The More the Better | The Honest Courtesan

Posts Tagged ‘The More the Better’

That Was the Week That Was (#313)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, A War for Peace, Above the Law, Advice for Clients, agency denial, Australia, Bogeymen, Bottleneck, brothels, Canada, condoms, cops, Cops and Condoms, Decentralization, dirty, disability, Down Under, Droit du Seigneur, Dutch Threat, Egypt, ethics, France, gangs, Hollywood, hysteria, India, internet, Islam, King of the Hill, Latin America, law, lawheads, Legalization a Good Idea?, Lying Down With Dogs, Mexico, Middle East, Minnesota, neofeminism, Netherlands, New Jersey, New Zealand, North Carolina, Oregon, politicians, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, rescue industry, Reviews, Russia, Sales Pitch, sex work is work, Skin To Skin, streetwalkers, Sweden, Swedish model, The More the Better, The Public Eye, Thought Experiment, underage, video, violence vs. sex workers, Whorearchy on March 29, 2013| 32 Comments »

We are simply sisters, mothers, neighbors and friends. We shop where you shop, we vote where you vote and we pay taxes like the rest of you. – Kristen DiAngelo

Cops and Condoms

…Bill Gates has…[offered] a $100,000 grant…to…develop “the next generation of condom”. Though condoms are the most reliable…method to protect against pregnancy and STIs, it doesn’t take your ex-boyfriend to tell you how much they kind of suck (oh, and will he tell you). So the foundation is requesting proposals for a…condom that “significantly preserves or enhances pleasure, in order to improve…regular use”…

Advice for Clients

Amanda Brooks published her own set of tips for clients; I think it’s worthwhile for a gentleman to read as many of these as he comes across, because every woman is different and may include something others didn’t think important.

Lying Down With Dogs

Ask yourself once again: Is this really the company you want the US to keep?

Egyptian prosecutors ordered the detention of 17 women and a Lebanese man…[for]…commercial phone sex…security forces raided [their] office…and confiscated phones and computer devices…Investigations showed “gang members” recruited female university students through job ads in newspapers and then agreed with them to perform acts “that run contrary to morality”…

Sales Pitch

Sweden says its “model” has reduced prostitution and deters clients: “[A] newspaper…published an advert about a fictional 19-year-old [sex worker]…Over the weekend, the phone had 130 missed calls and seven texts. After a week, the number had grown to 287 calls and 57 texts…[a] local police [spokesman claimed]…the callers were more curious than interested in buying sex…” What a pathetic rationalization! Here’s the real attitude of Swedes toward the law:

Down Under

Can you imagine American cops contradicting a prohibitionist politician’s lies?

Police say they’ve seen no evidence to back up [a New Zealand] MP’s claims that girls as young as 13 are working as prostitutes in south Auckland…Asenati Lole-Taylor says there is “growing prevalence” of underage girls selling sex…and she’s backing a bill to ban all street prostitution and confine sex work to brothels…[she also claims] she has witnessed police dealing with young prostitutes …That was news to police Area Commander…Chris de Wattignar. “It’s not something that police have seen ourselves. We also work with a number of agencies and community partners in the Otara town centre and that’s certainly not the information we have”…

Decentralization

The US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has [issued] regulations on…Bitcoin…there’s been zero regulation…[so far, because that] would essentially admit that it’s legitimate…The nature of Bitcoin makes it untraceable so unless firms are coaxed into cooperation, it’s hard to imagine the regulations being enforced.

Droit du Seigneur

“A former Bolshoi ballet dancer has called the acclaimed company a ‘giant brothel’…Anastasia Volochkova claimed that female dancers were forced to sleep with wealthy patrons…”

September Q & A

Though the main Wikipedia entry for “Prostitution” is an unusable (and uncorrectable) mess due to aggressive sabotage by neofeminists, there is a new article on “Migrant Sex Work” which is comprehensive, fact-based and non-judgmental and includes citations from many good writers like Laura Agustín, Elizabeth Bernstein, Pardis Mahdavi, Nick Mai and Rhacel Parrenas. Here’s hoping the author is able to keep control of it.

Thought Experiment

Charlotte Shane’s “’Getting Away’ With Hating It: Consent in the Context of Sex Work” is a brilliant exploration of how the weakness of the concept of “enthusiastic consent” (now being pushed by the “rape culture” folks) is demonstrated by sex work. This is definitely a must-read, especially for my male readers, as it looks at an area of female sexual psychology most men seem to have difficulty understanding. Even the comment thread is worth your time, especially the reactions to a Good Men Project writer who apparently thinks it’s only OK to pay a whore if she doesn’t need the job and is only doing it as a hobby or something.

The More the Better

The Australian Woman’s Weekly published “When Sex is Your Day Job”, an interview with five sex workers (including Rachel Wotton) about prejudice, sex work myths, discrimination and sex as a human right. What a difference from the United States!

Above the Law

…New Jersey [prison guard]… Juan R. Stevens, 50, was charged with…sexual assault and…criminal restraint…Stevens would call…escorts…[and tell them] he was a police officer in order to intimidate them into having sex with him for free…

A War for Peace (TW3 #11)

For once, I agree with a Femen leader’s analysis; too bad they don’t see it also applies to sex work:

A 19-year-old Tunisian activist who was threatened with death by stoning after posting topless pictures of herself online has reportedly been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. The woman, known only as Amina, posted the photographs…to the Femen-Tunisian Facebook page…Amina’s aunt claimed…”She had decided to kill herself and so posted nude pictures of herself online.” [Femen leader Inna] Shevchenko described the move as “a typical way of reacting to a woman’s demand to be free – they say she’s gone crazy or is being too emotional”…

Whorearchy

A…Mexican politician who…[appeared] in a…lingerie video is taking legal action against political rivals who claim she was [an] “escort girl.” Giselle Arellano says the…accusations resulted in her failing to win the nomination of Mexico’s conservative National Action Party (PAN)…She wants the election annulled on the grounds that she was “slandered” by her rivals…Arellano…resides in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she has done stints as a model and also runs a small company that offers “concierge services” to visitors. She was running for a seat in the Zacatecas State Legislature that is reserved for Mexicans who emigrate abroad…

Besides conventional services, Black Rose Services plans bachelor parties and group excursions to strip clubs and only takes clients by referral.

Bogeymen

Microsoft recently sponsored a “hackathon” based on the theme “combating human trafficking”, and a story on the ever-credulous NPR reports that one of the entries is a smartphone app that middle-class teenage girls who are suddenly “trafficked” by surprise (presumably by “pimps” leaping out at them from bushes) can use to surreptitiously “connect with resources, like a hotline number or a chat room where they can get help. ‘One of the requirements of this project was to make it covert, so it’s not easily detectable…and [that] it’s for girls ages 11 to 21.’ So the app, which they call Blossom, is disguised to look like it’s just about fun for teens…” Because captives would certainly be allowed to keep their phones, and university-age adult women are interested in the same sorts of games as 11-year-olds.

Bottleneck

“Authorities” not only refuse to recognize the damage licensing laws do, but often insist on congratulating themselves that they’re “helping” sex workers:

Saskatoon’s new adult services licensing bylaw…gives police new…powers to keep a closer watch on a large part of the sex industry…Anyone advertising sexual services…is now required to get a licence from the city…This is…taking part of the sex trade out of the shadows to protect vulnerable women, police and city officials say…”Prostitution is not against the law. If a person is working at a hotel and communicating in a private place, then they are not committing a criminal offence”…

And that obviously wouldn’t do, so they had to find a way to make it into one. For our own good, of course.

King of the Hill

North Carolina’s entry into the “trafficking hub” competition is especially hilarious for its claim that rural areas with low populations are “attractive” to those in the “sex trafficking trade”:

…On Eagles Wings Ministries plans to [build]…a haven for girls involved in the sex-trafficking trade…Gaston County provides a location that’s close enough to Charlotte to help girls there, but far enough away to keep traffickers at bay…North Carolina has become a hotspot for human trafficking…[due to] major highways and interstates, transient populations and large rural areas…

Book Reviews (October 2012)

Two of the authors of books from this column (Rob Arthur of You Will Die and Laura Agustín of Sex at the Margins) were interviewed on the subject of what inspired them to write those books; I think you’ll find their answers illuminating.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #50)

It’s a very hopeful sign when a review of a movie based in “trafficking” myth can conclude with this passage: “Eden…[is] not a documentary, it isn’t entertainment, and…[it] sure as heck isn’t art. It’s just a message, screaming on and on at people who agreed with the point before they bought a ticket.”

The Public Eye (TW3 #131)

More on the escort from American Courtesans who was arrested after complaining to police about a stalker:

Last month Lora LePoudre, who goes by the escort pseudonym Hilary Holiday, was arrested by the Eden Prairie Police department in Minnesota following an anonymous tip off by a neighbor and a subsequent sting operation…Neighbors in her family-friendly condo complex [said] they were thankful police had arrested her…

As you may remember, there was no “complaint” except from Hilary herself; the reporter also cherry-picks neighbors, spews inanities like “family-friendly” and misquotes Kristen DiAngelo as saying escorts are “very different” from other sex workers, when actually she said there was a difference between free and coerced prostitution.

Skin To Skin

…The head of the Essonne department…Jerome Guedj…called for allowing sex surrogates…as part of regular social services…[noting] that [they]…are permitted in some other European countries…But…[removed] the term…just ahead of the vote…after coming under criticism for opening the door to legalized prostitution…a national ethics council…ruled that authorizing sex surrogates would essentially “merchandise the human body”…

But while France says it’s OK to neglect disabled folks in order to “send a message” to dirty whores, New Zealand sees stories like this one:

I hired a sex worker for my late 93-year-old father. He had dementia and lived in a nursing home when he said to me, “You’ll need to find me a woman”…I took his request seriously [because]…I’m a disability support worker and I’ve seen how an individual’s sexuality needs to be considered…Touching Base put me in contact with…the person they thought most suitable: ‘Emma’…After time with Emma, my father’s well-being and consequently his behaviour improved…He wasn’t as agitated. He didn’t obsess over things like he used to. He was serene, happy and relaxed…

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (TW3 #139)

The Indian government has now completely reversed its sneaky criminalization attempt: “Sex workers and women’s rights activists across India have welcomed the…move to drop the word ‘prostitution’…from the amended…Penal Code. The new formulation targets sexual exploitation and not adult consensual sex work…”

Dutch Threat

What could possibly go wrong?

There is considerable sympathy among Dutch MPs for moves to get tougher on people who visit prostitutes and don’t report suspected exploitation or abuse…The senate…is currently considering legislation that would force prostitutes to sign up to an official register. Clients who fail to check if a girl is registered, could face prosecution…[some] want to go further and say clients should be prosecuted for failing to report to the authorities if they suspect a woman may be being abused or forced to work as a prostitute…

King of the Hill (TW3 #312)

Oregon is really ramping up the hysteria; between two different stories on the same legislative/cop antics we are told that “trafficking happens in small towns” to 9-year-olds, that “80 children are victims of sex trafficking each year” in Portland, that prosecutors want to use “racketeering laws” to prosecute whoever a girl names as her “pimp” after being jailed indefinitely (for her own good, of course), and that “men looking to buy sex from minors describe the victims they want to order.” All this on the word of unnamed women who present no evidence; you know, kind of like witch trials.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#135)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged abortion, activism, agency denial, bogus studies, Bottleneck, brothels, Bullies With Badges, Canada, Catholicism, censorship, Change a Few Words, Change of Heart, Connecticut, consensual crime, cops, Déjà Vu, Decentralization, dirty, Dirty Laundry, Dirty Whores, disability, disease, drugs, Due Consideration, East Asia, end demand, ethics, Europe, False Target, fantasy, First They Came for the Hookers, Florida, harm reduction, hysteria, I Swear To God, India, Indonesia, internet, Ireland, King of the Hill, law, lawheads, Little Boxes, Madonna/whore, Maine, massage, Minnesota, neofeminism, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, No Other Option, North Dakota, Oklahoma, porn, psychology, rape, Shift in the Wind, Something Rotten In Sweden, stage names, streetwalkers, stripping, Swedish model, tabula rasa, Texas, The Course of a Disease, The More the Better, United Kingdom, universal criminality, video, We Told You So, welcome to our world, What Were You Thinking? on February 3, 2013| 25 Comments »

Sex workers have a special place in society that is never rewarded or recognised. – Derek Freedman

No Other Option

My Cliterati article for last Sunday was “Skin To Skin”, a strong criticism of the cruelty of denying commercial sex to men who can’t experience physical intimacy in any other way; the very next day an English council provided a perfect example of that cruelty by announcing an “investigation” of a nursing home which allowed residents to hire sex workers, and I explained what was wrong with that in this week’s essay, “Caring Professionals”. Then there was this item from Bosnia:

Members of a…wheelchair basketball club are launching a campaign to legalize prostitution…to help disabled people “achieve their right to love.” Marinko Umicevic, president of the club Vrbas, said Wednesday that Bosnia had to catch up with 21^st century Europe, where…some people with disabilities “even get state subsidies to pay for sex.” Umicevic said some of his players had never had sex and legalizing the sex trade would help people like them achieve their basic rights…

Something Rotten in Sweden

Prostitution stings are disgusting no matter how they’re justified, but there’s something particularly vile about using “sex trafficking” as an excuse and then arresting hookers as well:

A multi-agency prostitution sting conducted earlier this month on behalf of National Human Trafficking Awareness Month has netted the arrests of…46 [people]…most for misdemeanor solicitation of prostitution…[but] five [for] women alleged to have posted sex ads…Sen. Leticia Van de Putte…[says] she intends to propose…a bill that would pave the way for victims of human trafficking to sue websites that make money off prostitution ads…

Senator Van de Putte could save the state of Texas a lot of money by simply researching the fate of similar ideas.

Decentralization

Bitcoin has become so popular, and its value has risen so much against that of national currencies, that Bloomberg is concerned that “virtual money could undermine the role of central banks”, which as Reason explains is exactly the point. The end of governments’ ability to directly meddle with the world economy can’t possibly come soon enough to suit me.

Dirty Whores

Dr Derek Freedman told the Irish Sun: “People from all strands of society use prostitutes from time to time. It ranges from [politicians], the clergy, the judiciary to people who are socially deprived, physically disabled and people who may be regarded as unattractive and may not be able to meet people”…while people often feel anxious about contracting infections after visiting a prostitute, he believes that “you’re probably safer with a professional than with a gifted amateur”…he added: “What we forget is that often sex workers give great comfort to people who are lonely”…

Déjà Vu

When even Christians are starting to see this, “trafficking” hysteria’s days are numbered:

…In her new book Other Dreams of Freedom, Yvonne Zimmerman, a professor of Christian Ethics, argues that the theoretical basis of US government anti-trafficking efforts derives directly from Protestant theology and traditional ideas of what she calls “sexually pure and pious womanhood”. Zimmerman challenges this basis for anti-trafficking efforts, saying that it ends up limiting the freedom of trafficked people, especially women, by conceiving of their “rescue” as them ending up in traditional, heterosexual marriages – or at least refraining from sexual relations outside of marriage…

What the Hell Were You Thinking? (We’re Not Done Yet)

A big improvement on the phone “app” described previously:

…a team [of students]…has invented a mobile panic button for street…sex…workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A voice or text message is first recorded onto a SIM card, which is inserted into a GPS-enabled device such as a pager…Pressing a button…activates the GPS and sends an emergency message and GPS location to a contact who can get help. Because the GPS is not activated until the device is activated, the anonymity of the user is preserved…Once prototype devices are ordered, the three students will hold focus groups to determine which type of device is more useful…[then] will launch a six-month pilot project by giving devices to 100 women…The group is currently holding a fundraising initiative online…$8,140 [will] cover…the entire pilot project…

Change a Few Words

Arch-prohibitionist Paul Chabot helpfully explains not only that prohibitionism really works, but that all prohibitions are equally valid: “When asked…why we keep marijuana illegal, Chabot responded: “Why do we keep heroin, LSD, prostitution, child pornography illegal?’” As Matthew Feeney points out, “Comparing marijuana to child pornography is a great way to insult millions of people by comparing them to pedophiles. Chabot is a free gift to those of us who would like to see drugs legalized.” And of course, the same goes for prostitution.

The More the Better (TW3 #4)

On Monday I received a press release from Sheri’s Ranch in Pahrump, Nevada, a brothel resort on 20 acres (8 hectares) with a swimming pool, spa and tennis court which actively markets itself to couples as well as single men. It’s now added “Sheri’s Playland”, a group of bungalows fitted out like movie sets so clients can enact any of six different sexual fantasies with working girls. As I’ve said before, this is a very positive trend; “it was after Vegas casinos started ‘gentrifying’ in the ‘80s that people from other states dropped their prejudices against gambling, and now casinos are everywhere in the US.”

The Course of a Disease

Sex workers fight an attempt to impose the Swedish model on Indonesia:

Prostitutes and activists…are calling on the government not to prosecute men who pay for sex…The chairwoman of Yogyakarta Women’s Sex Workers Association (P3SY)…said…that [client] criminalization…would decrease the bargaining power and income of sex workers…[and] drive prostitution further underground…[hindering] HIV/AIDS education and mitigation programs…arresting customers would lead to the closure of brothels…and force sex workers to seek customers on the streets…Ignatius Praptoharjono of the Atma Jaya Catholic University’s HIV/AIDS Research Center in Jakarta…cited the cases of Sweden, Canada and other Asia-Pacific nations, where a crackdown on [clients] led to the decline of red-light districts and reduced fees…forcing sex workers to charge less and work more. “Such a regulation will not protect women, but instead expose them to even higher risk,” [he] said…

Bullies With Badges

Heroic cops display their courage and fortitude by saving the helpless citizens of Connecticut from the menace of a 71-year-old whore: “an undercover cop…met her inside a room…[after] Sygun Liebhart placed a backpage.com ad…”

Little Boxes (TW3 #25)

Forcing massage parlors to close at 10 PM is the latest anti-whore fad:

…a new [Florida] bill…would ban massage establishments from operating between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m…to crack down on human trafficking and sexual exploitation…[it] also would make it illegal for massage establishments to allow anybody to live on the premises…the Florida State Massage Therapy Association questioned the hours restriction…[because] there are legitimate late-night clients including airline pilots and theatrical performers…[bill sponsor Dave] Kerner, a former…police officer, said…late-night massage establishments are a “hotbed” of illicit sexual activity…

Anyone who actually uses the phrase “illicit sexual activity” with a straight face should be barred from public office as a delusional busybody.

I Swear To God

Here’s another article on the PEPFAR “anti-prostitution pledge”, the efforts to overturn it and the importance of doing so from a health perspective, a human rights perspective and a free speech perspective. It really is beginning to seem like now that the gay rights culture war has essentially been won, many activists are starting to at last turn their attention toward the persecution of sex workers.

Shift in the Wind

Here’s a cute little promo video made at the Sex Worker Freedom Festival, the parallel AIDS conference held in Kolkata last summer by sex workers who were excluded from the US:

False Target

My fellow hot smart chick Amy Alkon wrote this week about that Jezebel favorite, social constructionist and penis apologist Hugo Schwyzer; his latest absurd claim (one which I called him to task about on Twitter a few months ago) is that older men are only attracted to young women because of “social construction”, and that before the advent of television guys were lining up to date old hags (presumably when they weren’t burning them as witches). In the process Amy discusses the evolutionary basis of lust, debunks the “rape is asexual” myth and quotes good sense from Dr. Gad Saad.

Bottleneck

The story of New York City’s “cabaret card”, an artificial bottleneck imposed on nightclub performers from 1926-1966, is an excellent example of why prostitution licensing doesn’t work; the corruption such a system engenders and the destructive consequences to individuals are virtually the same.

Dirty Laundry

“A divorced couple involved in running a brothel in north Dublin have avoided jail with fines and suspended sentences…Judge Mary Ellen Ring…ordered [Istvan Zeffer] to pay €1,000 to prostitute-support group Ruhama…Bernadette Kiss…is to pay €3,000…” Ruhama is the new front for the orders of nuns who ran the Magdalene laundries which enslaved whores and many other women; calling them a “prostitute support group” is equivalent to referring to the Nazis as a “Jewish support group”.

King of the Hill

Most of this story is the typical credulous stenography of an evangelical “rescue” organization’s claims, but this passage stood out: “The United States is the No. 1 destination for human sexual trafficking, with Oklahoma near the top of the most-active state list, the State Department reports…” As you probably know, the State Department “reports” nothing of the kind.

Change of Heart (TW3 #41)

Superior Court Justice Nancy Mills…threw out 46 of the 59 counts against the alleged co-conspirator in the high-profile Kennebunk prostitution case, setting the stage for another appeal to the state’s highest court. Mills’ decision…dealt prosecutors a…blow hours before opening arguments…were expected to begin…jury selection…[has already taken four days though] Mills said…it has never taken her longer than one day to seat a jury in her 19 years on the Superior Court…[charges were dropped after defense attorney Daniel] Lilley [argued]…that the notion that Maine privacy laws protect individuals engaged in criminal activity is “ludicrous.” The invasion of privacy charges are tied to the fact that the alleged sexual interactions…were videotaped without the [clients] knowing…the defense…is [also] free to pursue its…argument that Strong was the subject of police retaliation…

We Told You So (TW3 #131)

Slowly but surely, the press is waking up:

The sad tale of a prostitute being held captive in Chattanooga highlights a problem that appears overstated…it is the only one ever reported, according to area police. Meanwhile, a 2011 report co-produced by Vanderbilt University and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation estimated there were more than 100 cases of human sex trafficking in Hamilton County. The study is, apparently, based on erroneous surveys and severely lacking in verifiable facts…

First They Came for the Hookers… (TW3 #132)

More “stripper licensing” idiocy, complete with “sex trafficking” nonsense:

…officials in Moorhead, Minn., are expected to pass an anti-prostitution measure requiring erotic dancers, nude models and adult escorts to obtain licenses and submit to background checks…North Dakota counterparts across the Red River in Fargo and West Fargo are pushing similar ordinances and the regional approach will attempt to stem “a fairly prominent problem here” with prostitution trafficking between their cities and the oil fields…[police hope] the regulations will reduce “a huge problem of runaways and minors trafficked into the sex trade”…adult entertainers would likely have to pay $150 to $250, carry a photo ID and divulge their real names, aliases and criminal histories. Background checks revealing prostitution or drug convictions would disqualify applicants from receiving permits…

Pompous “authorities” just love creating bottlenecks that turn businesswomen into criminals, don’t they?

Due Consideration

It never takes control freaks very long to prove my points:

A…lawmaker in New Mexico introduced a bill…that would…require victims of rape to carry their pregnancies to term…as evidence for a sexual assault trial. House Bill 206, introduced by state Rep. Cathrynn Brown…would charge…[violators]…with a third-degree felony for “tampering with evidence”…

The bill is unlikely to pass, but only due to partisanism rather than because it’s a total abomination.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#51)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged acting, activism, Argentina, Australia, bogus studies, California, Canada, censorship, condoms, cops, crypto-moralism, dirty, evidence, Gorged With Meaning, harm reduction, Hollywood, hysteria, Lack of Evidence, Latin America, law, Legitimate Outrage, License To Rape, Madonna/whore, neo-Victorianism, neofeminism, New Jersey, New Orleans, New York, One Born Every Minute, porn, Profound Ignorance, psychology, rape, See No Evil, Shift in the Wind, slavery, Storyville, The Crumbling Dam, The More the Better, The New Victorianism, The Red Umbrella, Traffic Jam, Tyranny by Consensus, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers, welcome to our world, Where Are the Protests? on December 22, 2012| 15 Comments »

In reality, sex work isn’t stigmatised because it is dangerous. Sex work is dangerous because it is stigmatized. – Laurie Penny

Storyville

This is a pretty good introduction to Storyville, though it has a few errors and two really odd misinterpretations: she refers to “not on the first floor of any building” as a “district”, and she only counts business owners (rather than individual whores) when discussing income. Worth watching for the pictures.

Since young colonies rarely have anything to recommend them to women, they often have a pronounced gender imbalance; King Louis XV solved the problem in New Orleans by sending a boatload of whores, and George III did the same thing 68 years later for Australia. The ship was named the Lady Juliana, and this recent article draws on a recently-unearthed jail log to tell a little about the ship and its passengers.

License To Rape

…a former Eatontown [New Jersey] detective accepted a plea agreement…[for raping] an informant. His victim…explained to the court…how [Philip] Emanuele used the threat of prison for a theft charge…to coerce her into performing oral sex…When she refused, he raped her…Emanuele acknowledged what he had done in open court, and was sentenced to 5 years of probation for criminal coercion, and 3 years of probation for tampering with evidence…

Lack of Evidence

A New York district attorney has dropped a prostitution charge against former reality TV star Alicia Guastaferro…after further investigation revealed it was unmerited…The D.A. still plans to pursue [other] charges…Guastaferro…[and] attorney James D. Doyle [were found unconscious in Doyle’s car after]…a…motorist…[reported] a car being driven erratically…Guastaferro …told police Doyle pays her $500 to $700 to perform sexual acts and spend the night with him…

Yes, the cops actually filed a prostitution charge on the word of a semi-conscious drunk.

The Red Umbrella

This San Francisco Weekly op-ed by Chris Hall is the best December 17^th article by a non-sex worker I have ever seen. It deserves to be read in its entirety, but its tone is illustrated by the statement “…there really is no conversation about sex work…only a monologue by media and politicians with the workers themselves meant to stay silent. December 17 events represent a concerted effort to break that silence.”

The New Victorianism

Another Christmas present to sex workers from a journalist who isn’t one of us, but gets it; this one was published in The New Statesman by repentant neofeminist Laurie Penny:

…Laws regulating sex work are written…by people who have never done sex work and who have no sustained contact with those who do. The most well-meaning legislation…often backfires, pushing the sex trade further underground and giving the police licence to punish and victimise women…feminist author Ellen Willis termed this handkerchief-clutching zeal to “save” prostitutes, porn actresses and other “fallen” women “neo-Victorianism”…It’s a school of so-called women’s liberation that [believes]…work can’t possibly be the problem, so…If sex workers are victimised by the police and…face higher levels of violence and assault at work, then it can only be because of their dirty moral choice to have sex for money…This isn’t about evidence…It’s about morality, just as it was…when…women organised charity centres to ‘save’ street prostitutes from sin by finding them alternative employment as charwomen, in workhouses or scrubbing the streets…any kind of work, however exploitative and badly paid, must be better than sex work because it doesn’t involve sex, wicked sex, sinful sex…

See No Evil

The equation of images and reality claims another victim:

…Rémy Couture [is a]…Canadian special-effects artist charged with “corrupting morals” by illegally combining sex and gore…[in] two short films depicting the crimes of a necrophiliac serial killer and various photographs of simulated torture and dismemberment that were posted on Couture’s now-defunct website…The prosecution argues that Couture’s work is obscene under Canadian law because “a dominant characteristic” of it is “the undue exploitation of sex” combined with “crime, horror, cruelty and violence.” He faces up to two years in prison for this prohibited mixture…

Where Are the Protests?

The word “trafficking” is not to be found in this article, nor are calls for paving to be abolished:

…William Connors…his wife Mary…[and] their sons…were all convicted of conspiracy to require a person to perform forced…labour…the Connors would pick up…homeless drifters or addicts…[who then] lived in squalid caravans…as they moved around the country working on the Connors’ paving and patio businesses…and…were controlled by discipline and violence…[they] were beaten, hit with broom handles, belts, a rake and shovel, and punched and kicked…[they] were often made to strip for a “hosing down session” with freezing water…[and] were paid as little as £5 for a day’s hard labour on jobs that would earn the family several thousand pounds. They were given so little food they resorted to scavenging from dustbins…

And as Furry Girl points out, nobody seems to care if children are forced to act in movies for their parents’ profit, either: “Imagine if anti-sex worker activists treated all forms of entertainment the same way they treat [sex work]…Where are the Nick Kristof-led raids of acting classes for children, the protests against movie studios that utilize under-18 performers, and the arrests of live studio audiences at the taping of TV family sitcoms?”

The More the Better

Furry Girl writes about the way people’s acceptance of unfamiliar things like marijuana use, homosexuality and sex work tends to grow as they get to know real people who are involved with those things, and she proposes an experiment for those shy about coming out:

Go to a bar in the next city over, or a music festival out of town, or just tell the person sitting next to you on the bus or subway. Try openness on for just a day, or even 15 minutes. You will get some bad reactions, but I think it will surprise you how many people won’t be an asshole to you. Be prepared for questions, which you can choose to answer or not.

Traffic Jam

Amazingly, all 13 victims of an Argentinean “sex trafficking” witch hunt were acquitted of all charges last week: “…the judges said there was no way to prove that Marita, a 23-year-old mother and wife who vanished on…April 3, 2002, was kidnapped and forced into a prostitution ring…For the last decade Marita’s mother, Susana Trimarco, has waged an uphill battle [against]…the people she believed were responsible for her daughter’s disappearance into the netherworld of human trafficking…” Trimarco has insisted from the beginning that her daughter was abducted by “sex traffickers”, despite a total lack of evidence for such an outlandish interpretation of the meager facts. The article points out that Trimarco “almost single-handedly changed the way that human trafficking is viewed…across much of Latin America,” and this is true: with the help of cops and prohibitionists she has succeeded in introducing American-style “sex trafficking” mythology to a culture which has a much healthier view of sex work than that of the US.

Legitimate Outrage

Being an ignoramus is no impediment to a career in law:

The California Commission on Judicial Performance…[admonished] Judge Derek Johnson…[for] comments [made] in the case of a man who threatened to mutilate the face and genitals of his former girlfriend with a heated screwdriver, beat her with a metal baton and made other violent threats…Johnson, a former prosecutor in the Orange County district attorney’s sex crimes unit, said…”I’m not a gynecologist but I can tell you something: if someone doesn’t want to have sexual intercourse the body shuts down…[and] will not permit that to happen unless a lot of damage is inflicted, and we heard nothing about that in this case”…since 1980, California law has not required rape victims to prove they resisted or were prevented from resisting.

Profound Ignorance

Several people called to my attention a recent paper claiming that legalizing prostitution increased human trafficking; I pointed out to them that without good data and clear definitions, a prohibitionist can “prove” whatever he likes. But Dr. Laura Agustín said it much better than I did:

I’ve been asked several times to comment on a recently published article, Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?…This study belongs to a trend to use econometric concepts and techniques in a (vain) attempt to prove this or that about prostitution…fancy modelling and sophisticated analysis cannot help when the data being analysed is next to useless…Any critique of this work has to begin by asking how the authors define human trafficking, inflows, legalised prostitution, the prostitution market, trafficked women and legal prostitutes. None of these terms is self-explaining. After more than 15 years, we do not even have agreement about what the fundamental terms mean, so anyone writing in the field has to tell us which definitions they are using and they have to make sure they compare and contrast categories using the same definitions…The best way to understand this work is Garbage in, garbage out…

Metaupdates

The Crumbling Dam (TW3 #35)

Wally Oppal says the scores of women missing and presumed murdered by Robert Pickton and others in the Vancouver area were doubly forsaken – by society and by police. In fact, they were triply forsaken…The law itself forsook many of them, by criminalizing them for selling sex and driving them to the extreme margins…“I cannot ignore the reality that this legal regime played an important role in shaping the relationship between the police and women…potentially affecting…investigations…” Mr. Oppal writes…The report is a death knell for prostitution laws in their current form.

Shift in the Wind (TW3 #43)

More and more UN officials are coming out in favor of decriminalization:

The UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health – yes, that’s his full title…has…come down firmly on the side of decriminalising the sex industry. In fact, a 2010 report of his is one of the strongest statements I’ve ever seen in this regard by a UN official…

Tyranny By Consensus (TW3 #47)

A group of adult industry leaders announced…their intent to file a lawsuit soon against Los Angeles County over Measure B…an ill-conceived law that makes it mandatory for adult actors to wear lab coats, goggles and gloves as well as condoms while shooting adult films in the County. The law was funded solely by AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF)…The attorneys plan to challenge the law on the [grounds that]…health and safety…issues…fall under…State regulation…[they also] plan to challenge…on constitutional grounds…

One Born Every Minute (TW3 #48)

“Detectives investigating a website offering to pay the tuition fees of female students in return for sex have arrested [Mark Lancaster] on suspicion of inciting prostitution…” WTF? “Inciting prostitution”? How about fraud and sexual assault?

Gorged With Meaning (TW3 #49)

It’s astonishing that these people just can’t understand and accept that nothing has to “be done”, and that student sex workers will get along without their “help” just as they always have: “…ex-brothel madam [Becky Adams] has been enlisted to help…Swansea University…research…what motivates [students] to [do] sex work…” I’ll save them the trouble: the answer is “good money and flexible hours”. Now, where’s my £500,000?

This Week in 2010 and 2011

Beside my two previous columns for December 17^th, my two previous columns for Yule, my two previous yuletide fictional interludes and a history of Hanukkah, this week also featured a look at what passes for “evidence of prostitution”, a look at the truth of Swedish “feminism”, a statement of some of my principles, a thought experiment about coercion vs. free choice and a biography of Edith Piaf. Finally, there were also short items on Craigslist, the UK attempt to block all internet porn, PC celebrities, “john schools”, Bronte sister action figures, nanny-state dating advice, Julian Assange, hate crime, an awkward call, men’s magazines, a fatal BDSM accident, Barbie hate, a begging ban, another hooker-hiring politician and religious persecution.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#46)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged activism, Africa, agency denial, All in the Family, animals, archeofeminism, Australia, bad customers, Bad Girls, Blackball, brothels, Canada, censorship, Central Asia, Confined and Controlled, cops, Crying Wolf, cult of the child, dirty, disability, Don't Confuse Us With Facts, Down Under, ethics, Europe, Florida, Grace Bellavue, Greece, harm reduction, Hollywood, homosexuality, hysteria, Imagination Pinned Down, India, internet, Kenya, law, Maine, My Readers Write, No Other Option, porn, psychology, Reaction Formation, robots, stripping, The Dogs Do Bark, The More the Better, The Public Eye, The Pygmalion Fallacy, United Kingdom, Useful Idiots, yin and yang on November 17, 2012| 42 Comments »

I am a sex worker and I make my money from clients seeing me. Some clients just happen to have a disability. – Rachel Wotton

When Someone You Love is A Sex Worker

Do you have a sex worker in your family, or are you in a relationship with one? If so, Stacey Swimme of SWOP would like to talk to you. She’s writing a book called When Someone You Love is A Sex Worker, which is intended to support family members and partners, and she recently sent out an email to ask for input:

…I am inviting family members, partners, lovers and friends of sex workers to be interviewed for my book. I’m looking for examples of challenges as well as successes. I want to hear about your fears, disagreements and compromises with the sex worker(s) in your life. It would be a privilege to include your perspective if you have time to do a short interview (about 15-30 minutes) on one of the four dates below. You do not have to provide any identifying information. You’re welcome to provide a fake name…

The four dates are Wednesday November 14^th (at 11AM, 11:40AM, 12:30PM and 1:15PM), Wednesday November 21^st (same time slots), Monday November 26^th (at 9AM, 9:40AM, 10:30AM and 11:15AM) and Tuesday November 27^th (same time slots). If you’re interested please email StaceySwimme@gmail.com with your preferred name, age, city and times from the list that work for you.

Updates

Bad Girls

…farmers are losing thousands of shillings to prostitutes in [Kenya]… social services chairperson Elizabeth Kibii…said the department has received many complaints from farmers who have been robbed… “They either lace the drink with drugs that will make you unconscious or they send one of their own to the room early and hide under the bed. And when he and her partner are busy, the one under the bed walks away secretly with the money”…

All in the Family

Australian whore and activist Grace Bellavue uses the intense story of how she came out to her parents as a springboard for a discussion of whore stigma, in which she convincingly argues that those who oppose prostitution should actually be fighting that stigma rather than perpetuating it. It’s powerful and well worth a read, but skip the comment thread.

Reaction Formation

This sort of story is only “shocking” to the psychologically and sexually illiterate:

An ordained counselor dedicated to “freeing” people from homosexuality has been arrested on charges of molesting…young men…Rev. Ryan J. Muelhauser …was connected with OutPost Ministry…[and] allegedly fondled two young men who were seeking to “cure” themselves of homosexuality, as well as asking them to masturbate for him…

Furthermore, “leading a crusade” against any form of sexual behavior should be considered probable cause for suspicion of practicing that behavior:

A former top [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] official who helped lead the [South Florida] crusade against child sexual exploitation was sentenced…on a child pornography charge. Anthony V. Mangione…possessed up to 150 images of child pornography, some depicting the “extreme abuse of children”…

Crying Wolf

Neofeminist fanatics who foam at the mouth about “rape culture”, insist that normal economic needs constitute “coercion” and pretend that compliments are a form of “violence against women” need to have stories like this one drilled into their brains:

Mah Gul, 20, was beheaded after her mother-in-law attempted to make her sleep with a man in her house in [Afghanistan]…Gul was married to her husband four months ago and her mother-in-law had tried to force her into prostitution several times in the past…The suspect, Najibullah…said the mother-in-law lured him into killing Gul by telling him that she was a prostitute…

That is what sexual coercion, forced prostitution and violence against women actually look like.

My Readers Write

Aspasia writes in her own blog on would-be allies and “concerned parties” who expect sex worker activists to spoon-feed them the way prohibitionists do, and why it’s a bad idea to cater to their demands.

Don’t Confuse Us With Facts

Dean Boland, the lawyer who was fined $300,000 for demonstrating the absurdity of America’s draconian “child pornography” laws, has lost his appeal; the judges ruled that there really is such a thing as sympathetic magic, so that altering the images of children actually and literally harmed them in some tangible way. So much for science, logic or common sense.

Hark, Hark, the Dogs Do Bark

Another “dog bites man” study:

…a group of boys ages 8 to 11 whose fetal testosterone had been measured from amniotic fluid when their mothers were 13-20 weeks pregnant…were shown pictures of negative (fearful), positive (happy), neutral, or scrambled faces while a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine tracked changes in their brain activity. In the boys who had higher levels of fetal testosterone, the brain’s reward system was more responsive to positive…facial cues…[suggesting] those boys have a greater proclivity for “approach-related behaviors,” such as fun-seeking and impulsivity…

Useful Idiots

The US government’s scheme to collect and indefinitely retain DNA from virtually anyone has been challenged a number of times since it was first slipped into the Trojan Horse Act of 2005, and the Supreme Court has finally deigned to rule on it: “…at least 21 states and the federal government have regulations requiring suspects to give a DNA sample upon arrest…[which is then] cataloged in state and federal crime-fighting databases…the justices opted to take on an April decision…from Maryland’s top court, which said it was a breach of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure to take, without warrants, DNA samples from suspects who have not been convicted…”

The Pygmalion Fallacy

The “sex robot” morons are at it again:

Could sex with robots help extend human life spans? Some futurists seem to think so. A Nov. 7 article on the futurist website Transhumanity argues that robot lovers could help extend life spans by giving users mind-blowing “longevity orgasms” far superior in quality to those from human…partners…”[Sexbots will] be more desirable, patient, eager, and altruistic than their meat-bag competition, plus they’ll be uploaded with supreme sex-skills from millennia of erotic manuals, archives and academic experiments, and their anatomy will feature sexplosive devices…They’ll offer us quadruple-tongued cunnilingus, open-throat silky fellatio, deliriously gentle kissing, transcendent nipple tweaking, g-spot massage & prostate milking dexterity, plus 2,000 varieties of coital rhythm with scented lubes“…

Is it just me, or does this one-handed typist sound badly in need of a girlfriend?

Confined and Controlled

The inevitable result of busybody laws which treat women as helpless victims of male sexuality:

[Toronto] City council…adopted…changes to…regulations…Now…strippers can’t sit on patrons’ laps or make contact with breasts, buttocks or pubic areas. And rooms, booths or cubicles for private dances have to be transparent on one side…As the Licensing and Standards Committee was formulating the amendments…its staff consulted with us…but…management at the club I worked in…[collected the surveys] and [filled] them out on our behalf. The manager told me…“This has nothing to do with what you think they want…They want the girls to see all these stupid questions so they can answer, ‘Oh, people touching me…Oh, I don’t like the dark.’ Then they come in the court and say, ‘Look, the girls don’t like the business’”…The city’s data shows that 98 per cent of respondents in the surveys submitted by the [club owner’s association] denied ever being sexually assaulted or touched without their consent, while 67 per cent of strippers who submitted surveys themselves said they had been…

If governments didn’t persecute adult businesses, managers would have no cause to worry and standards could be determined by the sex workers’ needs rather than those of the managers or prohibitionists, who both use the women as pawns in their power game.

Imagination Pinned Down

Quote from the snake catcher himself on a snake expert’s message board: “Sorry but this is ridiculous, I was the one who caught this snake, never did I say anything like that, in fact I stressed to her that it was incredibly unusual for that to happen and quietly doubted it even occurred as she told it.”

The Public Eye

Burlesque as a hobby is less stigmatized than professional stripping, Portland, Maine is unusually tolerant, and a seat on the school board isn’t exactly high office, but it’s still amazing this happened at all: “…Holly Seeliger, a 26-year-old teacher and burlesque dancer, won the District 2 seat on the Portland Board of Public Education, getting 59 percent of the vote…”

Metaupdates

No Other Option (Updates Galore, Part One)

Rachel Wotton’s wonderful charity “Touching Base”, which connects disabled people with sex workers who specialize in helping them, has experienced an upsurge of publicity due in part to the documentary Scarlet Road and in part to the movie The Sessions, which I’ll be discussing in a column two weeks from now. I hope this sympathetic and respectful article in The Age calls even more attention to it, and that one day the US may grow up enough for a branch of the organization to operate here.

Blackball (TW3 #33)

Douglas Fox of Harlot’s Parlour shared an essay written by a male escort named Steve, which demonstrates how governments can ruin a simple idea used effectively by individuals and peer groups for decades:

There’s been a lot of hype about the Nationwide Ugly Mugs Scheme [but it’s useless to most sex workers]…Take…[this] recent…complaint [from] a male sex worker who didn’t get paid by a client who was drunk and told him he kept a knife [nearby]…Extracts from the warning read: “business was agreed to take place at the man’s home which was a flat in a communal block in Basildon…He is described as; 45-49, White, 5ft 9, stocky, shaven grey/white hair, blue eyes and pale complexion, with a local accent and scars to his torso”…No address, no phone number, nothing. Sex workers…need to access real information if we are to protect ourselves. Phone numbers…that look like…“0*********1″ do nothing to help…there are probably about 200 similar blocks of flats in Basildon…[and] the description sounds like every other client who has walked through my door in the last two weeks…

The organization which administers the NUM project made this (typically political) response.

Down Under (TW3 #43)

The Australian government has axed its “Cleanfeed” porn-filtering plan that’s been shrouded in a campaign to fight spam and malware. Backers…pushed the idea for the last five years claiming that the Cleanfeed filter would protect children from predators…The filter even passed a government trial and was expected to be adopted… [but a backlash started] when a secret…Communications and Media Authority blacklist of targeted websites…was outed by Wikileaks…Cleanfeed was opposed by online consumers, lobby groups, ISPs, network administrators, some children’s welfare groups, Google, the U.S. Ambassador to Australia, and a number of government officials. Opponents…feared the filtering would foster Internet censorship and new online restrictions…

The More the Better (TW3 #45)

Apparently some Greek officials believe in “sex rays”, even if the people don’t:

…local officials insisted that a primary school return [brothel owner Soula Alevridou’s] donation…[of] €3,000 to cover the costs of [a] photocopier and a small library…the school was grateful…[but officials were embarrassed by] a brothel madam stepping into a gap created by fiscal recklessness and state profligacy…”We must protect our children,” [said provincial director of education Giorgos Panayiotopoulos]…

This Week in 2010 and 2011

I presented biographies of Mata Hari and Veronica Franco, looked at whore-hatred in World War II France, contemporary Iceland and a fictional future, and examined the truth about federal “sex trafficking” stings, the use of “Swedish model” rhetoric in American police departments, the campaign against Backpage and a fake escort blogger. I also discussed cops who rape, the increasing number of academics telling the truth about sex work, the reason sex worker rights have languished while gay rights thrived, and the difference in sex work news stories between Europe and the US, and featured short items on internet censorship, the government’s intentional hiding of information on “missing children”, the underuse of HPV vaccines, weird search terms, a murderous proposal and “don’t panic” plans.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#45)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Across the Pond, activism, agency denial, Amsterdam, avails laws, brothels, California, Colorado, consensual crime, cops, cosmetic surgery, Craigslist, dirty, drugs, Election Day, escort services, Europe, Florida, Greece, Gullible's Travels, harm reduction, hysteria, internet, Ireland, law, lawheads, Little Boxes, Make Up Your Damned Mind!, neofeminism, Netherlands, New York, Not An Addiction, porn, psychology, sex offender registry, stereotypes, Swedish model, Texas, The Last 13, The More the Better, United Kingdom, Washington (state), Where Are the Protests?, Who Did Your Tits? on November 9, 2012| 14 Comments »

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both. – Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay

Election Day

At last the madness is over, and the world is relieved of the poison Americans vomit out everywhere in advance of our presidential elections. The pretense that one fascist is somehow superior to the other is of no concern to this column, but ballot initiatives in Colorado, Washington and California are. Let’s start with the good news: possession and use of small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized in Colorado and Washington, and Coloradans are allowed to cultivate up to six plants and give away weed as long as no money is exchanged. State authorities have been granted plenty of time (8 months in Colorado and 13 in Washington) to draft and adopt regulations for commercial cultivation and sale, and though the federal ban still stands it’s going to be rather difficult for the feds to enforce that, considering that 99% of all marijuana arrests are committed by state and local police (who in those two states will now be forbidden to act).

But while the forces of prohibitionism lost a little power over 12 million people, they gained a great deal over 38 million. Not only did Michael Weinstein’s crusade to turn porn movies into creepy goggle-and-glove festooned condom commercials succeed, but also the horrific Proposition 35 passed by a landslide due to its dishonest portrayal as an “anti-human trafficking” measure. The law defines a “‘commercial sex act’ as one that…occurs on account of anything of value being given or received by any person… ‘anything of value’…[could] include…dinner…a movie…a drink…” and defines coercion so broadly that a wide spectrum of previously non-criminal behaviors (including begging or buying a woman a drink) falls under it. Parents, adult children, roommates, spouses and landlords of prostitutes could all be charged with “pimping”, which along with “coerced commercial sex” is defined as “human trafficking”; million-dollar fines, decades-long prison sentences and lifelong “sex offender” registration are the penalties for the new “crime”. Furthermore, it demands that those condemned to this registry turn over all internet screen names, passwords and other “identifiers” to the police so they can be continually spied upon, forever (though this one narrow portion of the law has already been challenged by the ACLU and EFF). Finally (and most incredibly), the registration and its attendant surveillance are retroactive to 1944, so a 90-year-old woman convicted of “pandering” in the last days of World War II for assisting a hooker friend could be forced to register as a “dangerous sex offender” (with all that entails).

The word “Kafkaesque” falls utterly short.

Happy Birthday, Devil Dogs!

Tomorrow is the 237^th anniversary of the founding of the United States Marine Corps, and is observed by Marines as the Corps’ “birthday”. Military men have been among the best clients of whores since men first started going to war, and that will always be so despite the recent efforts of evil-minded prudes to change it. You can read my personal and professional thoughts on the subject from two years ago at the link above, and from last year also. And if you know a Marine, he’s sure to appreciate a “Happy Birthday!” tomorrow.

Not an Addiction

“Sex addiction” seems positively reasonable compared to the notion of an escort service that “wasn’t prostitution or anything”:

…Jennifer…was hooked on heroin in her early twenties…but straight after she left rehab, a new problem began to emerge. “I’m not really sure how it happened, but I started to work for an escort service…It wasn’t prostitution or anything, but what drew me to this particular company was the fact that all I had to do was go on dates with men…lots of men.” Jennifer says she didn’t sleep with her clients, but that working as an escort made her feel the same “high” that drugs had given her, because of all the attention she received. At the same time, she also became obsessed with constantly posting provocative pictures of herself on her Facebook page…After a year of this…Jennifer…quit working as an escort and [sought] counseling. She was told she was “addicted” to male attention…While the American Psychiatric Association doesn’t classify Jennifer’s condition as an addiction, some mental health professionals say they regularly encounter behavior like this in recovering addicts…Cindy Grassin…emphasizes that an obsession with or addiction to male attention is different from a sex addiction…

Actually, they’re exactly the same: obsessions which quacks mislabel as “addictions” to capitalize on a fad.

Make Up Your Damned Mind!

Prostitution stories involving Florida cops would be hilarious if their moronic shenanigans didn’t hurt real women: “The alleged illicit activities…not far from Walt Disney World…came as a surprise to some central Floridians. ‘That’s crazy…because people are coming here for fun,’ said…Tamika Stevens.” If Tamika thinks sex isn’t fun, I suggest she seek a competent therapist. “‘Every time we’ve been here it’s been as safe as anything,’ said visitor Wayne Aston. Law enforcement officials said they want to try to keep it safe. And to help do so, they are cracking down on prostitution.” Because we’re dangerous criminals! One never knows when a hooker will burn a kid with a flashbang grenade, or taser a pregnant woman, or machine-gun a bystander in the back…oh, wait, that’s cops.

Across the Pond

Though brothels are illegal in the UK, the city of Edinburgh has long tolerated prostitution in saunas as a way of reducing streetwalking. But when the licenses of 13 of the 15 saunas came up for renewal recently, protests were filed by busybody prohibitionists spouting idiocy such as “…The buying and selling of vulnerable women…is not a private matter…it harms us all.” Fortunately, the city council did the right thing and renewed the licenses anyway:

Twelve saunas in Edinburgh were…granted…licences by councillors, despite…one [man’s]…campaign against them. Michael Anthony, 59…left the City Chambers in protest…He had earlier accused police…of turning a blind eye to criminal activity…[but] police officers at the meeting said they had no grounds to object. Ten of the licences were granted and two were continued, because of ongoing police investigations, and will be reviewed within six months. Until then they will continue trading…Scotpep, a campaign group supporting sex workers, welcomed the decision…However, Jenny Kemp, co-ordinator of Zero Tolerance, said: “We are appalled by this decision. Sexual exploitation is a huge problem in Edinburgh and saunas are a key place where that…happens.”

Gullible’s Travels

“Long gas station lines and empty gas pumps have plagued drivers across New York and New Jersey since [tropical] storm Sandy slammed into the East Coast last Monday, leaving a gas shortage across the region…now it seems…Men have been taking to the personals on Craigslist, trading gasoline for sex…” To the credulous mind of the modern “reporter”, a few clueless idiots trying to get laid for about $20 of goods is “People trading gas for sex on Craigslist.”

Little Boxes

Behold: Olympic-level mental gymnastics:

…Jackie Samuel…is a professional cuddler…[who] turned to snuggling with strangers to help pay for her studies and provide for her young son…her college has threatened to expel her – while others have called her a prostitute…She said: “I think I was born knowing how to snuggle. Snuggling is healthy, spiritual and fun…Some of my older clients, their wives have passed away, and they just need someone to be with, like someone to experience touch with. Some of the younger clients are between relationships, some are in problematic relationships, and some people are just really curious and they come to just find out what it’s going to be like”…clients…are banned from touching parts of her body covered by underwear, which she wears under pyjamas. The business has done so well she has even hired another snuggling professional, Colleen…[who] has joined Jackie on two occasions in what they have termed a “double cuddle”…

The Odor of Socks

Ireland’s Turn Off the Red Light (TORL) campaign…already enjoys having their own letters widely published in…Irish newspapers, whilst sex worker letters are almost always ignored, but they want more…so…the Irish Feminist Network (IFN) reached out in a mailshot…calling for volunteer “letter writers”, only actually they meant shills. “TORL will provide the letter – all you have to do is put your name and contact details to the end of it”…

Metaupdates

Who Did Your Tits? (TW3 #5)

Just reading this made me incredibly uncomfortable:

…a police officer in Texas burst [Rebecca Van Hooser’s] breast implant by using excessive force when he arrested her during a traffic stop. Pantego Officer Eric Alvarez pulled [her] over…for a headlight violation [then] discovered a warrant for her arrest for an unpaid speeding ticket…”She gets out of the car, [Alvarez] grabs her, throws her against the car…kick…spreads her legs and…yanks [her arms] very hard behind her back,” [said] her attorney, Susan Hutchison…Van Hooser is suing the Pantego Police Department for the Oct. 28, 2011, incident, which…caused her right implant to split and leak fluid into her body. “She’s screaming in pain, and his response is, ‘This isn’t supposed to be comfortable,'” Hutchison added…

Where Are the Protests? (TW3 #10)

So, where are the calls to ban “ethical” chicken farming?

…workers at one company that helped to collect ethically raised chickens were apparently themselves victims of human trafficking and beatings…its…license [was] revoked…after allegations that it kept workers in debt bondage, among a series of other claims…roughly 29 Lithuanian men…said that they had been told that these would be well-paid jobs…but earned…less than $150 a week…

Amsterdam (TW3 #25)

Dutch “authorities” seem determined to destroy their historic tolerance by outlawing more aspects of sex work and then feigning surprise when the number of illegal whores increases (translated with Google’s help):

…police allege…that there is illegal labor and prostitution in many Chinese massage parlors…there were “signs of sexual acts” in two of the four Chinese massage parlors in Amsterdam…Twenty staff were checked by the police. Two employees were illegally employed, one was illegally residing in the Netherlands and in one case there were “indications of exploitation”…None of the salons proved adequate records of cash transactions. About 75 of the 300 massage businesses in Amsterdam are believed to be “happy-ending” establishments…and police concentrated on Chinese parlors in particular because of alleged “signs” that forced women are employed in them…

The More the Better (TW3 #42)

After sponsoring a soccer team in Larissa…brothel owner Soula Alevridou is now extending her financial support to a school in Patra…[by donating] 3,000 euros…to purchase a photocopier and a library for the school…

The Last Thirteen for Fourteen (TW3 #44)

Nine (of Feminist Ire) looks at the willful blindness of “Rhoda Grant MSP…the latest public figure to have jumped on the criminalisation bandwagon” by promoting the Swedish Model; Nine writes that “The proposal, based on a lack of understanding of what the sex industry is actually like, has been put together by someone who doesn’t want to learn about it. The consultation paper draws from unethical research and selectively uses small-scale studies on specific sectors of the sex industry to define sex work as a whole…” That’s why it’s important for as many sex workers and allies as possible, even those who don’t live in Scotland, to add their voices to the process.

This Week in 2010 and 2011

Besides my Marine Corps birthday columns and the two previous Guy Fawkes Day columns I mentioned on Monday, this week saw entries on Biblical queens and drama queens, two psychological aberrations which can affect men’s attitudes toward sex, a shift in the attitudes of reasonable people toward sex workers, the incompatibility of facts with dogma and science with law, and the nonexistence of free lunches. I also featured reviews of several books and short articles on trafficked wood, the weirdness of legalization, the presumption of guilt and a sociological group’s pro-decriminalization statement.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#42)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged abortion, Above the Law, activism, Africa, agency denial, Argentina, asset seizure, Backwards into the Future, bogus studies, brothels, California, cops, dirty, disease, drugs, East Asia, escort services, Europe, False Target, fantasy, France, Greece, harm reduction, hysteria, Indiana, Ireland, J’accuse, Latin America, law, Maryland, My Body My Choice, Naked Truth, neofeminism, psychology, rape, sex rays, sex work is work, stage names, stereotypes, streetwalkers, Swedish model, tabula rasa, teachers, That Old Black Magic, The Course of a Disease, The More the Better, The Public Eye, Think of the Children!, United Kingdom, vaccines, video, Vietnam, Washington DC, What If They Threw a Party?, Wholesale Hypocrisy, witchcraft on October 20, 2012| 21 Comments »

For all the talk about women involved in the sex industry as “victims”, there is no apparent appetite for actually speaking with them in order to assess what the real issues are. – Graham Ellison

Sex Work is Work

“Nairobi Mayor George Aladwa has warned…sex workers that they risk being arrested if they will not stop conducting their business in Central Business District…The mayor urged the sex workers to use their talents in seeking income…” This is, of course, exactly what he is threatening them for doing.

Updates

Think of the Children!

Indiana school officials believe that sex radiation is so dangerous that exposed students must be quarantined in order to contain the contamination:

Some students…in Anderson, Ind. [who] got a peek of their teacher’s bare breasts on a school-issued iPad…have been suspended and threatened with expulsion…Joshua Troutt, 13…and three other students were in their classroom, playing a game on [the] iPad…[and when] one of the students pressed a button…[the] photograph…was revealed. “It’s not our fault that she had the photo on there,” Troutt said. “We couldn’t do anything not to look at it…She had to have pressed something to make all of her [iPhone] photos synch on there”…

Let that be a lesson to you, kids: never tell any authority figure about anything unusual that happens, ever.

Wholesale Hypocrisy

Even though the prosecutor euphemistically refers to armed robbery and grand larceny as “improper use of forfeiture funds”, it’s still a pleasure to see this coming up to trial at last: “Former Romulus [Michigan] Police Chief Michael St. Andre, his wife, and five…detectives pled not guilty…to using asset forfeiture funds…[from] narcotics and prostitution investigations to buy…narcotics and prostitutes… The officers are accused of spending $40,000 in forfeiture funds in one year…[and] St. Andre also used $75,000 from drug forfeiture funds to buy a tanning salon…for his wife.”

Above the Law

Yet again: As long as government actors have excessive power over individuals, this will keep happening:

A woman in Maryland who was allegedly raped…by a deputy sheriff has filed a $15 million lawsuit against the Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Office…Lamar McIntyre allegedly…took [the woman, who was awaiting trial] into an isolated holding cell and told her to get naked, [forced her into] oral…and vaginal sex without a condom…”[slapped] her buttocks extremely hard”…[then] took pictures with his camera phone…McIntyre [then] took the woman to the court room “as if nothing ever happened”…McIntyre…admitted to police that he was involved…

Naked Truth

Dr. Brooke Magnanti’s Telegraph article on “sex trafficking” hysteria covers familiar ground, but she’s always a pleasure to read. Furthermore, because she was born in Florida but did sex work in the UK, she qualifies as “trafficked” herself under the official criteria. She mentions several useful statistics:

…of the trafficking referrals made to police in the UK, one in four are men, and domestic and agricultural exploitation counts for six of every 10 cases…Liz Kelly and Linda Regan of the University of North London attempted to estimate the number of women brought into the UK for sex in 1998 by surveying [police] reports…they came up with…71…[but this] included…women who willingly arrived…for sex work…In 2007…[Operation] Pentameter Two resulted in five convictions…406 arrests were made…153 of those…were released without charge. Most of the rest were charged with immigration breaches and unrelated offences. Twenty-two were prosecuted for trafficking; 7 of those were acquitted. Ten of the remaining lot turned out not to have coerced the women they brought into the country. This left five actual traffickers…none of [whom] were detected specifically by actions in the Pentameter Two effort…

She also mentions that the “80% of sex workers are coerced” claim promoted by MP Fiona Mactaggart (and repeated ad nauseum by other prohibitionists) originally came from a 1982 survey of San Francisco streetwalkers.

False Target

“People want to believe that any behavior they dislike…is either wholly voluntary or the result of ‘socialization’…but…[these are] better explained by evolution and neurology than by ludicrous tabula rasa notions. Why they prefer to believe that people are programmed by “society” or “the Patriarchy” than to acknowledge we are programmed by Nature I cannot say; perhaps they fear that instinct is harder to overcome than learning and therefore choose to deny the terrifying reality…” More on this same line of thought from Dr. Gad Saad:

…“blank slate” explanations are ubiquitous in the social sciences…men stray from their marriages…due to their viewing of pornography …people succumb to juicy burgers…[because of] those alluring advertising jingles…women [suffer]…eating disorders…[due to] media images that attack [their] self-worth…young [men’s]…violent and reckless behaviors…[are caused by] video games…these arguments are pure fiction…rooted in a perfectly erroneous view of human nature. Each of [these] is linked to evolutionary and biological principles that have little to do with…socialization…the blank slate view [is] so pervasive…[because] it caters to…the endless pursuit for hope…[and] provides people with the illusion of control. Alter the supposed culprit environmental cause and the issue will apparently be resolved…

The Public Eye

Though this item from the East Bay Express is largely based around the harm Proposition 35 will do if enacted, it is less an analysis of the proposed law and more an honest and accepting profile of a number of sex workers in the San Francisco Bay area, including regular reader Jolene Parton. The more articles like this we see, the harder it will be for prohibitionists to support the lie that well-adjusted sex workers are an unrepresentative minority.

That Old Black Magic

Most of this story about a “huge crackdown on human trafficking” in Scotland is the same old bombastic rhetoric, turgid “estimates” and endless repetition of lurid claims about the escort service owners convicted of “trafficking” last year. But there was an embedded link proclaiming that “Sex trafficking victims reveal horror of witchcraft and torture being used to ensalve [sic] women in Scotland!” which led to an article I missed in January notable not only for the “magical slave control” pap, but also for being published just before the popular exaggeration increased from “15 men a day” to 50. Stories like this are an excellent development, because they throw a spotlight on the close resemblance between “sex trafficking” hysteria and the Satanic Panic.

Metaupdates

What If They Threw a Party and Nobody Came? in October Updates (Part One)

Since it’s apparent that prudes prefer their daughters to die than to have sex, this study was necessary no matter how totally obvious its conclusions were from the start:

There did not appear to be any difference in the sexual behaviors of adolescent girls who received the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine and their unvaccinated peers…Among girls ages 11 and 12 enrolled in a large, managed-care organization, there were no between-group differences in the rate of pregnancy…sexually transmitted infection, or receipt of contraceptive counseling…In addition, the average age at the first composite outcome was no different between vaccinated and unvaccinated girls…

That’s especially good now that a new version of the vaccine may help women who are already infected:

…the experimental vaccine…was given to 18 women with cervical dysplasia, a precancerous condition…caused by a chronic HPV infection…after vaccination, the women produced immune cells that were capable of attacking and killing HPV-infected cells…this…could clear chronic HPV infections, and prevent precancerous cells from becoming cancerous…it’s possible a [similar] vaccine…could treat other types of cancer caused by HPV, such as some head and neck cancers…

J’accuse in TW3 (#13)

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is trying to get his “aggravated pimping” charge dismissed; apparently he’s just noticed that Western society, following behind the US like a flock of obedient sheep, is trying to “criminalize lust”:

…That defense and the investigation, which is facing a critical judicial hearing in late November, have offered a keyhole view into a clandestine practice in certain powerful circles of French society: secret soirees with lawyers, judges, police officials, journalists and musicians that start with a fine meal and end with naked guests and public sex with multiple partners…the most perplexing question in the Strauss-Kahn affair is how a career politician…was blinded to the possibility that his zest for sex parties could present a liability, or risk blackmail…

It’s only “perplexing” to female American journalists whose dedication to a PC agenda has totally conquered any critical thinking skills they may once have had. Another one who’s just waking up to reality is Hubert Delarue, the lawyer for one of Strauss-Kahn’s co-defendants, who apparently thinks halfway whores are something new: “Prostitution was…for a certain type of population…[but] today…there are occasional prostitutes, and sometimes they’re top models who try to make ends meet. They aren’t miserable women on the sidewalk.”

Backwards into the Future in TW3 (#27)

Baby steps, I guess:

Vietnam will free about 900 sex workers…from compulsory rehabilitation centres…when a newly amended…law comes into effect…[next] July…Since July [of] this year, sex workers have no longer been sent to…[the] centres…but…fined up to five million dong [$240 US] instead…drug addicts will continue to be sent to detoxification centres…

The More the Better in TW3 (#32)

I really like this trend of brothels funding athletics: “…[Members of] a cash-strapped Greek soccer team…are wearing…practice jerseys emblazoned with the logos of the Villa Erotica and Soula’s House of History, a pair of…bordellos recruited to sponsor the team after drastic government spending cuts left the country’s sports organizations facing ruin. One team took on a deal with a local funeral home and others have wooed kebab shops, a jam factory, and producers of…feta cheese…”

The Course of a Disease in TW3 (#34)

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we in America could see articles like this strong criticism of an attempt to impose the Swedish model on Northern Ireland?

…Lord Morrow’s Bill…is ill-thought through, confusing and based on rather dubious evidence. Sex trafficking is conflated solely with prostitution…and…is…accompanied by increasingly fantastical (and unsubstantiated) media claims about the number of “victims”…[yet] there has…been only one prosecution of a “trafficker”…and the women he “trafficked” were two Czech prostitutes that flew of their own volition to Belfast to operate out of [an] apartment that they rented from [him]…

The author, criminologist Graham Ellison, goes on to ridicule the impossible claims made about the Swedish model’s “success” and to correctly present it as the agenda of fundamentalist neofeminists and Christians.

My Body, My Choice in TW3 (#40)

Since the founder of Shared Hope International says that anti-trafficking activism “should be an extension of the ‘pro-life’ cause”, one wonders what her thoughts on this might be:

Argentina’s Supreme Court has ruled that a woman rescued from a prostitution ring must be allowed to have the abortion she wants…Argentina allows legal abortions in rape cases or to protect a woman’s health. But politicians, doctors and judges often continue to block them…and…in this case, a judge intervened…saying there was no proof of rape even though the woman had been kidnapped and forced into prostitution…

Backwards into the Future in TW3 (#40)

This decriminalization video was produced by an organization named “Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights”; when will American human rights organizations take this unambiguous a stand against prostitution law?

This Week in 2010 and 2011

There were two columns on the multiplying cracks in the prohibitionist dam, a juxtaposition of sex work with another form of labor, a look at whether prevailing religious views in a country determine its treatment of whores, a meditation on modern society’s attempts to ignore Nature, and news about HIV prevention. We also delved into the truth about neofeminists, the destruction of civil liberties in the US, the horror of American prisons and the production of prohibitionist propaganda through collusion of cops and the media. Finally, I examined the vital social role played by harlots in controlling male sexuality and ministering to the disabled, and called attention to society’s galling denial of it.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#41)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged Africa, agency denial, anal sex, Australia, Backpage, Backwards into the Future, bogus studies, brothels, California, censorship, Change of Heart, child "protective" services, condoms, cops, disease, Down Under, ethics, Europe, evidence, harm reduction, Housewife Harlotry, hysteria, Lack of Evidence, language, Latin America, law, License To Rape, Maine, Malawi, marriage, Mexico, Netherlands, pimps, porn, rape, Saint Death, Saving Them from Themselves, See No Evil, sexting, So Close and Yet So Far, stage names, stereotypes, streetwalkers, Texas, The More the Better, The Rape Question, Tyranny by Consensus, Umpteen Thousand People, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, video, Without Let or Hindrance, yin and yang on October 13, 2012| 14 Comments »

Prostitution has a social value, and it’s necessary in a city.– Daniël Termont

Without Let or Hindrance

Those who have dealt with “Child Protective Services” know that they are granted powers of which the Inquisition would have been envious. They routinely abduct people’s children on the flimsiest of pretexts, often on hearsay and without even a warrant, and once this happens parents may never regain custody; if they do it is after years of jumping through ridiculous and ever-changing hoops, playing endless games of “Mother May I?” with power-mad bureaucrats, submission to outlandish violations of their rights and privacy, hundreds of hours in court and total financial ruin…and that’s not even counting the emotional damage to the children. On Wednesday, an activist named Kathi Duran began a hunger strike on the steps of the California state capitol to call attention to these abuses; as expected, she was arrested almost immediately. She asked me to call attention to her protest and share this press release, and I’m happy to do so and will provide updates as I get them.

Updates

License To Rape

This result doesn’t happen nearly often enough:

An ex-Houston police officer [named Abraham Joseph]…was sentenced to life in prison…for raping a waitress…Joseph could have received as little as five years…but jurors chose the maximum sentence instead.

News articles always refer to criminal cops as “ex-cops”, implying they had already been fired when they committed the crimes.

Lack of Evidence

The San Francisco Police Department announced…that [it] will [temporarily] stop using condoms as evidence in prostitution cases…Under current city policy, police cannot confiscate condoms…But…police sometimes broke the policy…A July report from Human Rights Watch criticized San Francisco, along with New York, Washington, DC and Los Angeles, for [the practice]…

Spam received by a reader; if this isn’t a hoax, the cops, voyeurs or pimp wannabes who set it up labor under truly mythic levels of ignorance and disinformation.

December Q & A

Sex educator Debby Herbenick on the need for more research on anal sex: “…In an incredibly short period of time, anal sex has become a common part of Americans’ sex lives. As of the 1990s, only about one-quarter to one-third of young [Americans]…had tried anal sex at least once. Less than 20 years later, my research team’s 2009 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior found that as many as 40-45 percent…in some age groups had…[yet] taboos persist and…the list of what we don’t know about anal sex is far longer than the list of what we do. This makes it difficult for sex educators to feel truly confident in answering people’s very real and important questions…”

Backwards into the Future

Add Malawi to the list of countries whose legal experts understand human rights better than those in the US; one of them said that “Despite the fact that Malawi has not outlawed sex work…police officers on night patrols pounce on sex workers and…charge…[them] with rogue and vagabond…This is a clear violation of rights of sex workers…” He also commented on the unsanctioned compulsory HIV testing I reported in TW3 (#24), stating that it “is not recommended by…UNAIDS” and “it is impractical and unworkable and more effective results can be reached by supporting sex workers’…access [to] testing, prevention, and support…”

Housewife Harlotry

No, marriage isn’t prostitution; not at all:

…Several [New York] attorneys have shared the craziest [prenuptial agreements] they’ve penned…[including] items like “no piano playing while the husband is home”, cash bonuses…if either is caught cheating and an agreement to terminate a pregnancy if one should occur…[some include]a weight clause…[another] said [the wife] would never wear green and if she did, her husband [could]…destroy the item…One husband demanded “wife not allowed to cut her hair”…

The article also mentions the wives’ demands, including husbands being home by a certain time and (surprise!) being paid for sex.

Saving Them From Themselves

Amanda Hess adds to our list of good articles about “sexting” hysteria:

When Polaroid inventor Edwin Land introduced the first commercial instant camera…in 1948, he ushered in what Christopher Bonanos …in The Atlantic calls a “magnificent new era” in photography…for “instant, shareable nudie pics”…The new…format for…nude photographs—sexting—[is]…basically the same: instant explicit photographs, taken under the radar, shared between lovers and friends. In a recent report on a new study of teen sexting…dating “expert” Dr. Wendy Walsh favored terms like “embarrassment,” “shame,” “risky,” and “pressure” to describe the photographic form. And negative terms like those permeate the…discussion around teen photo sharing, though for years research has shown that the media-wide concern-trolling is overblown…

Tyranny By Consensus

On November 6^thLos Angeles county will decide whether to impose AHF’s “condoms in porn” measure; this video explains the real motive behind the whole thing:

Uncommon Sense

…In Ghent’s red-light district, as in many other cities, prostitutes sit in windows to attract potential clients. According to the new law in Ghent, women must wear something in addition to lingerie and may not dance or make suggestive gestures…[Mayor Daniël] Termont…stressed that the measures were intended to reduce the nuisance caused by customers…rather than to victimise the workers.

Saint Death

This US Army report on the Santa Muerte belief refers to it as a “death cult” (technically true, but the phrase has false and pejorative connotations), declares that it isn’t a “true” religion and states that “Although not all members of the cult are criminals, all live an existence that is dominated by crime.” I’m sure that bartenders, taxi drivers and prostitutes (who are not criminalized in Mexico) might disagree that their lives are “dominated by crime”, though cops (another large segment of her devotees) probably wouldn’t.

Umpteen Thousand People Can’t Be Wrong

It’s good to see some journalists finally starting to listen to us:

…Backpage’s critics say they are facilitating sex slavery…[but] all the figures quoted in the media come from a single source, a consultancy called AIM Group…[whose] methodology is shaky at best…they ignore major adult ad networks and mainstream ad networks that accept adult ads…and traffic, revenue and share-of-market numbers, even accurate ones, are no indication of how many…ads…actually convert into…transaction[s]…nor what subset of those…are with a minor or…coerced [person]…Backpage publishes about 3.2 million…ads a month…about 11 percent…are listed in…Adult Services…Backpage removes over a million ads a month…[mostly] for spam and fraud…Only 1.6 percent of the [removed] ads…are from the Adult Category…Only 2 percent of that 1.6 percent, or about 400…a month, are suspected of advertising a minor. Backpage reports those…immediately (and under no legal obligation) to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). In other words, about 1/25 of 1 percent (.04 percent) of the ads Backpage removes…are suspected of advertising a minor for sexual services, a number that represents 1/100 of one percent (.01 percent) of its…ad volume…

Instead of the usual prohibitionists, the article interviewed folks like researcher Ron Weitzer and Kate D’Adamo of SWOP.

The More the Better

…Lucinda Latimer…whose real name is Jan…was…broke, isolated and almost suicidal… she had sold her car and had no idea where her next penny was coming from when she saw a documentary on former career women who turned to the sex industry to make a living. Previously, she had [earned] up to £1000 a night as a graphologist…but ill health and the break-up of her marriage forced her back to Perthshire…[she now does phone sex work and] what has struck her about the men is how normal and pleasant most are and how well educated…Trying to hide her work would have made it shameful and sordid…[so] Jan decided to speak out…she has written…The Diary of a Rookie Phone Sex Floozie, and is about to launch volume two…

The Rape Question

Jezebel’s “sex advice” columnist gives a reader advice on how to shove her finger up a guy’s arse without his consent because she wants “to massage someone’s prostate goddamnit!”. Take note of the tepid protests to the columnist’s suggestions on how to trick and bully him into it, then imagine the firestorm if a male writer gave a man advice on how to pressure a woman into something because he wants “to fuck some chick in the arse goddamnit!”

Change of Heart

I’m never happy to see a sister pilloried, but I suspect the police decision to expose her customers is going to backfire so badly that this may have some positive results in the long run:

[Alexis Wright has]…been charged with running a prostitution business out of her Zumba dance studio [in Kennebunk, Maine] and secretly videotaping her encounters…Police have begun issuing summons to Wright’s customers and will release the names in the weeks ahead. Townspeople say they’ve heard that lawyers, doctors, law enforcement officials, a television personality and other well-known people in town are included in a detailed clientele list police found. A lot of people would rather not see the names made public because it will hurt families, children and careers…

So Close and Yet So Far

Another would-be ally undermines her own case by accepting the false claims of prohibitionists:

…In the Netherlands, prostitution is legal. Nonetheless, over 60% of the women involved in prostitution are involved in the sex trade illegally. The Mayor [of Amsterdam] and others refer to these as ‘trafficked’ – either because they are exploited and involved in the sex trade against their will…or because they are illegal workers brought to the country to work voluntarily in conditions different from those they expect…the argument for legalization included belief that it would…decrease trafficking, it has had the opposite effect…prostitution has gone from a predominantly home-grown industry to one very heavily dependent on illegal foreign workers…a [recent law criminalizes hiring]…a prostitute who is not registered with the government…But…this…means that…[the] information must be public so that…[clients] can verify that the sex worker is…licensed…[this] invades the privacy of both…prostitutes and…customers…

Prohibitionists intentionally confuse legalization and decriminalization, ignore the bottleneck effect of registration, pretend that correlation equals causation and conflate “unregistered” with “trafficked”, and the author, Dr. Nancy Darling, fails to question any of it.

Metaupdates

See No Evil in TW3 (#24)

Ilfracombe, the English town which claims to be unique in the world by being absolutely whore-free, proves it can be as prudish about lumps of bronze as anyplace in the Bible Belt: “Damien Hirst refers to ‘Verity’ as a ‘modern-day allegory for truth and justice’…[but hundreds of local residents and law officials]…call the 66-foot bronze statue of a half-exposed pregnant woman ‘soft porn masqueraded as art’…”

Down Under in TW3 (#40)

Australian sex worker activist Christian Vega has more to say on that “end demand” story from St. Kilda:

…As I read through [the article] the stench of bovine excrement almost made my eyes water…street sex work doesn’t relocate itself to another suburb on the other side of town…there is not an itinerant population of these workers who move en masse from one place to the next like migrating wildebeest across the African savannah…It’s more comfortable for people to think that sex work doesn’t happen in their community…and…that street sex workers must board a shuttle from planet Whore to our neighbourhoods under the cover of darkness before disappearing as the sun rises…

I think I like that imagery at least as much as my own.

This Week in 2010 and 2011

A federal judge enjoyed pleasures he persecuted others for and escaped with a slap on the wrist because officials always have different rules for their own class than for others; they’re also hilariously clueless about sex work and are only beginning to realize what a scam the “anti-trafficking” industry is. I discussed America’s weird love-hate relationship with prostitutes, what a 1947 sci-fi story can teach us about the nanny state, how sex workers arrive at our prices and how prostitution is a much older profession than most people think, and I related the story of a famous whore-obsessed preacher, told some hooker jokes, shared my answers to some amazingly stupid prohibitionist statements and presented two spooky stories for the Halloween season.

Read Full Post »

The Public Eye

Posted in Current Events, Perception, tagged archeofeminism, Australia, Canada, dirty, drugs, ethics, Madonna/whore, massage, naturalness, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, Real People, sex work is work, stage names, stereotypes, stripping, The More the Better, The Public Eye on August 30, 2012| 37 Comments »

Repression thrives on ignorance; when people see others as human beings they are less likely to support the persecution of those people, and when they see behaviors as normal rather than strange and “scary” they are less likely to support bans on those activities. – Maggie McNeill

As far as I’m concerned, the single most important mission of this blog is to make people understand that whores are no different from anybody else, and that prostitution is part of the normal continuum of female behaviors which is not easily distinguished from others (certainly not well enough to base laws around). As I wrote in “Real People”,

On many occasions I’ve written about the fact that whores aren’t all that different from everyone else; that is to say we’re different from each other just like everyone else is different, and we no more share a certain “whore personality type” than all amateurs share a “non-whore personality type”. We’re not all addicts, nor are we all emotionally damaged, nor have we all been molested as children. We’re not all nymphomaniacs or criminals (except insofar as our societies choose to brand us as criminals), or pimped “sex slaves”, and we don’t all have low-self esteem; in fact a disproportionate number of us have high self-esteem, which anyone who actually bothered to talk to real whores instead of just chanting dogma would realize is almost inevitable. We have families, children and friends, outside interests, hopes, dreams, fears and needs just like everyone else. But some people insist on portraying us as somehow inhuman, with dangerous or even fatal results.

Under the “Real People” tag you’ll find lots of examples of articles which illustrate the humanity of sex workers of all kinds, and under “The More the Better” ones about sex workers moving into the mainstream; last week I found three such articles, so I felt it was time for another column spotlighting them (and calling attention to the others). The first appeared in The Gloss and was appropriately entitled “How I Started Seeing Sex Workers as Real People”:

…the truth is that some of the strongest, most diverse, and compelling women I know are sex workers. For me, this was a revelation…my first novel [was]…about a [prostitute] named Edie…[but] she wasn’t…real…[because] I didn’t know anything about sex workers. After a year of trying to write my way into Edie’s world, I [realized]…that…if I was going to write convincingly, I needed to track down a woman with an honest perspective and experience. So, one night, I began to peruse the now-defunct erotic section on Craiglist for research. There I found the ad that started it all…

The author, Emilie Allen, contacted an escort named Jasmin who not only helped her develop “Edie”, but also inspired her to make a documentary called Sex/Touch/Work about Jasmin’s business, an erotic massage establishment in Ottawa. In the process of filming she discovered exactly what I keep talking about:

…I’ve met some crazy cool ladies from roller derby queens, to the Aussies trying to make a buck on their working holiday, to women studies graduate students, to single moms. Actually, it’s the mothers that I’ve been most impressed with. There are a lot of moms out there who moonlight as sex workers. The good money and flexible hours afford them the time and resources that properly raising a child requires. With mouths to feed, most moms take their job seriously and make the best sex workers because they know a secret: men don’t always come to them for sex. A lot of clients are looking for a far more basic pleasure: a sense of care which touch provides…our filming…has brought this up time and again. Clients of erotic massage parlors speak of the touch aspect of the experience much more than they do of the final release…I’d like to suggest that it’s time we move away from our socially engrained fears of women’s bodies and sexualities. People always want to talk about the sex stuff when I tell them about this project (Isn’t it so degrading?). But the women I’ve come to know and love aren’t anti-feminist in the least; a lot of the time they’re simply being paid to touch, to care, no more no less. I for one, see absolutely nothing wrong with that. To want to be touched is no crime, and to know how to touch in a way that makes another person feel cared for is a gift. And if that touch happens to be erotic, what’s the difference?

Allen’s statement about mothers making excellent sex workers, though obvious to anyone who has ever actually known any sex workers, is apparently inconceivable to the “authorities” who all too often use sex work as an excuse to abduct women’s children. This profile of porn actress Stormy Daniels discusses the subject at length:

…Mothers are a powerful influence in our lives and responsible for raising thriving, well-adjusted human beings. We have created a romanticized image that mothers are supposed to be sexless…so when we hear about a porn star who is a mom, it shatters our expectations, and many draw conclusions that these moms can’t be good parents…the 33-year-old Daniels says, “I had to work really hard and prepare a lot to have a baby because…I can’t work while I’m pregnant. I did two years of work in one year.” Wicked Pictures provided Daniels the extended time off for maternity leave and made it possible for her to return to work when she was ready. Daniels’s fans have been supportive of her becoming a mom…but…[she] has had to contend with some ugly criticism. She kept her pregnancy a secret to avoid negativity, but hateful personal attacks surfaced against her and her newborn child when someone congratulated her on Twitter after the birth of her daughter, who is now 19 months old…moms who work in the adult industry are thought to be incapable of nurturing healthy children and imparting good values because their lifestyles and careers are perceived to be immoral…

When the time is right, Daniels intends to be honest with her daughter about her career. She’s adamant about preparing her for the negative backlash she might experience from people opposed to the adult industry. “I’ll tell her Mommy has a job that some people don’t approve of, but Mommy’s proud of it and it’s for adults,” she says. Yet she also thinks it’s important to describe her career to her daughter in a filtered, age-appropriate way. Just like how police officers, bartenders, and emergency-room doctors wouldn’t share all the details of their job with their children, Daniels believes that discussing the adult industry should be no different…Daniels is not an anomaly in the adult industry, and when I asked if other adult actresses have children, Daniels says at least half do but fans just don’t know it…

If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say close to two-thirds of all escorts have children, and in fact as I’ve explained before many of them enter sex work for precisely that reason. But while most of us in the United States struggle merely to be accepted as normal citizens, some in more enlightened countries have much higher ambitions:

…Penthouse Pet and stripper Zahra Stardust has launched a bid to become Sydney’s next lord mayor by being nominated as the Sex Party’s candidate for the council’s top job…Stardust, a human rights lawyer who wants to be known as a feminist stripper, is joined by four others on her party’s ticket in the upcoming Sydney Council elections…Sex Party president Fiona Patten said…the party wanted to bring its policies into the local arena. The Sex Party wants Sydney to operate as a 24-hour city, increase the presence of drug-injecting rooms, lobby for the decriminalisation of personal drug use and end discrimination against sex industry workers…

I don’t really think Sydney is ready for a stripper mayor, but the very fact that she can run for the office without being persecuted by government actors and crucified by the media says a lot about the comparative immaturity and bigotry of American society.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#32)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, Australia, Broken Record, brothels, Business Opportunity, California, carnival, censorship, cops, dirty, Down Under, ethics, Europe, Feminine Pragmatism, Finding What Isn’t There, Hollywood, hotels, hysteria, law, lawheads, Legal Is as Legal Does, Michigan, neofeminism, New Orleans, New Zealand, Norway, pimps, porn, prohibitionist myths, Prudish Pedants, rape, Saving Them from Themselves, sexting, sporting events, stereotypes, stripping, Swedish model, Texas, The Course of a Disease, The More the Better, The Notorious Badge, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers on August 11, 2012| 29 Comments »

The reality is that the law has made it more difficult for women in prostitution. – Anniken Hauglie

Down Under

You think we should tell this “lobby group” that Australian governments already know they’re lying, or just let them waste their money? “A sex industry lobby group in Tasmania is pushing for the introduction of laws which penalise the clients of prostitutes…Dr Christy Giselsson from the Nordic Model Australian Coalition, says the group believes changing the focus of the legislation would reduce the demand for sex workers. ‘For example in Sweden it’s been shown to halve street prostitution’…” In any case, someone definitely needs to tell this reporter that Swedish Model proponents are NOT “sex industry lobby groups”.

Business Opportunity

Another example of politicians wasting other people’s money to fight a legal sex business: “Fighting plans for a brothel at Narellan last year came at a cost of almost $60,000 for Camden Council but councillors described the battle as a fight they had to have…Mayor Greg Warren (pictured) said the council’s position to refuse the sex premises reflected the concerns of the community…owner Greg Hall said the money…could have been better spent on community projects. ‘There are thousands of places it could have been spent than to waste it in court for a decision we all knew was going to get through anyway,’ he said…”

Saving Them From Themselves

Detroit school officials plan to fight the scourge of “sexting” by searching students’ phones and computers:

School officials in a Detroit suburb announced they may search student cell phones and laptops, in an effort to tackle the problem of teenage “sexting”…The rule did not result from any particular incident, but was “just a matter of being proactive,” [said] Rich Machesky, Troy’s assistant superintendent…Students could refuse a search request…in which case the district would contact the child’s parents instead…The ACLU is concerned over how broad the policy is and whether school officials would then hand off students’ phones to the police…While sexting is not illegal…kids who text can be prosecuted under child pornography laws and can be sentenced with 20 years in prison if convicted. Even having sexually explicit photos on your phone is a four-year felony…

Because obviously nude pictures are far more dangerous to “children’s” lives than spending 20 years in prison.

They All Axed For You

Anyone who’s ever lived in New Orleans knows about Hubig Pies, tasty little treats which come in a large variety of flavors and put other commercial snack pastries to shame. Unfortunately, their century-old factory burned down before dawn on July 27^th and it may be quite some time before it’s rebuilt. This video may be of interest to my readers because it provides an extended example of the “Yat” dialect spoken by a woman who sounds like a very typical New Orleans character.

Legal Is As Legal Does

Two stories from different Australian states demonstrating the weird situations that arise from legalization. The first is from Queensland, and updates an item from the original column: “A sex worker has won an anti-discrimination case against motel owners in a Queensland mining town who refused to rent her a room…[she] had stayed at the motel 17 times in two years until [the] owners…discovered…she was bringing clients to her room…[her] lawyer argued many people used the telephone or internet at the motel for business, and a bed was no different.” The owners argued that the worker’s activities were “disturbing” other guests, which is of course nonsense if she had been there 17 times before without incident. Furthermore, how is paid sex any more “disturbing” to other guests than giveaway sex?

The second item is from a town in Victoria, where sex work is legal but “brothels” (the term is defined so loosely it can mean virtually anything police want it to mean) must be licensed:

Police suspect an illegal brothel has been operating in a residential street…[in] Bendigo…[they] raided a house…and took a woman back to the station for questioning…“We believe she’s a sex worker involved in an illegal brothel at that address,” [a detective] said. “We’re waiting for a Chinese interpreter to come so we can interview her”…[a neighbor] was concerned about the well-being of the [sex worker]…“She’s very friendly – a lovely young lady.”

According to a comment on the story, Bendigo is practically the only city in Victoria without a brothel, which may explain why its government feels the need to harass women on technicalities.

The More the Better

Perhaps one day we’ll arrive at the point where, “He was so desperate to raise money he actually opened a legal business!” sounds as ridiculous to most people as it does to me:

A New Zealander was so desperate to fund his dream to compete in the London 2012 Olympics that he opened a brothel…[after] Logan Campbell…lost his bid for Olympic glory in Beijing in 2008, he was too strapped for cash to take his [taekwondo] career to the next level and train full-time…So…to make the $200,000 he needed to go to London, he opened a 14-room brothel in Auckland. Campbell…wants to repudiate the perception that he was a pimp selling women on a street corner. New Zealand decriminalised prostitution in 2003. “I sold the brothel so I don’t really want to talk about it now, OK?” he said. “It’s a legal business in New Zealand. It’s completely different from other countries in the world…No one was forced into the industry, and they’re not doing it because they are in poverty because we have a really good welfare system”…

Above the Law

It’s a start; now we need to work on getting similar sentences for the thousands of real cops who regularly do the same thing. Note the incredible concluding sentence: “A man who faked being a Texas law officer and demanded free sex from a prostitute has been sentenced to 35 years in prison…The woman submitted to [Raul Garza III] but later called police when he allegedly wanted suggestive photos of her 10-year-old daughter. Garza…testified he never committed a crime and just refused to pay the prostitute.”

Finding What Isn’t There

Most of this overblown and sensationalistic article is just repetition of the usual “sex trafficking” myths and exaggerations combined with the characteristic cop-culture strutting and bragging, but it’s notable for the accusation that the Department of Justice is “ignoring child sex trafficking victims” because it isn’t creating enough of them to support the hysterical predictions. That sound you hear is me clapping quite slowly.

Broken Record

While it’s nice to see an article actually leading off with the truth about sex work around major sporting events, I feel I must comment on this historian’s absurd exaggeration:

…Georgina Perry, who works at Open Doors, a support project…[for] East London prostitutes…says the Olympics are never good for the sex trade. “All the studies show there’s no increase in sex workers,” she says of past Olympics…Gone, it seems, are the good old days for your average harlot when the best athletes gathered. “Prostitution was a huge deal in the ancient Games,” says historian Tony Perrottet, author of The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games. The original festival attracted 40,000 sports fans — all male — to the remote religious sanctuary. “Brothel owners … brought in teams of beautiful girls from around Greece, Egypt and Asia Minor.” Any good prostitute would try to get to the Olympics, and earn in five days what would normally take her a year to make…

This is nothing but another permutation of the stupid “50 clients a night” idiocy. It is simply not physically possible for any full-time whore to make in 5 days what she could make in 360, unless perhaps she came from some rural district where she usually only got one client a day, managed 12 per day at the Olympics (difficult but doable), and charged six times her usual fee.

Metaupdates

Feminine Pragmatism in TW3 (#13)

Behold the lawhead psychosis in action:

Cash-strapped Nadya Suleman…has turned to various X-rated money-making ventures to help pay the bills – all with the encouragement of Orange County (Calif.) Child Protective Services. “They’re on my side–they’re supporters,” Suleman [said]…“It’s ironic. Once I talked with a CPS worker in regards to the adult stuff, she was like, ‘Are you really doing that?’ Well, it’s not illegal. More power to you!’ So it was almost like a green light–like, ‘Do what you need to do to take care of your family’”…A rep for the Orange County…Social Services Agency…[said] “The law allows a wide latitude in parenting styles and in parenting vocations. I don’t think that anybody would ever want it any other way. So as long as children remain free from harm or danger…then the Social Services Agency would not become involved.”

Unless the mother is a whore, of course, which automatically makes her less fit than Octomom.

The Course of a Disease in TW3 (#26)

Norwegian study demonstrates that the Swedish Model causes “sex trafficking”:

Prior to the 2009 Sex Purchase Act, Norway had one of Europe’s smallest and least organized markets for prostitution. Women…voluntarily…sold sex…without the interference from any pimp. The introduction of the law has made this process more complicated, according to a report in the Stavanger Aftenblad…”The women are very vulnerable towards the police and to a greater extent on the network and support that pimps can offer,” said [researcher] Guri Tyldum…”The criminalization intended to demonstrate that prostitution is not wanted in Norway. The risk is that the most dangerous and serious form of prostitution that remains,” she said…Norway’s Ministry of Justice has announced an evaluation of the sex purchase act.

This is not only what we’ve said for over a decade, it’s the inevitable result of putting the desire to “send a message” above the needs of real people.

The Notorious Badge in TW3 (#27)

Upon reading this I was irresistibly reminded of Sarah Woolley’s article:

I felt really exposed. It didn’t hit me until the first moment where the scene called for me to expose myself, because what came over me was such shame. Which was weird, because they weren’t my breasts, and it was what I had signed up to do….I started to cry, and if you look closely at those scenes when I’m opening my blouse, I’m smiling, but not in my eyes…I was just feeling really emotional and trying to hide it.

Boo fucking hoo. Women like this (Jessica Alba is another one) piss me off to no end. If you’re such a prudish twit you supposedly “cry” from partial nudity with FAKE TITS, I have a suggestion: restrict yourself to playing nuns, and leave the sex worker parts to grown women.

Prudish Pedants in TW3 (#31)

Good news for Simon Walsh, but I have to wonder how this would have turned out had the same thing happened in America:

A man who was tried this week…for possessing images of “extreme” sexual acts has just been cleared on all counts…David Allen Green, solicitor and legal correspondent for the New Statesman, said: “This was a shameful and intrusive prosecution which should never have been brought. It was bad law to begin with, but a good man has had his sex life examined in open court for no good reason. There are serious questions for the CPS to answer about bringing this prosecution.”

This Week in 2011

The bittersweet experience of “Leaving the Life”; “authorities” using their power to rape whores; “The New Victorianism”; the effects of defining everything as “violence against women” or “human trafficking”; what it looks like when individuals behave as “authorities” do; and the truth about “safe harbor” laws.

This Week in 2010

Cops’ weird anti-condom neurosis; “How To Be a Stupid, Greedy Whore”; why hookers should never let clients turn off the lights; how self-proclaimed “feminists” have been betraying women for 130 years; and a two-part column about regular clients.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#27)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A False Dichotomy, acting, Acting and Activism, Africa, Australia, Backwards into the Future, brothels, Dirty Amateurs, disease, drivers, East Asia, Europe, fantasy, Feet of Clay, First They Came for the Hookers, Good News-Bad News, Higher Education, Hollywood, hysteria, If It Were Legal, Latin America, law, lawheads, Nevada, New York, Nigeria, Norway, Oklahoma, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, porn, prohibitionist myths, sex education, sex offender registry, sex work is work, stereotypes, stripping, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The More the Better, The Notorious Badge, The Widening Gyre, underage, video, Vietnam on July 7, 2012| 29 Comments »

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. – Rita Mae Brown

Twelve updates and four metaupdates.

Acting and Activism (January 8^th, 2011)

Yet another actor tries to prop up a sagging career with a flying leap onto the “trafficking” bandwagon: Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan is going to Myanmar this week on a…mission to help combat child trafficking…UNICEF announced…that…Chan will…meet with officials of the Social Welfare Ministry and…police…

Backwards Into the Future (March 30^th, 2011)

Add Vietnam to the list of countries which aren’t known for their spectacular record on human rights, yet are doing better on the issue than the US:

The Vietnamese National Assembly recently [voted to stop detaining] thousands of sex workers in so-called rehabilitation facilities where they were held without right of appeal and forced to work (including for private companies) without pay…justice advocates…are hoping that drug detention centers…will follow soon…

Saddest Story of the Month (May 17^th, 2011)

Well, it’s not quite as bad as arresting someone for moving out of a dumpster...

A new law…is forcing convicted sex offenders to…move into tents. More than 40 sex offenders at the Hand Up Ministries in Oklahoma City had to move out of trailers on the ministry’s property. The new state law limits the number of sex offenders who can live in one dwelling. Ministry founder David Nichols said without a place to live, many offenders won’t register and could go back to prison…”I don’t think that it’s going to lessen crime any. I think it’s going to increase crime”…

Nichols is correct, but don’t expect the fanatics to listen.

A False Dichotomy (June 22^nd, 2011)

So here’s a thing in the Guardian (I hesitate to call a short collection of captioned photos an “article”) about “sex trafficking” in Burkina Faso. Though the author claims that “thousands of girls and women are trafficked from Nigeria to the African hub of Ouagadougou,” and that “many are lured by promises of jobs as hairdressers or nannies,”I was struck by two things: one, that the pictures look to me like any pictures of street or brothel workers in poor countries; and two, that the captions belie the claims of “trafficking”. The caption for the third picture reads, “Juliette, also from Nigeria, has been working at Mercy’s for six years. The 45-year-old sends money home each week to support her four children who live in Benin City.” In other words, she has enough disposable income to support four children, and is free to send it home. The caption for the 12^th (and last) picture tells us that “trafficking victims” are free to attend a church whose pastor lectures on the evils of the sex trade, and the one for the 5^th is the most telling: “At Mercy’s, women work seven nights a week and pay 2,000 CFA (£2.60) each day to rent a room. Men pay the women 5,000 CFA. This Burkinabe girl has turned up at the brothel looking for work.” In other words the rooms cost these “victims” less than half the price of one call (similar to the rates paid by American hookers), and local girls view it as a worthwhile place to work without being “forced” into it.

If It Were Legal (June 26^th, 2011)

Remember that bogus study who authors were so ignorant they equated an increase in ads with migrating whores, and claimed that 0.4% of something constitutes a major fraction? Well, partisan prohibitionists are using it to blame Republicans for “sex trafficking” despite a greater rise in ads during the Democratic convention:

…Huffington Post and Jezebel are running with stories claiming that GOP convention-goers are “hands down” the biggest clients at area strip clubs during political conventions. Along with strip club attendance, conventions also increase prostitution…and child sex trafficking…HuffPo continues…“A Baylor University study found that…conventions ‘increased the count of Craigslist sex worker ads by a substantial amount’”…researchers…found that sex ads increased by between 29% and 44% over their baseline level during 2008′s Republican convention in Minneapolis. Ads increased by between 47% and 77% in Denver, the site of the Democratic convention. Further, the study pointed out that a plurality of convention attendees are members of the media…

Dirty Amateurs (August 17^th, 2011)

MTV had the good sense to protect itself against STD-based liability claims from the cast members of Jersey Shore; there oughta be a law that these damned dirty amateurs get checked weekly by a government doctor, and arrested if they test positive.

Higher Education (December 11^th, 2011)

Something tells me that Professor Kubistant needs to find a regular escort:

A Western Nevada College student claims…that her human sexuality instructor required students to masturbate to pass his class, made them keep sex journals for class discussion, was obsessed with women’s orgasms and told the class “that he will increase their sexual urges to such a height that they won’t be able to think about anything other than sex”…Kubistant told the students that their final exam would be an assignment…which had to address such topics as early sexual exploration, sexual abuse, loss of virginity, homosexual experiences, promiscuity, cheating, arousal, climaxes, masturbation, sexually transmitted diseases and fetishes…

The Course of a Disease (February 16^th, 2012)

While groups like the soi-disant “European Women’s Lobby” produce ridiculous “end demand” tripe, European sex worker groups are producing ads like this:

It’s also available in 16 other languages.

Feet of Clay (April 5^th, 2012)

It’s nice to see the attacks on Nicholas Kristof continuously increasing:

…In a magnificent essay, “Be Aware: Nick Kristof’s Anti-Politics“, Elliott Prasse-Freeman…summarises Kristof’s oeuvre into a number of precise strokes: “By playing on his audience’s orientalist, classist and racist fantasies, Kristof fabricates legible narratives out of snapshots of distant worlds. He then crafts stunningly simplistic solutions to the seemingly irrevocable problems that plague those backwards places”…

And if you like that one, here are plenty more.

The Notorious Badge (April 9^th, 2012)

Sarah Woolley’s excellent article from XOJane explains “Why I Wince Through Hollywood Sex Scenes and Not Porn”:

…if some actors exaggerate their distaste for nudity it’s because they’ve seen what happens to the women who enjoy themselves without penance…And so, a romantic, soft lit, topless scene from a chick flick can unsettle me in ways that a supposedly degrading, adult movie rarely manages to accomplish…I’m not saying that those who willingly participate in uncomfortable scenes are victims because…they get the last say on that matter. However, I would rather watch the person who isn’t trying to numb things out with a bottle of vodka. I’m not naive enough to think that sex workers are free from shitty days at the office but, given their job description, I’m less likely to be watching someone wary of getting their front bottom out, than if I were watching a mainstream actress in a sex scene…If a sex worker speaks out on slipping standards it is correct to condemn the appropriate parties but it is usually an entire industry that is maligned in the process. If a mainstream actor brings a drink on set in brown paper (keeping the latter to hyperventilate into later) we applaud her for her craft and possibly chuck an award her way…

First They Came for the Hookers… (June 5^th, 2012)

Bubbles Burbujas on the problems with “pole taxes”:

…Connecting funding for victims of sexual assault to strip clubs is the primary reason I don’t like these taxes. It is absolutely offensive to have the government tell us that we—or, rather, our customers—are responsible for rape and domestic violence, and that we should be taxed specifically for that purpose…While strip clubs are certainly a luxury expense…There is…no guarantee that the taxes will be collected from patrons since the tax is on the clubs, not the customers. This means there’s a good chance that the fees dancers pay to work will go up to cover the club’s tax bill…Tracy Clark-Flory wrote about the latest round of state pole taxes at Salon, and spoke with anthropologist Judith Lynne Hanna…[who has criticized] the faulty “secondary effects” studies that blames strip clubs for increasing crime and breaks it down for the propaganda it is. I wrote about the myth of secondary effects here after the Texas Supreme Court’s decision came down, and it’s good they’re being exposed for the shoddy research they are…

The Widening Gyre (July 6^th, 2012)

The inherent racism of “trafficking” mythology isn’t usually as obvious as it is in this June 8 cartoon.

Even though the law’s supporters say “We simply cannot have drivers knowingly profiting from the sex trade, willingly taking prostitutes from john to john, job to job,” we’re also supposed to believe this:

Cabbies can pick up all the scantily clad women they want without worrying about being charged with promoting prostitution, Mayor Bloomberg declared…“There’s no penalty for transporting a prostitute or decoy, but only for knowingly engaging in a sex-trafficking operation”…the mayor said…City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras…sponsor of the legislation, said such fears were overblown because her bill was targeted at a small number of cabbies involved in hooker rings…“It’s not the majority of drivers. However, when you have a young girl being driven to 30, 40, 50 johns a night, it is a very big problem.”

Obviously third-grade math skills and a sense of the size of one’s own city are not requirements for a position on the New York city council.

Metaupdates

Good News, Bad News in TW3 (#10) (March 10^th, 2012)

As per my epigram, an example of governmental insanity in Western Australia:

…leading urban planning expert…Paul Maginn said the government’s …reform bill…would do little to move prostitution out of the suburbs. “If you look historically…the sex industry is quite adaptive…they’ll still continue, it’s not going to be eradicated”…Maryanne Kenworthy, owner of the Langtrees brothels in Perth and Kalgoorlie, supports Mr Maginn’s claim…”This government is trying to stamp out escorts, which no country in the world has successfully done…Instead, the industry is going to go completely underground…How many of WA’s 4000 sex workers are going to get a commercial industrial area to work out of? None, they can’t afford to, it costs half a million dollars just to get council approval”…

The More the Better in TW3 (#11) (March 17^th, 2012)

Zahia Dehar isn’t doing too badly for a “trafficked child”: “There aren’t many fashion designers who can say they got their starts as underage prostitutes. But Zahia Dehar…first earned her fame as the center of a high-profile sex scandal involving three elite European soccer players in 2010…[then] crossed over into fashion, earning praise from Karl Lagerfeld and a cover shoot for V‘s Spain edition…”

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs in
TW3 (#25) (June 23^rd, 2012)

It’s good to see at least a few small countries standing up to Uncle Sam’s bullying:

The Guyana Government today denounced the latest installation of the US State Department report on trafficking in persons…“The Report fails to establish not one single fact. The Task Force notes several inaccuracies and misrepresentations in the Report that must be addressed. What is clear is that the architects of this Report have not made significant progress in improving the veracity, coherence and validity of their annual assessments. The Ministerial Task Force denounces the Report since it comprises unsubstantiated generalisations and repetitive uncorroborated claims. The Task Force strongly recommends that the US State Department seek to improve its methodology, establish proper baselines to guide comparisons, avoid use of anecdotal claims and develop a consistent, understandable, transparent and logical tier ranking system if countries are to benefit from these rituals…”

The Course of a Disease in TW3 (#26) (June 30^th, 2012)

Wendy Lyon takes a detailed look at the report which inspired Norway’s minister for social affairs to call for the Swedish Model to be scrapped; she discovers that besides the problems we’ve already discussed, the model literally forces sex workers into the street and promotes pimping.

One Year Ago Today

“Imaginary Lines” argues in favor of loosened immigration restrictions, and points out how the current situation helps to drive “trafficking” hysteria.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »

Visit my bookstore
This Month
May 2026

S M T W T F S

1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31

« Apr
Old Posts
Old Posts
Call me

Enter your email address to follow "The Honest Courtesan"; you'll be notified by email whenever Maggie posts something new.

Email Address
Become a Blog Patron

If you want to donate but don't want a recurring charge, you can send any amount you like via PayPal to my email address (see below). Be sure to include a note so I can thank you!
Contact Maggie

If you’d like to ask me a question, click here.

If you made a comment and it doesn’t appear within a few hours, click on this one.

If you’d like to alert me to an interesting item, use this one.

And if you have a request, bouquet or brickbat or just want to introduce yourself, this is the one for you.
A Few References
Boring but necessary legal stuff

All original content on this website (i.e. all of my columns, pages and anything else which I write myself) is protected under international copyright law as of the time it is posted; though you may link to it as you please or quote passages (as long as you attribute the quote to me), please do not reproduce whole columns without my express written permission. In other words, you have to say “pretty please with sugar on top” first, and then wait for me to say “okey-dokey”.

Frank commentary from a semi-retired call girl

Posts Tagged ‘The More the Better’

Metaupdates

Updates

Metaupdates

Metaupdates

Updates

Metaupdates

Updates

Metaupdates

Metaupdates

Metaupdates

Visit my bookstore

This Month

Old Posts

Call me

Become a Blog Patron

Contact Maggie

A Few References

Boring but necessary legal stuff