Theatrics

Posts Tagged ‘Theatrics’

In the News (#549)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, agency denial, Backpage, cops, Crying for Nanny, dirty, Dysphemisms Galore, Florida, Follow Your Bliss, hysteria, Illinois, Indiana, Innocence Never Had, language, Madonna/whore, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Orleans, New Zealand, Passive Voice, porn, rape, Rough Trade, sex rays, Sex Rays (updates), streetwalkers, stripping, Surplus Women, The Public Eye, Theatrics, Torture Chamber, Traffic Circle, underage, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Wisconsin on June 24, 2015| 3 Comments »

We all know that a bullet doesn’t leap out the barrel of a gun of its own volition. When law enforcement departments tie themselves up in shibari-style grammatical knots to imply that it did, they only undermine their own credibility even further. – Rhiannon Starr

Rough Trade

“A man has been found guilty of raping a woman in an Edinburgh park. Faizan Ali attacked [her]…on 13 November 2014…Ali…will be placed on the Sex Offenders Register…”

Above the Law

…A…jury found Rajat Sharda guilty…of sexually assaulting a woman in August 2013 after the on-duty officer came across the woman and her boyfriend having sex in a vehicle…Judge David Ricciardone sentenced him…to 5 to 7 years of imprisonment, followed by ten years of probation…

Surplus Women (#24)

A jury…found [Terry Speaks] guilty of killing and dismembering a stripper he lured from a New Orleans French Quarter bar along with his ex-girlfriend…Margaret Sanchez…the couple lured her from the club where she was working, killed her, cut her up and then drove the body parts to Mississippi where they dumped the pieces. [Jaren] Lockhart’s head, lower legs and left thigh washed up on…beaches in June 2012, triggering an investigation that eventually led authorities to Speaks and Sanchez. Sanchez’s trial has not yet been scheduled…

The Public Eye

Here’s a profile of sex worker Kitty Stryker, in Cosmopolitan of all places. Better yet, it’s part of a continuing series. Hey prohibitionists: We’re winning. And there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.

Theatrics

This wouldn’t “shock” anyone with the approximate timidity of a sheep, especially considering it’s at least the third example we’ve seen of this same inane gimmick:

Those who approached what appeared to be a working vending machine…were in for a surprise when they found it filled with an image of two young girls available for purchase. Rather than candy or soda, the machine contained informational fliers about sex trafficking in Milwaukee as part of an awareness campaign…called “Children Are Not For Sale.” The fliers highlighted warning signs to look for…Last year’s campaign, called Unlucky Thirteen, was named after the average age of trafficking victims…[a nearby prohibitionist vomited out]…”If you see something, say something” [and] “Milwaukee has been considered a hub for human trafficking”…

Dysphemisms Galore

Gary is essentially a suburb of Chicago; “cross-border trafficking of prostitutes” therefore actually means “escorts driving across town”:

The Lake and Cook County sheriffs announced a joint initiative Friday to end cross border trafficking of prostitutes between Chicago and Gary. Sheriff John Buncich and Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart said…they have formed a task force to arrest pimps who shuttle sex workers among clients in the Indiana-Illinois border…Dart singled out Backpage for allowing its classified advertising website…to be used in Indiana and Illinois for illegal activity. He said human traffickers use the Internet to lure women into prostitution and force them to set up Facebook pages to lure their friends as well…

Yes, that’s the “Facebook pimps” myth again.

Torture Chamber

Three [guards] at an Alabama county jail were caught coercing female inmates into nude dancing for them in exchange for doughnuts and cell phones…this…seems to be merely the latest in a string of indignities and abuses—some fatal—inflicted on prisoners at Alabama county jails. Madison County is facing three federal lawsuits filed by the families of former inmates who died while in custody….of conditions that shouldn’t be fatal: gangrene, a broken bone, and constipation…Sexual abuse, either at the hands of [guards] or simply ignored by them, also seems to be a major problem…

Sex Rays

I’m honestly not sure why this was controversial; nobody can deny it’s true:

…Bree Olson was…a Penthouse pet and the star of hundreds of adult movies…she posted [this] admonition to aspiring porn stars on Twitter…[many] adult performers…applauded Olson’s message…But it also generated some controversy…Olson insists that she has no problem with the porn industry itself, and that her experiences there were largely positive…the worst part…is…that…sex workers are frequently the target of discrimination, even long after they’ve left the industry…

Traffic Circle

Another mainstream article tearing down “sex trafficking” hysteria, this one from a sex worker:

…It is well documented that one of the largest and most conservative lobbies in Washington—Shared Hope International—is behind much of the so-called anti-trafficking policy in the U.S., policy with politically and socially vested interests in conflating sex work with sex trafficking. It is no secret, of course, that the religious right opposes prostitution on purely moralistic grounds. Regressive ideologies of gender and sexuality contribute to the belief that prostitution is moral bankruptcy for women and, furthermore, that Godly salvation is the only path to “restoration.” As a result, sex workers—and other so-called sexually deviant women, often poor women—are scapegoats for anxieties surrounding sex and sexuality more generally. Perhaps less well known is the link between lobbyists, anti-trafficking non-profits, allocations of federal grant money for academic research, and the subsequent propagation of sexual danger narratives…

Innocence Never Had

Imagine American cops making a statement like this:

Children as young as 12 are working in a hidden Auckland sex scene, according to new research…none of them are protected by the Prostitution Law Reform Act and they often work in unsafe circumstances. Natalie Thorburn interviewed 10 underage sex workers for her Masters of Social Work (MSW) at the University of Auckland…Some of her participants had parents that had been suicidal or mentally ill and others claimed they were abused by the organisations set up to help them, including claims of sexual assault…Allegations of underage prostitution in Auckland have been made in the past…Police said they treated such allegations seriously but could not find any underage prostitution. “The reality is we can find no evidence to support that child prostitution is happening, anywhere, at this point in time,” said Counties Manukau West Area Commander Jason Hewett…

Passive Voice (#429)

Police in the United States have fatally shot 455 people so far this year. The phrase they would use is that 455 officer-involved shootings occurred. That term is so ubiquitous that it even has its own acronym: OIS. It’s vile to reduce the loss of a life to three euphemistic letters. However, it’s not the only strange language in many press releases from US police departments. Certain rhetorical devices are frequently used to deflect attention away from officers who shoot civilians…Three linguistic sleight-of-hands are wheeled out with wearisome predictability. The first is suggesting the victim is to blame…The second…is to avoid explicitly stating that a police officer fired the fatal shot…The third…is to describe the gun as if it acted independently of an officer…D. Brian Burghart, the founder of Fatal Encounters…agrees. “The grammar of officer-involved homicides is Orwellian. It’s amazing the gymnastics these cops and media will perform to make the officers passive actors in these dramas”…

Crying for Nanny (#539)

Ignorance of the law creates train wrecks like this:

A group of [self-declared] teen sex trafficking victims are appealing the dismissal of their lawsuit against Backpage.com…the Communications Decency Act immunizes Web services companies from liability for crimes by users…[but] the plaintiffs’ [lawyers]…allege that Backpage…violated a host of laws…the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other digital rights advocates…[pointed out] that requiring Backpage to face the lawsuit would cause online platforms to become “more expensive, more restrictive, and ultimately less available for individual expression”…

Follow Your Bliss (#544)

Who are the “sex traffickers” again?

A 25-year-old male “transporter” with all of three days on the job, and no real background check. And a 17-year-old girl who wound up in foster care partly because she had fallen victim to forced prostitution. When the eight-hour drive was over, the [girl] had been victimized yet again, and the driver was under investigation for rape…Our Kids, the organization that oversees foster care and adoption services in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties under contract with the Department of Children & Families, declined to discuss the 17-year-old, whose case was being managed by the Family Resource Center, an Our Kids subcontractor…the man…got his job…partly upon the recommendation of another FRC employee, a case worker, to whom he is related…

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In the News (#542)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Absolute Corruption, agency denial, Arizona, asset seizure, Australia, bogus studies, Bottleneck, brothels, California, Canada, Checklist, Do As I Say, Dysphemisms Galore, end demand, First They Came for the Hookers, Florida, France, Gingerbread House, Held Together With Lies, hysteria, Indonesia, language, law, lawyers, massage, North Carolina, Ohio, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, pathologization of males, Philippines, porn, prisons, psychology, red-light districts, stripping, surveillance, Texas, The Biggest Whores, Theatrics, Traffic Circle, Tyranny by Consensus, video on May 30, 2015| 9 Comments »

The [Satanic] panic…was instigated and perpetuated mostly by groups of fundamentalist Christians who saw Satan in every heavy metal album, “Smurfs” episode, and Dungeons & Dragons game. – Radley Balko

The Biggest Whores

An Australian lawyer chides prohibitionist peers:

…If lawyers picked and chose…their clients…based on morality, then those individuals who fall on the wayside of public opinion would be completely without assistance…I was essentially being called morally bankrupt by two men who have acted for some of the most notorious criminals this state has come across. They have also acted on behalf of alleged criminals who have been found not guilty. If these men had subjected their clients to the same moral rigour as they have with sex workers, those clients may not have had the benefit of their legal services to begin with, and may have subsequently found erroneously guilty…when lawyers cast…moral aspersions on parts of society, something we are specifically trained not to do in ethics class, that does not leave much hope for the minority that are subject to those aspersions…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

The inevitable result of criminalization:

…Tucson [cop]…Shane Barrett said the department first received complaints about [an alleged brothel]…on Nov. 29, 2011. The Pima County Attorney’s Office used Barrett’s affidavit as the basis for trying to seize $15,000 and a long list of property from the accused operators…Clarissa Lopez and Ulises Ruiz…[cops] finally obtained and served search warrants on Ruiz and Lopez’s home and their places of business…three years and two months after the initial reports…TPD is conducting an internal affairs investigation alongside the criminal investigation…It’s unclear whether the implicated officers are thought to be customers of the brothel or involved in some other way…

Held Together With Lies

Prohibitionists make up a bunch of big numbers, then multiply them to get an even bigger fake number. SCIENCE!

…Prostitution in France brings in an annual turnover of €3.2 billion, a new study funded by the European Commission has found…France’s nearly 40,000 prostitutes…bring in an average gross total of €87,700 a year – much of which is sent abroad. The authors of the report, who are campaigning for the abolition of prostitution, say that there is a serious tax evasion on these earning that totals €853 million a year. They added that the total “cost” on society was €1.6 billion…The profession also proves costly for indirect social consequences, the study noted, such as imprisonment for pimping, health expenses, and addictions. Maîtresse Gilda, spokeswoman from the French sex-workers union Strass said the figures in the study were “delusional”…

The idea that sex workers are to blame for the costs of criminalizing us is the exact moral equivalent of a bully who hits another child with his own hand while mocking, “Stop hitting yourself!”

First They Came for the Hookers…

“Sex trafficking” fetishists target strip clubs because they’re much more easily located than online escorts:

…OneHeart Ministry in Dayton…is…helping women who work at strip clubs who are at risk of being trafficked or are being trafficked…children ages 10 to 12 are being targeted for prostitution…“If you see something, say something,” she said…

Yes, these fanatics are un-ironically using one of the police state’s more notorious slogans.

Gingerbread House

It’s satisfying when the mask of concern for “trafficking victims” slips:

Controversy continues to grow over the proposed safe house for male victims of sex trafficking in [North Carolina]…The group against the safe house said their major complaints were that no one told them it was going right behind their houses, and the fact the boys living there could run away and cause damage to their property. However, they remain adamant that they have nothing against the boys or mission…

NIMBY at its finest and most literal.

Checklist

It’s hard to imagine an article with a lower opinion of female intelligence and agency than this one:

…a…Florida…bill…requires public-awareness signs be placed at rest areas, turnpike service plazas, some emergency rooms, weigh stations, strip clubs and bodyworks businesses not operated by health-care professionals. The signs will outline how to identify a human trafficking victim along with the phone number of the awareness center. Signs could also be placed in restroom stalls, allowing victims to self-identify during a rare moment of privacy…a…second bill attacks the root cause of much human trafficking…without the demand by so-called johns, the pimps would be out of business. To that end, the bill targets first-time offenders with a $5,000 fine, 100 hours of community service and completion of [“john school”]…That should serve as a stronger deterrent than current penalties…

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (#312)

Prostitution activities maybe [sic] permitted in several areas [in Jakarta, Indonesia] in an effort to control illegal prostitutions [sic] in rented rooms and apartments…In addition, allowing prostitutions in specific places was said to enable a check on activities to offer sex by underaged girls…Indonesia Ulama Council’s general head’s representative Ma’ruf Amin…[said] the proposal…deviated from Islamic teaching…

Theatrics

But hey, they weren’t selling sex, so there’s no need for a crusade or anything:

An Ontario Human Rights Tribunal ruling has highlighted the vulnerability of temporary foreign workers in a case where two women worked in what the tribunal called a “sexually poisoned work environment.” The women had their work permits revoked and were sent back to Mexico after resisting the sexual overtures of their employer at Presteve Foods…One woman was forced to perform sex acts under threat of being sent home and both were sexually harassed in other ways…

Dysphemisms Galore

It’s kind of nice to see sex workers described as depraved temptresses rather than helpless victims:

…more terms [have emerged for an] escort [such as]…PSP — or personal service provider…prostitution is utilizing the power of the Internet to lure those who patronize it…The underground flesh trade has become more wired and clandestine…Ashley…moonlights as a PSP to support her obsession with material possessions…mostly…gadgets and signature dresses…she does this to…mask what was really behind her personality…the person she is…too ashamed for others to see…according to psychologist Dr. Estrella Tiongson-Magno, women dabble into prostitution because it is easy money…some men buy sex as a way to escape problems or uncomfortable emotions…however…since the pleasure is not lasting, men have to do it over and over again…Ronald Aguto…of the Cybercrime Division of NBI, said that self-advertised prostitution is rampant online…

Tyranny By Consensus (#346)

I’ll bet you thought opponents of condoms in porn were exaggerating:

California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health has issued a set of safety standards for all California porn production sets. The 21-page standards presentation…goes into graphic detail about the safety precautions that are to be undertaken when adult video actors perform various acts. Here’s one eye-opening detail from the document: “the employer shall provide, at no cost to the employee, appropriate personal protective equipment such as, but not limited to, condoms, gloves for cleaning, and, if contact of the eyes with OPIM-STI is reasonably anticipated, eye protection. Personal protective equipment will be considered “appropriate” only if it prevents blood or OPIM—STI* from passing through to or reaching the employee’s eyes, mouth, or other mucous membranes“…“OPIM—STI” means pre-ejaculate, ejaculate, semen, vaginal secretions…or…any other bodily fluid…in situations where it is difficult or impossible to differentiate between bodily fluids…

Yes, that means goggles.

Absolute Corruption (#449)

Radley Balko uses the case of Fran & Dan Keller to discuss the Satanic Panic in general:

…”[Texas’] highest criminal court…threw out the 1992 sexual assault convictions against Dan and Fran Keller but declined to find the former Austin day care owners innocent of crimes linked to a now-discredited belief that secret satanic [sic] cults were abusing day care children nationwide. The Kellers spent more than 22 years in prison…The nine judges did not provide an explanation for why they rejected the Kellers’ innocence claim”…dozens of innocent people were sent to prison for crimes for which there was no evidence other than the coerced testimony of kids, and for which those same defendants would later be exonerated. Here’s an excerpt from the concurring opinion of Judge Cheryl Johnson, who would have declared the couple innocent: “This was a witch hunt from the beginning. The allegations…were based on the testimony of a three-year-old child who…was in therapy for numerous psychological and behavioral issues“…That the highest court in Texas still can’t bring itself to declare the couple innocent, in spite of all that we know now, shows just how difficult it can be to undo the damage caused by a moral panic and junk science in the courtroom…One of the best treatments of the panic is the movie Witch Hunt, which focuses on Kern County, arguable the epicenter of the panic…

Bottleneck (#508)

Prohibitionists never understand how ridiculous they sound to normal people:

Edmonton should stop licensing body rub centres and crack down on their customers instead…four speakers argued…Kylee Nixon from the Friends and Families of McCauley Society called on the city to reduce demand for these services by focusing on johns. This should include forcing customers to provide their names at the centres and arresting them when they break prostitution laws, she said…

Traffic Circle (#532)

The Washington Post continues to hammer at “sex trafficking” myths:

…many…lawmakers [have] repeatedly cited the statistic that “300,000” children were “at risk” of being sexually exploited. Often, the source of the statistic was claimed to be the Justice Department…But it turns out that this is another one of those nonsense statistics, based on data so old that the original researcher even says it is no longer relevant. It also does not have the imprimatur of the Justice Department. In recent months, The Fact Checker has exposed a series of dubious factoids, each of which are endlessly repeated by politicians and, even more irresponsibly, by the media…In 2008, Michelle Stranksy and David Finkelhor of the respected Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire wrote a report explaining the problems with the Estes/Weiner estimate, as well as other claims about the extent of the juvenile prostitution. “PLEASE DO NOT CITE THESE NUMBERS,” the report pleaded…how did such an out-of-date guesstimate get touted as a current “Justice Department” figure?…in 2010, the Office of Justice Programs published an article in its Juvenile Justice Bulletin that cited the Estes/Weiner estimate…But the bulletin makes clear that this is only an opinion article and it does not express the official position of the Justice Department. A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed that…“No reliable national estimate exists of the incidence or prevalence of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of minors in the United States”…[politicians] should be ashamed of citing a figure that is so out of date and discredited…All lawmakers should stop using it and post prominent corrections of their statements on their Web sites…

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In the News (#510)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged activism, advertising, agency denial, Arizona, bogus studies, Bottleneck, Broken Record, Business As Usual, Canada, Colorado, cops, Cuckoo Advertising, dirty, diversion programs, Do As I Say, end demand, FBI, genitalia, Gorged With Meaning, halfway whores, hysteria, Ireland, Italy, law, Monsters, Nevada, pimps, politicians, prohibitionist myths, rape, sex work is work, Shift in the Wind, Something Rotten In Sweden, sporting events, statistics, streetwalkers, stripping, Stupor Bowl, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Mote and the Beam, Theatrics, Traffic Jam, transgender, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state) on February 4, 2015| 14 Comments »

This Government only won an election, not the right to become our Mammy. – Ian O’Doherty

Another Reason Not To Do Cowgirl

This isn’t actually the reason I dislike cowgirl, but it makes a good excuse:

“Woman on top” is the most dangerous sex position, according to a new scientific study…”cowgirl”…is responsible for half of all penile fractures…”doggy-style”…is behind 29 per cent…[and] “man on top”…just 21 per cent…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

…a prostitute…asked for the $100 that [a client] agreed to for 30 minutes of her company. She then explained that if the man wanted sex, he would have to pay an additional $150…the man became angry and demanded his $100 back…he…shoved her across the room…then unzipped her jeans…she began kicking him…and he punched her in the head twice…then pinned her down and removed the $100 from…her bra. He then left the apartment…[investigating cops] discovered [the client’s phone number] belonged to a Las Vegas [cop named Michael Kitchen]…

Broken Record

Cows cause “sex trafficking”!

Federal and local [cops arrested] six child victims of domestic sex trafficking and…two alleged traffickers during the 2015 National Western Stock Show…large events with a national draw bring an…increase in child sex trafficking, the FBI said…agencies have been using big events…most notably last year’s Super Bowl — to…[arrest so-called] victims…Colorado is a breeding ground for human trafficking because of the major interstates crisscrossing it…

Shift in the Wind

The prestigious Adam Smith Institute comes out against laws that deny sex workers’ agency, drawing on data from Ric Curtis’ latest study. Before too much longer, prohibitionists won’t be able to claim their crap is based on anything more than a political agenda. Of course, that hasn’t stopped the creationists from getting laws passed, but it’ll be a great comfort when normal, educated people mock prohibitionism as they mock creationism today.

Bottleneck

We are remarkably dishonest when it comes to the sex industry…objections to nakedness-for-cash…blur into vague, emotive statements with very little actual meaning…”Farcical” and “dangerous” are two of the words I heard used last week to describe the UK’s licensing of sexual entertainment, and those words are absolutely accurate: the situation is a mess…any venue offering lap dancing, pole dancing or striptease is classified as a “sex encounter venue”. Local councils have the power to veto licences for SEVs and, if they wish, declare a “nil” policy, meaning no SEVs whatsoever on their turf…this translates to councils up and down the country granting or denying licences inconsistently. They’re given and revoked for no apparent reason, licensing fees are topsy turvy and, in some authorities, restrictive policy is such that councils are effectively trying to ban what is a lawful activity…

Theatrics

Anti-whore theatrics are always ludicrous, but this is one of the most ridiculous ones I’ve seen yet:

Two female Italian councillors have embarked on an unusual quest to clamp down on…prostitution – by dressing up in miniskirts and confronting kerb-crawlers with a hidden camera. The stunt had been initiated by Mayor Dimitri Russo…and councillors Anastasia Petrella and Stefania Sangermano…[who pretend sex work has a] damaging effect…on their town…when punters would stop for the fake prostitutes, they were confronted by the mayor and a cameraman, leaping out from behind parked cars…

The self-important pomposity of politicians is demonstrated by the fact that nobody involved seems to realize how idiotic a spectacle they present.

Monsters

…this [story] from…Louisville, KY…has all the disrespectful AP Stylebook violations…when writing about…murders of African-American trans women. Using mugshot photo in WHAS-TV story: CHECK. Using victim’s dead name: CHECK. Misgendering her throughout the story: CHECK. Surprised…WHAS-TV…didn’t…insert…whatever criminal record they could find since they found the mugshot…Ms. Edwards…was found shot to death at the Fern Valley Motel…on January 9…LMPD is searching for…Henry Richard Gleaves in connection with this homicide…[if] those of you in the Louisville area or Indianapolis area where Ms.Edwards was from…have some pics of her or know her femme name, please get it to me ASAP…

Cuckoo Advertising

Will these “reporters” never wake up?

With tuition costs soaring in Canada, many students are turning to a new…way of paying for school: Renting yourself out for paid dates. SeekingArrangement.com, which brings together prospective “sugar babies” with deep-pocketed “sugar daddies,” says it has seen a 42-per-cent increase in the number of students signing up on its site in the past year…the University of Toronto [has]…the fastest-growing number of sugar babies, with 195 new sign-ups last year…followed by Montreal’s McGill University, with 161 sign-ups…

The idea that selling sex is a “new” way to pay for schooling is utterly hilarious.

The Course of a Disease (#401)

Another rare Irish denunciation of prohibition:

…As a member of the Government which published the…Bill…which adopts the illogical position of criminalising the client but not the sex worker, [Alan] Farrell no doubt feels he is the vanguard of an administration which wants to protect women, but…saying that you are against…forcing [women] into sexual slavery is not the same as saying you are against…informed consent between two adults…In a world where most civilised countries have recognised prostitution as a morally neutral fact of life which can be regulated and taxed – where it is simply another arm of the leisure industry – we have replaced our inherently immature and prudish attitudes about sex work with…one which says that all prostitutes are victims and all Johns are sexual predators…his assertion that: “In my opinion, it is simply unacceptable that a man or a woman would purchase a person’s body for sexual gratification” is entirely irrelevant but also rather instructive, because a man who has legislative power has just admitted that he thinks two grown-ups having a private transaction is “unacceptable”…

Stupor Bowl

Even though the mainstream media are now admitting that the “gypsy whores” myth is bullshit (at least in regard to the Super Bowl), they just can’t let go of that “sex trafficking” carcass yet. The Washington Post‘s debunking is marred by extensive quoting of cops and of Dominique Roe-Sepowitz’s bogus “study” that claimed (among other idiocy) that “84% of [escort] ads indicated possible sex trafficking“, and the Bowling Green News helpfully explains that “sex trafficking” doesn’t increase around sporting events because “in reality it occurs everywhere, 24/7” and is caused by TV commercials.

Traffic Jam (#422)

It looks as though the horrible Project ROSE may be kaput, though of course Sepowitz has to save face by denying that the mountain of ethics complaints against it had anything to do with that: “…Roe-Sepowitz, who…helped organize Project Rose, said that program has been put on hold, but she said it was due to officer availability, not controversy…” The day that Crazy Joe Arpaio won’t provide “officers” for an anti-sex pogrom will be a very frigid one in Hell.

The Mote and the Beam (#428)

…The sheer number of anti-sex trafficking bills that have been introduced in the new Congress (17)…should tell us something. Either sex trafficking has suddenly reached epidemic proportions in America, or it’s become the showboat du jour for preening politicians. Most signs point to the latter. Of the 11 anti-trafficking bills passed by the House [last week]…most…merely add layers of bureaucracy and authorize funding to pad these layers…but…H.R. 181…is exactly the kind of thing federal officials will use to entrap folks into agreeing to sex with an imaginary 17-year-old and then send them to prison for a few decades…every week I read multiple local-news reports from around the country about “sex trafficking stings”…[that] result in nothing but the arrest of adults engaged in consensual prostitution…H.R. 181 would be federalizing [this]…

Gorged With Meaning (#434)

I’m not sure what the headline writer means by saying “Belle Knox is Remaking Herself as a Libertarian Activist“; she’s been an avowed libertarian since she first came on the scene a year ago, and has been active in Students for Liberty for most of that time. The part of this interview that caught my attention the most was this one:

…On the Students for Liberty website, Weeks identifies her “favorite figures in liberty” as Ayn Rand, economist Milton Friedman, and two other activists whose careers have included both sex and politics: porn star Nina Hartley and former call girl Maggie McNeill…

Business As Usual (#506)

This reporter’s faith that cops never do anything they aren’t supposed to, like raping whores during “prostitution stings”, would be touching if it weren’t so horribly misplaced. Even worse? He quotes prohibitionist Kathleen Barry, calling her a “prostitution expert” (which is like calling Carrie Nation a “wine expert”), and giving her a platform for her vile “end demand” propaganda.

Something Rotten in Sweden (#507)

Prostitutes are victims…King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg…told a packed Town Hall audience in attendance for an anti-sex trafficking panel…But…how does acknowledging the existence of consensual adult sex workers nullify all anti-trafficking efforts?…it contradicted the panel’s own stated intentions of respecting marginalized individuals’ humanity…sex workers in the audience, however, had different opinions about how to best protect—and distinguish—at-risk youth and self-employed adults…

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In the News (#503)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Mound of Filth, A Tale That Grew in the Telling, Arizona, Australia, BDSM, Canada, Chauvinism, dating, games, hysteria, Imagination Pinned Down, internet, law, Ohio, prohibitionist myths, Russia, sporting events, Subtle Pimping, Theatrics, transgender, Under Every Bed, video, yellow journalism on January 10, 2015| 13 Comments »

[Anita Sarkeesian]…has the same paternalistic views that many feminists have regarding sex workers—that they need to be rescued, saved; that they would never actually choose this line of work, but rather, were led or coerced into it by a man. – Princess Kora

Imagination Pinned Down

Note that as usual the supposed “sex slavery” was decades in the past, unsupported by anything remotely resembling evidence:

…Niki Cross…was forced into sexual slavery as a teenager. She’s now sharing her story and…working with other victims. “I didn’t realize I was being sold. I just thought I was being raped over and over and over…at least 10 a day.” Cross…was lured by a man to Akron, Ohio, with promises of a singing career. Instead, she was chained in an attic, drugged and sold as a sex slave for a year, until she managed to escape one night…and…was taken in by Chrissie Murphy. The two went their separate ways, until a friend of a friend recently reconnected them nearly 40 years later…

Subtle Pimping (#330)

Sex workers in video games are nothing new, but a game whose developers want to promote empathy for whores rather than just exploiting us as a game mechanic definitely is: “[In] The Oldest Game, currently in development, [players assume] the identity of a sex worker in one of three Canadian cities…the objective…is to make as much money as possible while staying safe, which creates a difficult, no-win scenario…to show the very real constraints sex workers experience…”

Meanwhile Anita Sarkeesian, who has insulted and infantilized sex workers in order to promote her particular brand of pop-neofeminism, is getting a taste of her own medicine from a sex worker:

…Princess Kora…[has] found a way to profit from Sarkeesian’s detractors. Two weeks ago, the 29-year-old PhD student and veteran sex worker launched an adult webcam series called “Boob Frequency,” a parody of [Sarkeesian’s YouTube channel] Feminist Frequency…Kora dresses in Sarkeesian’s typical uniform of hoop earrings and a plaid shirt, only she leaves most of the buttons undone and exposes a generous portion of her substantial cleavage…She also mocks Sarkeesian by “whining about exploitation and oppression”…hordes of Gamergate supporters have come flocking to her webcam channel…and…“Boob Frequency” has garnered several hundred subscribers…

Chauvinism (#335)

Russia has listed [transgender status]…fetishism, exhibitionism and voyeurism…as “mental disorders” now barring people from driving…because Russia has too many road accidents…Russian psychiatrists and human rights lawyers have condemned the move…Valery Evtushenko at the Russian Psychiatric Association…said some people would avoid seeking psychiatric help, fearing a driving ban…

Under Every Bed (All Traffick, All the Time)

The increasing grandiosity of the Bakken oil field trafficking subsection of “sex trafficking” mythology will probably get an entire chapter to itself in my book. Here’s an “investigative series” which manages to run for an entire week without actually investigating the topic, at least not by the usual meaning of that word; it’s just the typical hodgepodge of ridiculous, unsupported claims, wildly exaggerated numbers and cop wanking fantasies without the slightest shred of proof or even a single interview with an actual sex worker. Truly astonishing, even by the low standards of yellow “sex trafficking” journalism.

A Mound of Filth

Even for Arizona, referring to the same old lies which have been circulating for years as “new statistics” is a pretty bold (not to mention stupid) move; some of the intended audience must recognize the claims as not remotely “new”, and even if they still believe such factors contribute to the erosion of the mythology:

New statistics show how big the problem is in Southern Arizona…A third of runaway girls are approached by a sex trafficker within 48 hours…the average age of victims…is just 13 years old…Human sex trafficking is a $9.8 billion business…During a sporting event like the upcoming Super Bowl…girls can be sold to as many as 45 buyers in a night…

Theatrics (#446)

The dating app Tinder appears to be the new hub for aggressive moralists seeking to sexually shame others:

A group of young Melburnians say they are exposing paedophiles [sic] grooming underage girls on dating app Tinder by creating a fake profile…of a 15-year-old girl they called “Imogen”. The group say they secretly filmed her conversations with men online where she tells them her [false] age and then subsequent face-to-face meetings…The creators [are all 21 or older, including the one who]…pretended to be “Imogen”…cyber safety consultant Susan McLean said the experiment [is]…”absolute stupidity. I can see this ending terribly for everyone involved”…

One can only hope so.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#502)

Another good way to give lies weight in the minds of the Great Unwashed: embed them in an infographic.

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That Was the Week That Was (#452)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Year Later, abortion, Above the Law, advertising, agency denial, Alaska, asset seizure, Bad Jobs, Banishment, BDSM, Because We Say So, bogus studies, California, Canada, Central Asia, cops, dehumanization, dirty, Dirty Laundry, Feminine Pragmatism, Florida, Hollywood, hysteria, Ireland, Japan, law, Marching Up Their Own Arses, marriage, Missouri, Nepal, Norway, porn, pragmatism, Property of the State, rape, rescue industry, Safe Targets, sex offender registry, Texas, The Course of a Disease, The Mote and the Beam, The Notorious Badge, The Pro-Rape Coalition, Theatrics, video, violence vs. sex workers on December 27, 2014| 11 Comments »

Apparently learning when to use a turn signal is twice as complicated as conducting an undercover operation that jeopardizes women’s lives. – Samantha Allen

Bad Jobs

I’ll just point out that sex work is an “amusement and recreation service”. So much for “PTSD” and “90% would quit if they could”:

A study published last month…suggests that some jobs have much higher rates of depression than others…the…authors calculated the incidence of depression across 55 industries. The highest rate of depression (16.2 percent) was found among bus drivers. The lowest (6.9 percent) was…among those in “amusement and recreation services,” a broadly defined group that includes the sports, fitness, and performing-arts industries…

Feminine Pragmatism

Part-time casual prostitution to supplement meager earnings has been a fact of female existence since at least Roman times, so this is not anything remotely like “news”:

…salaries for Japan’s flight attendants have slumped significantly over the past decade…This has lead to some stewardesses engaging in [casual prostitution]…“Girls willing to do it with a pilot passed their number to a person who was effectively a female pimp,” says [one] stewardess….other stewardesses may take up part-time work as party companions or bar hostesses in Tokyo’s ritzy Ginza district…

The Pro-Rape Coalition

Have I told you lately how much I love Elizabeth Nolan Brown?

So I was going to ignore this silly study about how pornography is serving as a widespread “marriage substitute” for young American men. But it just keeps popping up on my radar…the study actually found [that]…the more hours of pornography a young man watched, the less likely he was to have a spouse…bachelorhood makes watching a lot of porn…more possible…than it is for people living with a wife and family…and…married individuals are less likely to self-report ample pornography consumption…Correlation does not imply causation. And “low-cost sexual gratification” probably isn’t the end of civilization as we know it.

Meanwhile, over at Slate, Jordan Weissmann goes into even more detail about why the study is, in his words, “deeply silly”. You will not be surprised to know that the “researchers” used data from the General Social Survey, whose unsuitability for questions of this nature I have noted before.

Above the Law

They just can’t call it rape when the rapist is a cop, can they? Especially if his victims are whores: “A Dallas police officer has been arrested for…using his position…to force prostitutes to perform sexual acts…David Kattner…will be [given paid vacation]…pending the results of the…investigation…”

The Notorious Badge

What is it with actors presuming to judge sexual minorities they make big bucks playing on screen?

Jamie Dornan went to a sex dungeon for work. He was preparing to play Fifty Shades of Grey’s…Christian Grey, and…found it underwhelming. “I went there, they offered me a beer, and they did…whatever they were into…Then going back to my wife and newborn baby afterwards… I had a long shower before touching either of them”…

Jamie, I’m sorry to hear that your prudish sex life is so boring. I’ll leave you with a message from my friend, Mistress Matisse:

…Guess what? There were happily married people at that party doing BDSM. Some of them have children, too, just like you. How dare you take a role as someone who does BDSM and then blatantly insult the very people who allowed you into their party and let you observe them in their intimate moments?…I think it’s a shame the makers of 50SOG didn’t cast someone more emotionally mature and more secure in his own sexuality than this. Perhaps Mr. Dornan is more like the character of Christian Gray than he’d like to think…

Banishment

The continuing crusade to treat “sex offenders” as subhuman:

…A registrant in Florida won a three million dollar scratch-off lottery…Timothy Poole…[is the subject of a] hue and cry…that he should, by any means possible, be denied his winnings…because he is a SEX OFFENDER. Florida has no prohibition against any convicted felon profiting from lottery winnings, not even SEX OFFENDERS. I am currently making book that Florida’s next legislative session will see a bill introduced that will do just that…Mr. Poole, since his release from prison in 2006, has maintained a record as spotless as the proverbial driven snow…None of that quashed the flood of outrage or deterred the cesspool of nasty headlines, articles, and commentary as to why he should not receive the money and how inherently wrong it is for him to have won it to begin with…

Dirty Laundry (TW3 #337)

Sadistic Irish judges think it’s funny to rob sex workers and our associates and give their money to an organization dedicated to destroying our entire profession:

…Dublin road engineer [Thomas Lyons] rented an apartment for use as a brothel…[he] has been given a suspended jail sentence and ordered to pay over €10,000 to…Ruhama, an organisation which [profits from the harassment of sex workers]…

The Course of a Disease (TW3 #341)

A rare example of criminalization blowing up in the faces of “authorities”:

A prostitute won a landmark victory against police [when] an Oslo court…ruled that police were wrong to claim taxes for the money she had made selling sex…the court queried whether the state should tax income from prostitution, given that related activity such as pimping and human trafficking are crimes…

Property of the State

A new proposed bill in the Missouri state legislature would require women…seeking an abortion to get consent from the man who is the father of the child. Exceptions are allowed in cases of rape or incest, but [not]…if the woman is in an abusive relationship…

Or, presumably, if she just doesn’t know who the father is.

Because We Say So (TW3 #421)

Next Generation Nepal (NGN) has launched its…report showing that…orphanages in Nepal contain over 15,000 children, yet at least two out of three…are not orphans…many…are being used as poverty commodities to raise money from well-intentioned but naïve fee-paying foreign volunteers and donors…almost 90 percent of “orphanages” in Nepal are located in the top five tourist districts for this reason…the growing global phenomenon of voluntourism…has the potential to…cause considerable harm…

The Mote and the Beam (TW3 #428)

Remember, consensual sex work is usually defined as “trafficking” in the US; this law would felonize the posting of an ordinary escort ad:

A state representative wants to make it a crime to post an ad on the internet if the person posting it knows it could result in human trafficking. It could be an ad anywhere – on websites such as Craigslist or Backpage, or even on a gas station bathroom wall…House Bill 152 would make that person guilty of sexual trafficking of a child; a felony that carries a penalty of up to life in prison…[sponsor] Elijah Haahr…says the idea is based on the SAVE Act…

Safe Targets (TW3 #439)

…the relationship between law enforcement and sex workers in Alaska has supposedly altered in recent years…[due to dogma pretending that] sex workers[are] victims who need to be rescued…[but] a new report by Tara Burns titled People in Alaska’s Sex Trade: Their Lived Experience and Policy Recommendations…found…that…the role of the police has not changed that much…the law has been used against people selling sex (who are said to be trafficking themselves)…”In none of the documents I’ve examined since the law’s inception,” Burns says in the report, “has it been used to benefit a victim”…women Burns surveyed and interviewed see the police as a threat…More than a quarter of the women surveyed said they had been sexually assaulted by police; 9 percent said they had been robbed or beaten…

Theatrics (TW3 #446)

On December 19…[a spam] text message [landed] on mobile phones of [about 300,000] users [in Kathmandu, Nepal]. The…message…read “young boys and girls are available for commercial sex inside the Kathmandu Valley” and asked the recipients to call certain numbers for further details…the message was being delivered by Terre des Hommes…whose website says “it works against child exploitation”…[the NGO] defended the message…[as] “part of its campaign to aware [sic] the general public about child exploitation and end commercial sexual exploitation of children”…

Marching Up Their Own Arses (TW3 #450)

For a change, many outside the demimonde recognize anti-whore douchebaggery for what it is:

The retired cop used to interfere in sex worker’s lives by arresting them, now he just ambushes them with cameras…sex workers…rightly call [reality show 8 Minutes] “vile,” “gross,” “terrifying,” and “exploitative”…[Kevin] Brown was profiled in the LA Times…as founder…of Safe Passage OC, a group with a website that looks like it was made in 1998 and a moral worldview from at least a hundred years earlier than that…Volunteers only need to “attend a 16-hour course”…about half as long as it takes to get a learner’s permit in the state of California…

A Year Later

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That Was the Week That Was (#446)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, Arkansas, asset seizure, Banishment, California, Canada, censorship, cops, dirty, Drawing Lines, Droit du Seigneur, Facebook, Florida, Gingerbread House, hysteria, If Men Were Angels, Illinois, India, internet, Ireland, language, law, Madonna/whore, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nigeria, Pimping the Pimp, Policing for Profit, politicians, porn, pregnancy, prisons, prohibitionist myths, racism, rape, rescue industry, Rough Trade, Safe Targets, Scrambled Eggs, See No Evil, sex education, sex rays, sex work is work, shame, Swedish model, teachers, Texas, The Scarlet Letter, Theatrics, Think of the Children!, tits, Whither Canada?, Whore Detection, Wisconsin on November 15, 2014| 3 Comments »

Abolishing prostitution is a complete fantasy, and those deluded by it…sacrifice the lives of real human beings on their altar of sexual purity. – Joyce Arthur

Rough Trade

“A Delhi court has sentenced four youths to 10 years rigorous imprisonment for abducting and gangraping a Rwandan refugee, saying merely because she was working as a sex worker does not confer the right upon anyone to violate her dignity…“

Think of the Children!

Norah Langweiler…was…hired as Adolescent Health Training Coordinator of Mississippi First, a non-profit specializing in education advocacy and reform…she would design and implement a training center to train educators and medical professionals on…sex education…an…online harassment…group…mined through Langweiler’s Facebook, Etsy, and Twitter accounts to find and repost any “objectionable” material they could find on her, current or years-old…The incriminating “stuff” the small guild dug up included a link to a cartoon about vibrators, mild cursing, and…a photograph of Yoda-shaped pasties…[after a politician joined them]…she was asked…to resign from her position…

The Scarlet Letter

Flint, Michigan has one of the highest crime rates in the US, so cops there have decided to give up on that and use their time trying to destroy the lives of people engaging in peaceful commerce instead:

Suspected Flint prostitutes and johns will be the target of a new police social media tactic to stamp out the world’s oldest profession…police will begin posting on its Facebook page the names and photos of suspects who have been arrested and arraigned on prostitution-related charges…Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton said he believes more-severe punishments are needed to deter prostitution…[an amateur circle-jerk he participates in] has proposed legislation that would change the crime to be a five-year felony…

Scrambled Eggs

In the entire history of futurism, has any futurist ever been right about anything?

One of the developers of the contraceptive pill has predicted his own invention will become redundant as more people choose to be sterilised, making sex purely recreational by 2050…Professor Carl Djerassi said increasing numbers of babies being born through IVF…will lead to men and women choosing to have their eggs and sperm frozen at a young age…people would then be sterilised out of convenience because there would be no need to have sex to produce children…

Above the Law

Some rapist cops carefully plan their assaults: “A..Wisconsin [cop]…has been convicted of sexual assault of a child…and possessing child pornography. Daniel Barber [abused]…several boys, including two toddlers…he [used]…Craigslist and Facebook to connect with parents in need of baby sitters…” While some prefer to simply take advantage of opportunities:

[Florida cop] Carlos Xavier Lopez…responded to a call about a possible domestic incident [then] a few days [later]…he returned for a followup…he…forced himself on a…woman…and…kissed her, pressing his tongue into her mouth…he told her he “could last for hours” and that “I’m not going to get caught.” Then…he forced his hand inside her underwear and touched her, so she attempted to pretend someone was coming into the garage so he would stop…[he] followed her and tried to guide her toward a bedroom…Lopez allegedly said he would have had sex with her if members of her family hadn’t been home at the time…

Gingerbread House

Look beneath the Orwellian language:

Every year in Texas 46,000 kids will go missing…More than 6,500 of them will become victims of sex trafficking…the…Refuge for Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking…is working to open the refuge ranch where victims of human trafficking can get all the help they need. “Everything will be self-contained on the 50 acres so that in the beginning the girls don’t have to be moved outside of that and that gives them some safety and consistency”…Girls ages 11-17 will be able to stay as long as they need…

“Girls don’t have to be moved” = “girls won’t be free to leave”. “Safety and consistency” = “security and isolation”. “Stay as long as they need” = “indefinite, open-ended sentence”. And given that only 6 of that “missing children” figure are actually abducted by strangers, it’d be a good trick for “more than 6500” to be “sex trafficked”.

Sex Work is Work

Bitch Magazine eschews the usual nonsense about whether sex work is “bad” or “empowering”, instead treating it as work and interviewing three sex workers whose names you know: Mistress Matisse answers “How Does a Dominatrix Do Her Taxes?”, Melissa Gira Grant talks about “Looking at Sex Work from a Labor Perspective”, and Emi Koyama discusses “The Social and Legal Reality of Sex Work”.

Droit du Seigneur (TW3 #132)

A group of [Nigerian] sex workers…beat up a top politician…over his refusal to pay for services rendered…Eye witness [sic] said that the prostitutes…began to drag him along the…road, shouting, “pay us our money for the service we do for you”…his clothes had been torn to shreds before his friends…moved to rescue him, while pleading for forgiveness from the sex workers…

Theatrics

If this supposed “crime” is so common, how come the only pictures we have of it are always fake ones?

Fake accounts on Tinder, using pictures of models with cuts and bruises, have been set up as part of a campaign against sex trafficking. Dublin-based advertising agency EightyTwenty and the Immigrant Council of Ireland are behind the scheme. Profiles initially show a picture of an attractive person, but when users swipe to see more photos they are then confronted with images depicting abuse that victims of trafficking are [supposedly] subjected to…

Policing for Profit

The seminars offered police officers some useful tips on seizing property…Don’t bother with jewelry (too hard to dispose of) and computers (“everybody’s got one already”), the experts counseled. Do go after flat screen TVs, cash and cars. Especially nice cars. In one seminar…Harry S. Connelly Jr., the city attorney of Las Cruces, N.M., called them “little goodies”…And…described how [cops]…could not wait to [steal] one man’s “exotic vehicle” outside a local bar…In September, Albuquerque, which has long seized the cars of suspected drunken drivers, began taking them from men suspected of trying to pick up prostitutes, landing seven cars during a one-night sting. Arkansas has expanded its seizure law to allow the police to take cash and assets with suspected connections to terrorism, and Illinois moved to make boats fair game under its D.W.I. laws…In Mercer County, N.J., a prosecutor preaches the “gospel” that forfeiture is not just for drug arrests — cars can be seized in shoplifting and statutory rape cases as well…Officials offered advice on dealing with skeptical judges, mocked Hispanics whose cars were seized, and made comments that, the Institute for Justice said, gave weight to the argument that civil forfeiture encourages decisions based on the value of the assets to be seized…

Pimping the Pimp (TW3 #403)

Annie Lobert of “Liars for Jesus” is back in the news again, and the source who pointed this story out to me has a bit more info on her. It turns out she went by the stage name “Fallon” and used to work the casinos; she was never a streetwalker, never had a “pimp” (unless you count her current husband, Oz Fox of the Christian rock band Stryper) and has continually inflated her stories of beatings and the like for the past eight years. Remember her “prostitution glossary“, in which she pretended agency escorts use terms cops claim are from the narrow little world of pimped streetwalkers? Yeah. Anyway, this “Destiny House” is actually the second mansion some would-be rescuer has allowed her to use; she lost the first one because she couldn’t prove her “charity” actually accomplished anything, and now that she’s about to lose this one she’s crying for public funding with the help of a reporter best known for Area 51 stories. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Drawing Lines

Once again: No, adding a camera won’t protect you from prostitution charges, even though the distinction is total bullshit:

Porn stars get paid to have sex. Prostitutes get paid to have sex. But porn is legal, and prostitution is not. And now porn stars are letting fans pay for the chance to have sex with them on camera…While at first glance the concept of someone bidding thousands of dollars…to have sex with a porn star in front of a video crew might seem like prostitution, adult industry experts say it’s not…Marc Randazza…explained that the differentiation between pornography and prostitution generally refers back to a 1988 California Supreme Court case, People v Freeman…

See No Evil (TW3 #421)

A picture showing a new mother breastfeeding her premature baby for the first time was removed by Facebook after a user complained it contained “offensive” nudity. Emma Bond, 24, said she wanted to share the image of the “special moment” with Carene, who was born 12 weeks early…Facebook said breastfeeding photos have never been against the firm’s Community Standards, but nipples had to be covered or concealed. It said the picture had been removed in error and had since been reinstated…Sarah Crown, editor of parenting website Mumsnet, said…”We have a problem with photos of women breastfeeding on Facebook because they involve breasts”…

Whither Canada? (TW3 #423)

Canada’s new anti-prostitution law was passed this week despite mountains of evidence of his harmfulness and unconstitutionality. The city government of Vancouver has protested the new law, strongly implying that it will refuse to enforce it, and steadfast ally Joyce Arthur had this to say about it:

…The misnamed “Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act” will accomplish neither, because the main unwritten goal of the law, bluntly stated by Injustice Minister Peter MacKay, is to “abolish prostitution“…the law is a recipe for violence against sex workers, who]…will be pushed into more isolated areas, forced to work alone, pressured into rushing transactions, harassed by the police, less able to access social and health services, and subjected to increased stigma and discrimination. New prohibitions on advertising will put many indoor workers onto the street…Kerry Porth…of Pivot Legal Society…said…”The new laws are so confusing that no one — not even the government itself — really knows what activities will be illegal and what will be legal”…a Charter challenge is all but certain. Sex workers will win again, this time for good.

If Men Were Angels

A…teacher [named Tariq Ahmad] is wanted [for]…the sexual abuse and rape of two female students at a private Islamic school in Florida…one…[needed] “substantial surgical repair”…the school knew about the alleged incidents, which happened between 2006 and 2008, but did nothing about them…

Safe Targets (TW3 #439)

Would he have been prosecuted if not for the Vice article? Doubtful.

A Fairbanks man arrested…after a two-month investigation is accused of posing as a [cop] and trying to blackmail local prostitutes for cash…Jase O. Connors, 26…[is only in trouble because he’s] not a certified police officer…none of the victims who came forward to discuss the case…will face prosecution as a result of doing so…

Of course, now cops and prosecutors know their names and details.

Whore Detection

Note that she doesn’t question the prohibitionist laws that both reinforce this stigma and raise it from merely insulting to actually dangerous:

The online conversation about women of color being profiled as sex workers made me think about my own stories…I [am] a…twenty-something [black] woman [married to] a white man in his mid-thirties…[I get] propositions a few times each year…Stop Street Harassment…has found…that dark-skinned women are more likely than light-skinned women to be asked questions like, “How much?” by men in public spaces…

Banishment (TW3 #444)

Red Light Legal…has called on the Oakland City Council to repeal new rules allowing the city to force landlords to evict alleged prostitutes…the Oakland City Attorney’s Office…[pretends that] the city won’t actually use the legislation to target sex workers…[but rather only the] motels and hotels [they live in. City Attorney Barbara] Parker…demanded [newspapers censor their truthful coverage of the law]…and print [city propaganda] instead, [vomiting out the myth that] “Prostitutes are…victimized and brutalized by the pimps, Johns, and others who prey on them and force them into that life“…Despite Parker’s [lies]…the law still leaves the door open [to persecute sex workers on the whim of cops or prosecutors]…

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That Was the Week That Was (#339)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Procrustean Bed, A Tale That Grew in the Telling, Above the Law, adolescence, agency denial, Alabama, An Ounce of Prevention, animals, Arizona, Australia, bad customers, Bad Girls, Be Careful Who You Rape, brothels, California, Canada, Change of Heart, comics, cops, disease, drugs, ethics, Florida, Georgia, harm reduction, hysteria, Imagination Pinned Down, India, internet, Ireland, Juxtaposition, law, Madonna/whore, neofeminism, Netherlands, New York, North Carolina, Perquisites, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, rescue industry, Reviews, Rough Trade, Saint Death, Scapegoats, Shift in the Wind, statistics, stereotypes, Still a Child, stripping, Swedish model, Texas, The Proper Study, Theatrics, United Kingdom, video, Watershed on September 28, 2013| 68 Comments »

What Feministe did is like pissing on your host’s carpet, then storming out indignantly when they point out that you just pissed on the carpet.
– Chris Hall

Rough Trade

Australia agrees with what I have stated before: cheating a whore is a form of rape: “Akis Emmanouel Livas…pleaded guilty to sexual intercourse without consent after he left the woman with a white card bearing a printed red rose instead of the agreed $850…”

Bad Girls

Ladies, if a client treats you badly, it’s probably best just to add his name to an “ugly mugs” or “bad date” registry and leave it at that: “Angela Dawn Specker…cut a former john on his forearm when she saw [him] in…a liquor store the [next] day…Specker told the cop…that…he…had been very aggressive…pulling her hair and slapping her…[then throwing] the $100 at her and [leaving]…”

A Procrustean Bed

New York officially classes all whores as passive objects without agency:

New York…is creating a statewide system of…criminal courts to handle prostitution cases and provide services to help wrest…sex-trafficking victims from the cycle of exploitation and arrest, the state’s chief judge announced…The new Human Trafficking Intervention Courts will handle all cases involving prostitution-related offenses that continue past arraignment…the court will refer defendants to services like drug treatment, shelter, immigration assistance…health care…education and job training, in an effort to keep them from returning to the sex trade…women typically enter prostitution…between…12 and 14, Judge Lippman said…

As we have often seen, basic mathematical literacy is not a requirement to hold office in New York.

Perquisites

A San Francisco strip club is suing Oracle after one of its employees ran up $33,540 in charges on a company credit card – and Oracle refused to pay the bill…Jose Manuel Gomez Sanchez…[charged] $16,490…at the New Century Theater…[then] returned two nights later and rang up another $17,050…

The Proper Study

For the first time the men and women selling sex indoors in Ireland have been asked about their lives. The findings harshly contradict the popular media image…The 195 escorts who took part…were from 29 different countries. Most were…in their 20s or 30s and highly educated…97.3 percent were self-employed independent escorts…there was no evidence of the involvement of any under 16s and only one participant was aged under 18. Participants reported low alcohol and drug use [and] high condom use…

An Ounce of Prevention

A common drug that dermatologists prescribe to treat nail fungus appears to…completely eradicate infectious HIV from cell cultures…the virus doesn’t bounce back when the drug is withheld…[so] it may not require a lifetime of use to keep HIV at bay…the fact that it’s already deemed safe for one type of human use could make the regulatory process faster than usual…

Saint Death

“…A…$3.4 million settlement with the family of Jose Guerena will end a two-year legal battle…Guerena…was [murdered] by SWAT team members…when they raided his house…[a spokesman claimed] the settlement is not an admission of any wrongdoing…” You may remember that the cops tried to claim that Guerena, a retired Marine, must have been a “drug trafficker” because he had a picture of Jesus Malverde.

Above the Law

I get that there’s not technically a federal rape law, but this seems to seriously downplay what this cop did: “Jason Glenn Thomas…a…Police sergeant in Tuscaloosa, Ala., was sentenced…to…ten years in federal prison…for sexually assaulting a…woman in violation of federal civil rights laws…[after detaining her and transporting her] to a remote area…”

Scapegoats (TW3 #10)

In Phoenix, dog porn is a higher law enforcement priority than rape:

A…man accused of burning his initials onto the genitals of at least one woman was arrested again…after…deputies allegedly found pornographic videos featuring a dog at his home. Christopher Jackson…was arrested on suspicion of bestiality…“If you saw the video, you’d be pretty sick,” Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said…Police also arrested…Josephine Erikson, who they say is seen in the videos…

While Arpaio seems to be motivated by the desire to leer at women in person after watching them in stolen dog videos, over in North Carolina they’re motivated by weird ideas about sexual purity:

A…woman is accused of having sex with dogs while her…husband filmed them [for]…the Internet…Ruben Chance James Fox and his wife, Amber Nicole Fox…face…charges of bestiality, conspiracy…disseminating obscene materials…[and] soliciting a crime against nature. The Humane Society tipped off the…police…

Change of Heart

Edinburgh sauna chiefs have compiled a “hypocrisy hit list” of senior public figures who paid for sex at their premises in recent years…[it] includes police officers, council officials, lawyers and even two “celebrities”…[and] is due to be unveiled at a civil court case next month…the list…proves double standards among public officials trying to shut the city’s sex industry down…

Shift in the Wind (TW3 #43)

Melissa Gira Grant on the increasing desperation of prohibitionists:

I’ve written before about Equality Now (in Jacobin, and in Reason)…[who] deny that anyone involved in the sex trade dissents with their approach. Lately their op-eds have turned explicitly against sex workers’ rights, which makes sense, as the past two years have seen the mainstream of the global health and human rights community joining sex workers in calling for an end to…criminalization…Equality Now appear to be losing credibility as human rights advocates…As more and more…advocates…demand…that sex workers be understood as the experts…the anti-sex work campaigners begin to look quite out of step with the…people they claim to protect…

Lauren Hersh, who wrote the op-ed to which Grant refers, was a prosecutor who resigned in disgrace after she was caught railroading two black men on rape charges. Grant also commented on a Scott Long article which examines Equality Now’s lies and schemes at great length, ending with this bombshell:

…The Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy is offering a practicum for students…in a project for Equality Now. “This project would analyze the legalization of prostitution and formation of sex workers’ rights groups…Equality Now seeks to better understand the movement…in order to refute arguments for legalization and lobby for adoption of the Nordic Model instead”…

In other words, Equality Now is paying a prestigious institution to spy on sex workers so as to help it create fake sex worker rights organizations which will lobby for the Swedish model, thus confusing politicians and others into thinking there is legitimate debate among sex workers about decriminalization being best. The strategy itself is nothing new; it’s why Swedish model missionaries often deceptively and incorrectly label it “decriminalization”. But that they are willing to go to this extent demonstrates the depth of their desperation, and the fact that the school took down the page as soon as they realized activists had found it (but not before Melissa got this screenshot) shows that they are fully aware of how incredibly unethical this is.

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

Sunitha Krishnan’s lies get more outrageous all the time:

Yes, that’s 100 clients a day she’s claiming there.

Book Reviews (TW3 #133)

For over two decades, Chester Brown has been one of Canada’s leading cartoonists, known…internationally for such works as Yummy Fur, Ed the Happy Clown, I Never Liked You, and Paying for It…For this year’s McCready Lecture, Chester Brown will present an illustrated talk…[to complement the] presentation in the Canadian galleries of a selection of the original drawings created for Louis Riel and will launch the new anniversary edition of the book…

Watershed

…last week…Feministe made a very embarrassing and controversial post about sex work disappear from their site, along with several hundred comments…they have not posted any explanation, apology, or retraction for the post, apparently hoping that they can just make it vanish down the memory hole…”Dear Feminists” by Sarah Elizabeth Pahman…pretended to be about…impoverished sex workers, [but] it was all about Pahman, and how seeing them for the first time made her feel…[the incident] shows how deeply institutionalized their problems with sex work are…

The Joy of Juxtaposition (TW3 #312)

Georgia appears to be competing with Washington for the state with the most ridiculous and extreme manifestation of “sex trafficking” hysteria:

…a new Georgia law requires certain businesses to post…notices letting sex trafficking victims know who to call for help…The list includes: adult entertainment establishments, bars, airports, train stations, bus stations, truck stops, emergency rooms, urgent care centers, farm labor contractors, privately operated job recruitment centers, rest stops, hotels, and massage parlors without licensed massage therapists…

What, not ethnic restaurants and nail parlors?

Theatrics

Did you see that ridiculous video which claims that most whores in Amsterdam were “trafficked”? Here’s Dr. Brooke Magnanti on what’s wrong with the entire mindset that produced it:

…[in] Stop the Traffik’s recent “viral”…bystanders who think they’re enjoying a show are suddenly broadsided with a ham-fisted…message…It neatly employs a trick that has been used by what Laura Agustin calls the “Rescue Industry” for some time now: conflate all trafficking with sex trafficking, and all sex work with trafficking…it’s then perfectly acceptable…to mislabel consensual sex work as abuse…and at the same time to ignore the more widespread and less fashionable phenomenon of forced labour happening in domestic and drug sectors…the people who influence public taste and public policy definitely don’t want anyone looking too closely at where their cleaners and their drugs come from, but everyone hates sex work, so attacking that is A-OK. Raids that rescue exactly zero trafficked individuals and put plenty of willing others behind bars are fine…

Still a Child

The UK is moving toward defining people in their early twenties as “children”:

…Child psychologists are being given a new directive…that the age range they work with is increasing from 0-18 to 0-25…the change follows developments in our understanding of emotional maturity, hormonal development and particularly brain activity…There are three stages of adolescence – early adolescence from 12-14 years, middle adolescence from 15-17 years and late adolescence from 18 years and over. Neuroscience has shown that a young person’s cognitive development continues into this later stage and that their emotional maturity, self-image and judgement will be affected…

Keep in mind that since “adolescence” is largely an artificial concept, dividing it into periods like this is equally artificial. But at least someone with sense is quoted in the article:

Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, says we have infantilised young people…”There is a loss of the aspiration for independence…and…psychology…reinforces that kind of passivity and powerlessness and immaturity and normalises that…we hold our children back from a very early age. When they’re 11, 12, 13 we don’t let them out on their own. When they’re 14, 15, we hover all over them and insulate them from real-life experience. We treat university students the way we used to treat school pupils”…

Another excellent article by evolutionary psychologist Peter Gray explains that one of the biggest culprits is the eradication of unsupervised play:

…around 1960…adults began…reducing children’s freedom to play on their own…Adult-directed sports…began to replace “pickup” games; adult-directed [activities]…began to replace hobbies; and parents’ fears led them…to forbid children from going out to play…away from home, unsupervised…Over the same decades…[there has been] a continuous…increase in anxiety and depression in young people…the suicide rate…has more than doubled, and…[there has been] a decline in empathy and a rise in narcissism…[which is] exactly what we would expect to see in children who have little opportunity to play socially. Children can’t learn these social skills…in school, [which] is an authoritarian…setting…[where] children…are not free to quit when others fail to respect their needs and wishes…Yet policymakers…are continuing to push us in the opposite direction — toward more schooling…more adult direction…and less opportunity for free play…

Be Careful Who You Rape

The “deals went bad”. Seven times.

…Van Dralan Dixson, 38, confessed to police that he was responsible for a Sept. 1 rape in which he [attacked] a woman who was leaving work at a fast food restaurant…he told police…that the [only] two incidents that [he was sorry for]…the one…“with the kids and the ‘chicken lady’”…but the rest were prostitute deals gone bad and he had nothing to apologize for…

Imagination Pinned Down (TW3 #334)

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That Was the Week That Was (#336)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, A War for Peace, Absolute Corruption, agency denial, Arizona, asset seizure, Backpage, Bangladesh, bogus studies, brothels, California, Canada, Catholicism, censorship, Central Asia, Colorado, Confined and Controlled, cops, Dirty Laundry, Elephant in the Parlor, Europe, Florida, Germany, Harm Magnification, harm reduction, Having and Eating Cake, hysteria, India, internet, Ireland, King of the Hill, Korea, law, marriage, Monsters, neofeminism, New York, Opting Out, politicians, porn, psychology, rescue industry, RIP Petite Jasmine, sex offender registry, Shift in the Wind, Somewhere in the Middle, Stand-Up Guys, streetwalkers, stripping, Swedish model, Texas, The Course of a Disease, The Dogs Do Bark, Theatrics, transgender, Ukraine, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Virginia, What a Week!, Whatever They Need To Say, Worse Than I Thought, yin and yang on September 7, 2013| 23 Comments »

The Swedish model, in its mission to eradicate sex work, is by definition an unapologetic mission to eradicate sex workers. – Nine

A War for Peace

…a new documentary screening at the Venice Film Festival has revealed that Femen was founded and is controlled by a man. Ukraine is not a Brothel…by…Kitty Green, has “outed” Victor Svyatski as the mastermind behind the group. Mr Syvatski is known as a “consultant” …[but]…“It’s his movement and he hand-picked the…prettiest girls because…[they] get on the front page… that became…the way they sold the brand,” [Green] says… “These girls are weak,” [Syvatski] says in the film…“They show submissiveness, spinelessness…and many other factors which prevent them from becoming political activists”…

Harm Magnification

…PEERS Victoria Resource Society quietly closed the doors to its drop-in centre and shut down its most incremental program…PEERS will continue its daytime and nighttime outreach services, but only 10 per cent of its current 515 clientele have been matched with service providers…executive director Marion Little…says the decision …[is] due to the…new [British Columbia] provincial integrated case management system…[which requires] many more administrative steps…clients…would now be required to issue a full name and social insurance number just to access services…“we were losing so much staff time to administrative roles…we could…no longer afford our own services,” said Little…

Elephant in the Parlor

OK, now this politician/hooker story is news:

An investigation into a fire that gutted the home of a former escort…[focused on]…Sutter County District Attorney Carl Adams…Sarah Garibay…showed police text messages from Adams saying he was jealous of her other lovers…Yet she said she does not believe Adams set fire to her home…“Someone is trying to smear him and they’re using my name to do it”…

Hark, Hark, the Dogs Do Bark

Their next study will attempt to determine if water is really wet:

…married men are more likely than women to have extramarital affairs, as well as to seduce someone else’s partner…New research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin…suggests men’s ability to resist temptation is no stronger or weaker than that of the ladies. But it gets overridden more often because of the intensity of men’s desire…

Stand-Up Guys

In a column on humorist Dave Barry’s surprising depth and wisdom, Lucy Steigerwald quotes a 1994 interview he gave to Reason magazine:

…I saw one of these real-life cop drama shows…[where] the whole show consisted of this [undercover cop entrapping]…prostitutes…Meanwhile…the other cops, these fat men with walkie-talkies, are laughing…because…they are about to enforce the law and protect society…This poor woman–I don’t know whether she’s feeding her drug habit or feeding her kids or whatever. And the cops are so proud of themselves…It just made me sick to see this. To treat these people who are trying to make a living…this way, and to be proud of it…we’re all supposed to watch this and feel good about it. It’s just disgusting…

Confined and Controlled

…St. Louis [Missouri]…Alderman Jeffrey Boyd…posted this tweet…“A constituent suggested legalizing…Brothels What do you think?” The woman who made that suggestion said she wanted to be taken seriously and offered it as a way to protect women in her community. “These are human beings, and you can do something to help them,” said Joyce Glaspy…[she] conceded that most folks in St. Louis won’t agree with her, but said a brothel would provide security for these women and get them off the streets…

Whatever They Need To Say

In Bangladesh, as in the Netherlands, “morality” is being used as an excuse to evict sex workers so developers and their government cronies can profit:

…“If anybody thinks that these evictions took place out of some moral issues and that we are doing some criminal activities, then they are wrong…[it was] to grab our land”…[said] Joya Shikder…of the Sex Workers Network…“Usually after evicting, the government hands over Tk10,000 and a sewing machine…in the name of rehabilitation…the department does not even bother to know whether we can sew or not”…

Worse Than I Thought

The cancer keeps spreading: “[Virginia state] Sen. Mark Obenshain…wants to make human trafficking a standalone felony offense…add offenders engaging in commercial sex with a minor to the sex offender registry and extend asset forfeiture laws to human trafficking…”

Dirty Laundry

This excellent article about Ruhama’s efforts to persecute Irish sex workers was transcribed (in English) from the print edition of Rabble by the Spanish-language blog El Estante de la Citi:

…According to [Ruhama]…it’s “prostituted women” and never “work”…they’re [not] very concerned with trafficking…when it’s young Asian men…[sitting] in weed growhouses…but they’re not having sex so it doesn’t matter right? They believe all sex workers are abused and…only Ruhama…can represent [them]…Ruhama…[says] prostitution is…violence against women and the Swedish law has been great at reducing prostitution and trafficking…[but] the Swedish government admitted…that they actually hadn’t a clue how much prostitution there was…and the Swedish police have reported that trafficking has grown significantly since that…law was brought in…

The Course of a Disease (TW3 #42)

Dr. Graham Ellison continues his fight against the imposition of the Swedish disease on Northern Ireland:

…Dr Graham Ellison…is working on a research project on sex work regulations in Berlin, Manchester, Prague and Belfast…one of his co-researchers is Dr Susan Dodillet…[who says] Sweden’s sex purchase law has made sex workers more vulnerable…like Dr Ellison, she favours…decriminalising prostitution…in 2002 new [German] laws put the sex trade almost on a par with other work. One exception…is that the unemployed cannot be penalised for refusing [sex] work…However, prostitutes can claim unemployment and sickness benefit and brothel owners must provide the same…rights as other employers…Dr Ellision added…”a senior officer in the Berlin Kriminalpolizei who [investigates] organised crime…was emphatic that trafficking for sexual exploitation [is] not a significant problem. Generally, the more you criminalise something the more you drive it underground and into the hands of gangsters”…

Shift in the Wind (TW3 #43)

Laws and interventions aimed at reducing human trafficking by targeting commercial sex workers can…actually endanger their health and result in human rights violations, experts say…Part of the problem…is that anti-trafficking programmes often take the form of “raid and rescue” missions…[which] invade privacy and…scatter…networks of sex workers who, in some cases, had implemented successful sex worker-led health programming…“rescue raids of sex establishments have exacerbated violence against sex workers and compromised their safety,” say the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS…

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake

…Four exotic dancers are suing Fantasy Gentlemen’s Club in Grand Junction, Colo., claiming the club’s owner violated…minimum-wage laws…Fantasy…took such a large cut of…tips that dancers sometimes made less than $7.25 per hour…“The case is fundamentally one of…exploiting workers that are vulnerable because of the stigma that’s attached to what they do,” Mari Newman, the [dancers’] attorney [said]…Kevin Eardly, the owner of the club…characterized the suit as a shakedown by a group of disgruntled strippers…

Absolute Corruption

…Fran Keller and her husband Dan…are each serving 48 years on multiple sexual abuse charges…“We were supposed to have buried children…or flown them to Vegas, California and Japan…we had an airstrip in back of the house, dinosaurs and sharks in the pool. It was just so farfetched that I had no idea anyone could believe such stories.” The Kellers were caught up in the 1980s-era hysteria surrounding satanic [sic] ritual abuse…popularized on daytime talk shows [and] lurid paperbacks…Nearly two dozen years after their conviction, [they] have filed a Writ of Habeus Corpus that could lead to the end of their prison sentences…

Theatrics

Fraudulent recruitment, debt bondage, abusive conditions, threatening workers with deportation…but it’s never called “trafficking” when politically-connected companies do it:

…twice this summer…more than 150 Jamaican guest workers who clean luxury Florida hotels and condos walked off the job…They…borrowed to pay recruitment fees of $2,000 to $2,500, counting on promises of full-time work and good housing. But…the cleaning company packed as many as 15 people into unfurnished two-bedroom apartments, for…as much as $5,000 a month. Charges for rent and required extras like $70 for a T-shirt “uniform” reduced the workers’ net pay to subminimum levels, sometimes even zero, and…paychecks repeatedly bounced…Guest workers…are tied by law to the employer who sponsored their visas, which means that if they are found too “difficult” for any reason — including asking that their rights be respected — the employer can…deport them and blacklist them from receiving future work visas…

Monsters

Islan Nettles was out…with friends when a group of young men…learned she was a transgender woman and began taunting and maliciously beating her—right in front of a police precinct in Harlem…[the 21-year-old] was punched in the face, knocked to the ground and beaten until she lost consciousness…she…fell into a coma…[and later] died…Nettles’ alleged assailant, Paris Wilson, was booked on a misdemeanor assault charge and freed on $2,000 bail…Nettles’ death was officially ruled a murder…[but] Wilson has not yet been arraigned on any murder charges…

Somewhere in the Middle

The mainstream media touted another bogus client study last week; this one used a single Backpage ad placed twice in each city, and thus (unsurprisingly) generated wildly-varying figures for their “estimate” of the fraction of men who buy sex. The design presumes that all clients use Backpage and that all men will respond to a generic ad for one particular type worded by ignorant amateurs; it’s like counting the pigeons near one statue at some random time and using it to estimate the number of all birds in the whole city. The academic behind this is the ethically-retarded Dominique Sepowitz of Arizona State, who has a history of reporting her survey subjects to the cops; her department is also involved in “Project ROSE”, which entraps streetwalkers and then offers them a “choice” of jail or Bible-based brainwashing. And who funded this bogus “study”? Try the Phoenix Police Department, Arizona State’s “Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention”, and Asstoon & Dumi’s THORN. In other words, it’s about as trustworthy and reliable as anything from Melissa Farley or the Schapiro Group.

What a Week! (TW3 #322)

As bad as things are in the US, at least sex workers aren’t executed here:

Kim Jong-un’s ex-girlfriend was among a dozen well-known North Korean performers who were executed by firing squad…Hyon Song-wol…a singer with the Unhasu Orchestra, was among those arrested on August 17 for [selling pornographic videos of themselves]…All 12 were machine-gunned three days later, with other members of North Korea’s most famous pop groups and their immediate families forced to watch. The onlookers were then sent to prison camps…

R.I.P. Petite Jasmine

Here’s a good introduction to the horrors of the Swedish model by Nine of Feminist Ire, illustrated by the way the policies led to Petite Jasmine’s death:

…Prohibitionist campaigners…portray Sweden’s stance on sex work as progressive, and assert that sex workers themselves are not targeted…They’re painted as victims to be pitied and rescued…[but] as with religion-cloaked homophobia, this distinction makes little difference to those on the receiving end…Police stake out sex workers’ homes and workplaces, clandestinely film them, and subject them to invasive searches. Sex workers are often forced to testify in court, but have the rights of neither victim nor accused…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #329)

“A film by three students in Plymouth is being used nationally to teach people about child sexual exploitation…the film…is the fictional story of…a 13-year-old sex trafficking victim, who is kidnapped and forced into prostitution after being groomed online”…UK authorities have little choice but to use a film about fictional “sex trafficking” victims, because they can’t seem to find any real ones.

Opting Out

…Parliamentary servers have registered tens of thousands of attempts to access porn every month with over 100,000 attempts last November alone…A…spokesperson said…the figures may have been enlarged by “automatic links” and “pop up” windows. “We are not going to restrict Parliamentarians’ ability to carry out research,” they added.

But restricting the citizens’ ability to carry out similar “research” is A-OK.

King of the Hill (TW3 #335)

“According to Homeland Security, Texas is the second largest human trafficking state…” Because third place ain’t good enough for Texas!

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Posted in Current Events, Perception, tagged agency denial, California, dirty, Florida, harm reduction, hysteria, illegal aliens, Latin America, law, Mexico, neofeminism, Pennsylvania, racism, rape, restaurants, Theatrics, Where Are the Protests? on April 11, 2013| 30 Comments »

If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. – William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (III,iv)

The moral panic over human trafficking has grown more aggressively than most; in its earlier form, the Satanic Panic, it only barely got out of the United States. But once the cultists metamorphosed into “criminal gangs”, two powerful and wealthy types of organizations recognized that the hysteria provided the perfect plot for media theatrics designed to disguise sleazy agendas which might have mobilized considerable resistance had they been openly revealed. The anti-sex cabal of neofeminists and evangelical Christians use “trafficking” as camouflage for an anti-whore crusade, while governments use it as an excuse for tighter controls on immigration; the net result is an awful lot of money being invested into dramatic displays, and an awful lot of disinformation being spread through official channels, while real victims of exploitation are ignored.

In the US, “human trafficking” is practically synonymous with “sex trafficking”; though lip-service is paid to the existence of other forms of exploitation, virtually all of the money, manpower and press coverage is devoted to “sex trafficking”, which bogus statistics declare to be the most common form (with claims ranging from 60% to “almost all”, despite the insistence of other reports that it’s more like 10%). This is due partly to the fact that most of the money either comes from or flows through prohibitionist organizations, and partly because sex sells in the media. But there’s another, more sinister and far dirtier reason why so much attention is paid to whores who are not “enslaved” in any reasonable sense of the word, and so little to people who are clearly coerced and exploited: modern Western economies depend upon dirt-cheap labor, so by harassing harlots they can make a great and entertaining show of “doing something” about exploitation while yet ensuring that the vegetables get picked and the garments get made. Americans in particular leer over lurid accounts of “child sex trafficking” which is so rare as to be almost nonexistent, while ignoring widespread and pervasive sexual abuse among women who, if they were sex workers, would be called “trafficking victims”:

The majority of women farmworkers interviewed…by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Human Rights Watch had experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault, which ranged from verbal abuse to rape. One…study…estimated that as many as 80 percent…have been sexually harassed or assaulted on the job…Women make up slightly more than 20 percent of U.S. farmworkers, and of these, the majority are immigrants from Mexico. Women become migratory workers for the same reasons men do—in many cases, to escape rural poverty…“Generally, [the perpetrator] will have some kind of legal immigration status,” says Liz Maria Chacko, a supervising attorney at Friends of Farmworkers in Philadelphia. “This gives them power over their victims”…lack of fluency in English makes the women even more vulnerable. Their immediate supervisors, who tend to be their harassers, also tend to be bilingual. If a woman complains, the perpetrator can directly present his case to the farm owner in English. The woman who’s been victimized cannot…Chacko says owners often react defensively to accusations of harassment. “The response we get is usually denial”…Women who are the victims of serious crimes, including rape, domestic violence and sexual harassment, are eligible to apply for a U-Visa. But in order to qualify, they must cooperate with law enforcement—and thus risk deportation…

And when the US government itself is the “trafficker”, it’s even worse:

Alleging unpaid wages and repeated retaliation, McDonald’s workers in central Pennsylvania launched a surprise strike [on March 6^th]…The strikers are student guest workers from Latin America and Asia, brought to the United States under the controversial J-1 cultural exchange visa program…[which] is officially intended to promote educational and cultural exchange. But advocates allege that J-1, like the other guest worker programs that collectively bring hundreds of thousands of workers in and out of the United States each year, is rife with abuse…According to [National Guestworker Alliance (NGA)] the visiting students each paid $3,000 or more for the chance to come and work, and were promised full-time employment; most received only a handful of hours a week, while others worked shifts as long as twenty-five hours straight, without being paid overtime. “Their employer is also their landlord,” said [NGA Director Saket] Soni. “They’re earning sub-minimum wages, and then paying it back in rent” to share a room with up to seven co-workers. “Their weekly net pay is actually sometimes…as low as zero”…management required [them] to be on call twenty-four hours a day, ready to show up for work at thirty minutes’ notice, and…workers have been subject to threats and retaliation for speaking up or turning down work. [Striker Jorge] Rios said that…“they actually threatened one of our roommates by saying that they’re just a call away from sending him back to his home country”…

Let’s see now; we’ve got people being misled about the conditions under which they’ll work, then paid starvation wages that are docked for “fees” so they can never get clear, and threatened with deportation if they complain…sound familiar? Yet Nicholas Kristof, Polaris Project and the other “rescuers” who purport to care so much about victims are mysteriously silent on the issue, probably because they’re too busy trying to get sex workers and our clients arrested and our faces splashed across TV screens from coast to coast. This is hypocrisy on an epic scale; either governments need to start paying attention to real labor exploitation (most of which doesn’t involve sex work) and cease harassing those who neither want nor need their “help”, or else drop the whole pretense and admit their real and ugly motives for funding “anti-trafficking” theater instead of simply ensuring the rights of all people, whether native or migrant.

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