They Still Don’t Get It

Posts Tagged ‘They Still Don’t Get It’

In the News (#660)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Alaska, censorship, cops, cult of the child, I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now, Illinois, Indonesia, Madonna/whore, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Paint By Numbers, pathologization of males, Pennsylvania, porn, Profound Ignorance, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, rescue industry, restaurants, sex offender registry, Social Construction of Eunuchs, sporting events, stripping, Stupor Bowl, Sweden, Tennessee, The Pro-Rape Coalition, The Public Eye, They Still Don't Get It, Thought Control, To Molest and Rape, transgender, United Kingdom, Virginia, Whatever They Need To Say, yellow journalism on August 3, 2016| 6 Comments »

Some people like to paint. Some people like to dance. Some people like to express themselves in an erotic way. – Sharron Cooks

Social Construction of Eunuchs

Sweden has been systematically working to emasculate its men for a generation, yet wonders why Swedes are having less sex:

…Swedish…Health Minister Gabriel Wikström said in the 20 years since the last survey into the country’s sexual habits, newspapers have been reporting that Swedes are having less sex…The aim of the new survey is to find out if that is true — and if so, why. Wikström said…“sex is not, and never has been, a purely private matter. Sex is also a matter of [public] health, and from that perspective, a political issue”…

I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now

…that police “investigated” this “sexual assault”:

Murfreesboro, Tennessee’s police…responded to a call reporting an alleged sexual assault by a toy and didn’t arrest or shoot a single person in the process. “A woman’s husband said she was sexually assaulted when she was squirted with water from a toy at a hibachi restaurant. The woman, Isabelle Lassiter, and her husband, James Lassiter, called the police but refused to file charges when they arrived…” The alleged perpetrator of the “sexual-style assault” was a plastic toy in the shape of a little boy used to entertain children at Wasabi Japanese Steakhouse. When the toy’s pants are pulled down, it squirts water in a manner Isabelle Lassiter found completely inappropriate for her “minor children and grandchildren” to witness…Unfortunately for the Lassiters, it appears the toy and the chef who introduced it to Ms. Lassiter at Wasabi won’t face any charges, as Tennessee’s statute on “sexual battery” requires the “sexual contact” in question be “for the purpose of sexual arousal or gratification”…

They Still Don’t Get It

This pompous ass seems committed to braying out of both sides of her maw:

…Unfortunately, a typical “rescue” is muddied by the erroneous criminalization, failed service provision, and revictimization of human trafficking survivors, as well as the infrequent conviction of their offenders. I became acutely aware of this reality after working with a victim…”Jessica”. I rescued her from her trafficker on Aug. 21, 2015, after witnessing him abusing her in front of a suburban mall in the middle of the afternoon in Virginia. She had been victimized on and off for fifteen years, having been shot in the leg, raped, beaten, and mentally abused…Despite having served on two different anti-trafficking task forces and having nearly a decade of experience in the anti-trafficking field, it was extremely difficult for me to find adequate services for “Jessica”…she ended up moving between domestic violence shelters (some with bed bugs), a mental health facility, hotels paid for from the discretionary funds of anti-trafficking organizations, and homeless shelters….law enforcement wasn’t able to incapacitate her trafficker, so about six months after her initial rescue, she was revictimized. Given the trauma bond that often exists between victims and offenders, it is common for sex trafficking survivors to return to their victimizer, especially when adequate services are absent…

Her “trafficker” was “abusing her in front of a suburban mall in the middle of the afternoon”, and this presumably middle-aged woman “rescued” her? How, pray tell? Did she rope the “trafficker” with her magic lasso? Pick the girl up bodily & fly off with her in her invisible plane, leaving the villain shaking his fist? Why were the police unable to “incapacitate” someone who supposedly committed a violent crime in front of (presumably) a dozen witnesses or more? And note the insidious “trauma bond” concept here again, which is nothing but psychobabble intended to negate the agency of women who make decisions of which “authorities” and “feminists” disapprove.

Whatever They Need To Say

Sometimes the land grabs are more subtle, even if reporters’ language isn’t:

The East London Strippers Collective (ELSC) is an ethical organisation of strippers and lap dancers in London and the UK…[who] seek to challenge societal attitudes towards strip clubs by creating their own working conditions and empowering dancers. [An event called]…RIP Shoreditch…will [take] place at 6pm on 14 August, with a funeral procession beginning in Rivington Street and ending at Red Gallery…they’re commemorating their favourite strip club – The White Horse – closing down after 38 years due to gentrification…Stacey Clare, co-founder of the ELSC [says]…this sort of thing is partly due to political and economic changes…”Gentrification is seeing so many genuinely alternative venues and spaces pushed out of East London, replaced by a sanitised homogeneous zone for the privileged”…It is, she says, “almost unbearable to work as a stripper nowadays” because of…licensing legislation that rigidly restricts the industry from growing or developing…

The Public Eye

Let’s hope many more reporters learn to feel ashamed of their attempts to shame sex workers:

At this year’s Democratic National Convention…Pennsylvania activist Sharron Cooks was one of 28 openly transgender delegates and two trans women-of-color delegates. She’s also a former sex worker. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, it’s this last bit that The Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong chose to focus on…insinuating that having a former sex-worker as a Democratic delegate was somehow at odds with the party nominating its first female presidential candidate. Cooks, founder and chief executive of the nonprofit Making Our Lives Easier…handled the situation with grace…[but] the Inquirer columnist…kept pressing Cooks for more details about her past work. It’s only after the delegate evades her farther that the writer begins to “feel dirty” about her line of questioning…

The Pro-Rape Coalition (#35)

Republican candidate vows to “crack down” on porn. In other news, Pope announces he’s Catholic:

Donald Trump will crack down on internet pornography if elected president, vowing to appoint a commission to examine its “harmful public health impact”…the promise…is part of “The Children’s Internet Safety Presidential Pledge” from the group Enough Is Enough…The anti-porn commitment means he promises to “uphold the rule of law by aggressively enforc[ing] existing federal laws to prevent the sexual exploitation of children online, including the federal obscenity laws, child pornography laws, sexual predation laws and the sex trafficking laws”…

Profound Ignorance

Why do economists always make such dumb assumptions when studying sex work?

A new study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, examined the link between a prostitute’s age and the price she charges…Kitae Sohn…used prostitutes’ earnings to address a much broader scientific question, one that applies not only to paid sexual exchanges, but to everyday concerns that many of us obsess about at some point in our lives: What does the opposite sex actually find attractive in a partner?…Men do not have unrestrained choice in whom they marry or date, but they do get to choose whether or not to pay a prostitute for sex, and the amount they are willing to pay reveals something about what they most prefer…Sohn’s sample was very large, including 8,560 prostitutes from 15 different cities in Indonesia. As Sohn notes, Indonesia provides an ideal place to examine this issue, because prostitution is “quasi-legal”…the government…keeps official records on prostitutes’ income alongside incomes from other professions…When it comes to hiring the short-term services of a prostitute, men pay the most for women between the late teens and early twenties. Between the ages of 25 and 35, the price men are willing to pay for a prostitute drops precipitously…For each increase of a year in age, a prostitute’s hourly wage decreases 4.5 percent…Sohn argues that: “evolution influenced all humans, so we expect that future research will find similar results in other countries.” Supporting Sohn’s argument, the age preferences found in this research are quite consistent with findings using other methods in other societies around the world…

Because obviously Indonesia being both an Asian and a Muslim society could have no possible cultural impact on preferences. And obviously, all women tell the truth about their income to government busybodies. And all whores work by the hour. And all income is in the form of reportable wages. And…I think you get the picture. All other things being equal, most men do indeed prefer a younger-looking sex partner…and all other things are not equal, not by a long shot.

Paint By Numbers

Do whatever it was you were going to do anyway, but declare that you’re doing it to “fight sex trafficking”; stupid people will believe you and give you money:

Cory Bolduc wants men to fight sex trafficking, grow beards and buy his beard butter…He handcrafts beard butters from his Winnebago [Illinois] home and sells them online and at the Rockford City Market, and 12 percent of all proceeds go to Freedom Firm, a nonprofit that fights the sex trade in India. But Bearded Republic isn’t just about men’s grooming or charity, it’s about challenging men to take responsibility for their personal appearance and also [meddle in the lives] of others…the “beard movement” is redefining the modern man to be an empowered individual who expresses his individuality and lives by a moral code…

Stupor Bowl

Minnesota desperately tries to cash in on “sex trafficking” hysteria before it vanishes completely:

Law enforcement officials are bracing for a surge in internet sex trafficking when Minnesota hosts the 2018 Super Bowl…[they] anticipate hundreds of women and girls will be sold for sex around the time of the game…”There’s no doubt that when you have an increased amount of individuals congregating…you are going to have an increase in crime committed. It’s naive to assume it wouldn’t be,” Washington County major crimes prosecutor Imran Ali said. Before the Super Bowl…another major sporting event is drawing people to Minnesota — the 2016 Ryder Cup…Already at work is a task force…alarmed by sex trafficking ads spreading on internet sites. Authorities said more juveniles are being forced into the sex trade because the internet has expanded the market…”They’re targeting those that are mentally ill, are chemically dependent,” Ali said…Some experts argue the idea that Super Bowls attract a large commercial sex trade is a myth…

Despite the efforts of sociopathic “authorities” to convince the public that all sex workers are mentally ill addicts, we’re winning the narrative; note the decrease in gypsy whores from 40,000 to mere hundreds, and the now-obligatory disclaimer (though this one tries to dismiss our facts as mere opinion).

Counterfeit Comfort (#420)

At least this maniac didn’t manage to kill any of his victims, which doesn’t make the government any less culpable in these assaults:

…Jason Vukovich…is accused of tracking down [three] men on [Alaska’s] online sex offender registry, going to their homes and [attacking] them [with a hammer]…over three nights in late June…[in each case] the attacker called [the victim] by his name and explained he was there because [the victim] was on the sex offender list…If convicted, Vukovich could face 35 years total for the combined crimes…

Thought Control (Traffic Updates)

Amazon isn’t a library, but given its prominence this is still a censorship attempt:

Books that teach readers step by step how to control women and make money are readily available for anyone to buy on Amazon. Now an Albuquerque group is working to change that. As part of Human Trafficking Awareness Day, a local coalition of churches and non-profits started a petition…asking Amazon to stop selling a group of books they claim teaches people how to become a human trafficker…With the I-40 corridor, experts say the metro can become a hot spot for this type of crime. Christine Barber [is clutching her pearls over]…titles…such as Organized Game, Pimps: The Raw Truth…How To Get A Woman To Pay You…and How To Get A Fat Girl To Pay You…”a pimp is a human trafficker,” Barber [panted]…she had a booklet pointing out other “pimp” products sold on Amazon…like an air freshener or a pimp gnome…She said she’s not asking Amazon to stop selling all “pimp” related products, rather specifically to stop selling the “how-to” books that go into graphic detail about human trafficking tactics…

The worst part is that these morons have now given free publicity to idiotic “pimp”, “Game” and PUA books.

The Public Eye (#439)

I’m not sure what “awards” there are for whores outside of porn, but I’m always happy to see well-spoken and “out” sex workers like Charlotte Rose appearing on podcasts. ‘Nuff said, methinks.

To Molest and Rape

Yes, I understand the legal arguments. And no, putting extraordinary restrictions on people who have as much power as cops do is not remotely unfair or unconstitutional, considering that the institution of professional policing itself rests on very questionable constitutional ground:

A divided Ohio Supreme Court…declared unconstitutional a law that made it illegal for [cops] to have sex with minors simply on the basis of their profession. The court ruled 4-3 that the law arbitrarily added police to a ban on professionals having sex with minors that includes people with authority over children such as teachers or coaches…At issue was the 2012 conviction of…Matthew Mole, who…[raped] a 14-year-old boy…

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In the News (#647)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, bogus studies, Bottleneck, Bread and Circuses, California, Canada, cops, Do As I Say, end demand, escort review sites, False Witness, Hollywood, hysteria, I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now, imaginative fiction, Indiana, King of the Hill, law, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, My Readers Write, Nebraska, Original Sin, politicians, porn, prisons, prohibitionist myths, robots, sexting, statistics, stripping, The Notorious Badge, The Pro-Rape Coalition, The Pygmalion Fallacy, They Still Don't Get It, Traffic Circle, United Kingdom, Washington DC on June 18, 2016| 3 Comments »

When we see people jumping from a…window to escape a fire, our response should not be to stop them by boarding up the window!
– Mark Draughn

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

The schadenfreude is always especially sweet when the cop who gets in trouble works for Montgomery County:

A police sex-sting operation in Northern Virginia…has nabbed a [cop from] Maryland…Christopher Dunkes…[of] the Montgomery County Police Department, answered a Craigslist advertisement posted by an undercover officer who was posing as a 15-year-old girl…Dunkes twice proposed a specific act and suggested that they meet in his car…

The Pro-Rape Coalition

Study shows kids believe stupid shit. Researchers next plan to study the religious beliefs of popes:

The majority of boys who view online pornography believe it provides a realistic depiction of sex, according to the most extensive survey of British secondary school pupils undertaken…most [students] – 94% – who have seen online pornography have been exposed to it by the age of 14. But the study also found that almost half of the 1,000 11- to 16-year-olds questioned had never seen internet pornography – findings that are in contrast to many other studies. It also revealed that [young people] have a [proper] understanding of sexting [unlike] policymakers…sexting [is] the sending of intimate messages, [not necessarily accompanied by] images, and the vast majority…questioned did not report having taken naked images of themselves…53%…said they had viewed online pornography, and while some chose to seek it out, they were as likely to have come across it by accident, often via pop-up ads…Of those who had viewed the material, 53% of boys said they believed it presented a realistic depiction of sex, while 39% of girls thought the images were realistic. Approximately 41%…felt “curious” the first time they viewed it, which was the most common response. However, more negative feelings such as being shocked (27%), confused (24%) or disgusted (23%) were also experienced…

My Readers Write

It’s especially pleasing for me when my friends write about each other:

…I’ll leave the validity of the 90% statistic (and the prevalence and causes of PTSD among sex workers) to someone more qualified. Worrying too much about the details could make us miss a more important point: Why should Lorelei Rivers give a shit what other sex worker want? There is certainly nothing wrong if Lorelei Rivers wants to know the needs and desires of other sex workers. Maybe she’s just a good person who has empathy for others. But…her right to go about her business should not depend on how other people feel about it, and that includes other sex workers. If 99.9999% of sex workers want to quit and find a different line of work, but Lorelei Rivers prefers to keep doing what she’s doing, what possible justification can there be to stop her?…the desires of the majority are a distraction from the real issue, which is personal choice…we have to make collective decisions…when making different individual choices would cause irreconcilable conflicts — so we depend on majority rule to tell us that…we should drive on the right side of the road. But…choice of employment, including employment as a sex worker, is a Pepsi or Coke kind of thing. In a free society, if some women want to be sex workers and others don’t, there’s no reason they can’t both get what they want…

I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now

…a 73-year-old man in [Nova Scotia] charged with soliciting…a [cop] pretending to be a prostitute, went before a judge to argue that he had been entrapped. There’s a lot to be outraged about when it comes to this type of lurid deception but let’s start with the underhanded funding of coercive repressive state interests. At a starting salary of $75,000 a year (and more than six figures for many more when you factor in overtime), it is unquestionable that female police officers posing as street-based sex workers make more money than many street based sex workers do…they are allowed to approach potential clients. Our street-based sisters have no such legal right; real street-based sex workers are constrained from making bold sales pitches. But [cops]…suffer no legal risk…given the allegation inscribed in our current prostitution laws that witnessing sex transactions in public is damaging to communities…how [do cops] posing as sex workers in public rationalize their presence…If they are dressed exactly like sex workers and acting even more obviously “for sale,” wouldn’t their presence engender the same unwholesome effect?…

The Notorious Badge

At least this is one actress who won’t be vomiting out anti-whore propaganda:

An actress who played a prostitute in Game of Thrones is actually a real-life hooker…Saeeda Vorajee…starred…as a prostitute called Armeca…However she…also…offers her services…under the name of Sahara Knite…Saeeda…admitted she has picked up a lot of fans from Game of Thrones but said she never gets recognised in the street…she…advertises herself as a “porn star, masseuse, mistress and session wrestler”…

Bottleneck

If this dude clutched his pearls any more tightly, he’d strangle himself:

Sections of Springfield [Massachusetts’] decades-old strip club regulations appear to routinely go unenforced, even as Mayor Domenic Sarno has promised a crackdown on clubs he [fantasizes] as a haven for violence and gang activity. The city’s strip clubs again came under scrutiny last week when police alleged that Showbar…had hired a 17-year-old dancer…[who] left the club after her mother intervened…the girl had used a false ID when applying for work…according to the city’s strip club regulations, last amended in 1992, clubs are required to register the names, ages and addresses of their dancers with City Hall…while the clubs would comply with that regulation if asked to do so, [club lawyer Daniel] Kelly said, the rules as written could endanger the privacy of workers by having their addresses listed for public review…The regulations also describe detailed restrictions on the attire and conduct of strippers, including bans on the simulation of sex acts, the touching of “breasts, buttocks, or genitals” and having employees “mingle” with customers while unclothed. And another requirement appears to be unenforced: A prohibition on the use of “back rooms”…

King of the Hill

We’ve seen claims of “Top 13” and “Top 20” cities before, but this is the first pretense that there is an “FBI list” of top 15 states:

The online selling of children and teenagers for sex is skyrocketing in communities throughout…Minnesota. The FBI says Minnesota is one of the top 15 states in which sex trafficking is a major problem…Washington County Attorney Pete Orput [fantasized]…“I could do them all day for the rest of my life and not put a dent in it”…former U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose [argued for internet censorship while describing a masturbatory fantasy involving “Younger and younger victims, which is not surprising given the role of social media and its role in human trafficking”…

Original Sin (#321)

Methinks those behind this train wreck need to consult theologian Benjamin Corey:

…The U.S. State Department…reveals 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year…there are 20 to 30 million slaves in the world today…The University of Pennsylvania’s Richard Estes and Neil Weiner conducted a case study revealing the most common age of entry into prostitution…Exodus Cry…created the documentary Nefarious: Merchant of Souls to educate viewers about the evils of the commercial sex industry…Today’s slave trade shares many parallels with the African slave trade in centuries past…Exodus Cry’s intervention team has hit the streets and strip clubs with gift bags or roses and a message of love and hope…pornography feeds the sex trafficking industry—and many Christians are feeding the slavery beast…

Bread and Circuses

Pigs and prosecutors destroy yet another board sex workers use to stay safe, vomiting out “trafficking” lies in the process:

Investigators have dismantled what they described as the first members-only Internet prostitution ring of its kind in San Diego…San Diego police Capt. Brian Ahearn…called the [internet message board a] “sex ring”…the website operator personally vetted every man and woman seeking to become a member in an effort to “wall off” the site from [pigs]…But…[one] member…[was threatened into ratting] to police about a year ago…The case wrapped up with the arrests of Dale Vinzant…and Christian Koalani…[they were] charged with pimping, pandering, soliciting for prostitution and money laundering…Both have pleaded not guilty…

False Witness

No, this decision doesn’t “correct” shit. An innocent young man sat in a cage for nine years because cops lied and tortured him into a false confession:

A young Detroit man who wrongfully pleaded guilty to killing four people when he was 14 will soon be released from prison…Judge Brian Sullivan…vacated the 2008 conviction of Davontae Sanford who had been serving a 37- to 90-year sentence…Sanford, who is now 23, [was coerced to] confess…[and] plead guilty to four counts of second degree homicide on the advice of an attorney, who is now suspended from the practice of law…[just] two weeks after Sanford’s sentencing, a professional hit man, Vincent Smothers, confessed to the…homicide…and made clear that Sanford was not involved. But the case languished for years as the boy grew from a teenager to a man while incarcerated…“The court’s decision today corrects a grave injustice,” said Heidi Naasko, Sanford’s attorney…

As if the lies and coercion weren’t bad enough, everybody involved sat on their hands for eight years after they all knew he was innocent. This is what we call the “justice system”.

They Still Don’t Get It (#616)

Recycling 140-year-old myths to justify the same old violent pogroms against consensual sex doesn’t remotely qualify as a “sea change”:

…The new approach championed by [Nebraska] Attorney General Doug Peterson focuses on helping survivors, stopping traffickers and shrinking the market by going after customers instead of victims who are coerced into working as prostitutes…”We have to let this industry know that to operate in Nebraska, you’re going to place yourself at great risk”…Survivors frequently suffer from mental health and substance abuse problems, as well as developmental disabilities that impair their judgment…”A 16-year-old girl typically doesn’t get into prostitution by herself. Someone is most likely profiting significantly off of her”…Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks…is working with the attorney general’s office on legislation to increase criminal penalties for human traffickers and customers…Pansing Brooks said most prostitutes have been trafficking victims at some point, and the state is only now starting to treat them differently. “It’s a huge sea change,” she said.

So now we’re not only mentally ill and delusional, but also mentally retarded.

Traffic Circle (#645)

When even USA Today rags are reporting debunkings of “sex trafficking” myths, you know the panic’s days are numbered:

Have you seen the anti-sex trafficking billboards saying 13 is the average age kids are first used in the sex trade?…one of the most influential anti-trafficking organizations says the statistic is not supported by the data, The Washington Post Fact Checker recently reported…The statistic…makes little sense, Kessler wrote. If 13 is the average age for entering the sex trade, then there have to be children under age 11 offsetting those becoming sex workers at age 16 or 17…A 2008 study of sexually exploited kids in New York City found the average entry age [for underage workers] is about 15, but the researchers warned that the data is fuzzy…Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller…[pretended] he wants to be as accurate as possible. Even if the average entry age is 15, Zoeller wrote, it underscores the fact that children and teens are targeted…

Of course, the politicians still try to distort the facts to their advantage, pretending that the average age of entry for underage workers is the average for all of us.

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#646)

Leave it to moralistic control freaks to clutch their pearls about something that not only doesn’t exist, but never actually will as they envision it:

…Sharkey points out that porn has changed…male expectations, of real-life sexual partners…Is it possible that young women of the near future will feel pressure not just to look like porn stars but also to perform like robots, ever available and always eager to please?…sexual objectification is…an act that reduces a woman to nothing more than a sexual vessel…The problem is not that sex robots are available: it’s that they are wanted…of the sale of sex robots is to be allowed at all, it must be highly regulated…people who want to buy sex robots need to present the agreement of a couple of doctors, before they are judged emotionally restricted enough to need to retreat to such an inhuman fantasy. Or maybe, out of respect for women, this technology should just be rejected.

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In the News (#616)

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

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

Book Reviews

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

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

Oops

Most incompetent pimp ever:

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

Above the Law

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

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

They Still Don’t Get It

These types of stories are often stunningly incoherent:

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

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

King of the Hill

WE’RE NUMBER FOUR! WE’RE NUMBER FOUR!

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

Monsters

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

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

Seeking Sappho

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

The Eye of the Beholder (#340)

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

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

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

Traffic Circle

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

The Widening Gyre (#546)

These are getting funnier and funnier:

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

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

Bad Fantasy, Good Reality (#586)

Korean cops are learning US-style agency negation:

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

The Swedish Pimpocracy (#606)

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

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

The Course of a Disease (#606)

Governments now think they own their citizens:

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

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In the News (#610)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, agency denial, Backpage, Barbie, California, Canada, censorship, Check Your Premises, Choke Point, comics, cops, dirty, Eternal Vigilance, Germany, hysteria, Idaho, India, law, Monsters, New Zealand, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, racism, rescue industry, Safe Targets, See No Evil, sporting events, Stupor Bowl, Surplus Women, Swedish model, Texas, The Pro-Rape Coalition, They Still Don't Get It, transgender, Utah, violence vs. sex workers on February 6, 2016| 7 Comments »

The [only Super Bowl-related] surge was in cops and busybodies looking for something to do. – J.D. Tuccille

Safe Targets

In the US, the victim would’ve been arrested as well:

A woman and her two accomplices, who tried to blackmail a sex worker and extort money from her customer, were arrested by [Hyderabad] police…Moina Nayeeda…established a fake NGO…and…went to the house of Sabha, a sex worker…and told her that she was in financial trouble and want to make some money by prostitution. Then Sabha arranged a customer one Jaheer…Nayeeda came to Sabha’s place along with her brother Sohail and some others…After entering the house, Nayeeda closed the doors with the customer inside and shouted loudly about the illegal acts going on there. Nayeeda’s brother Sohail and others rushed to the house and threatened the owner of the house and the client saying they were from an NGO and would file a complaint against their illegal activities…

Barbie

This article contains no new info, but it’s of interest for the selection of Lilli cartoons: “So it turns out Barbie’s original design was based on a German adult gag-gift escort doll named Lilli. That’s right, she wasn’t a dentist or a surgeon, an Olympian gymnast, a pet stylist or an ambassador for world peace. And she certainly wasn’t a toy for little girls…“

A Tale That Grew in the Telling

WTF, Vice? Seriously? You’re back to spreading “sex trafficking” myths again? Make up your minds whose side you’re on, you sleazebags:

There are 20-30 million victims of human trafficking living in the world today. These modern slaves cost an average $90-a-head…human trafficking is the third largest international crime industry, generating profits of around $32 billion each year…This January was National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month…we asked three organizations fighting trafficking about how things have progressed over the last few years, as well as what steps we can take to actually eradicate the practice…

This is your periodic reminder that one of the big wheels at Equality Now, one of the orgs included here, is a former prosecutor who resigned in disgrace after she was caught railroading innocent men for rape.

The Pro-Rape Coalition

I’m not sure who’s stupider: the idiots who claim that porn will replace whores, or this moron who claims that porn increases our business:

A Utah state senator is taking a stand against pornography, blaming skin flicks for creating a “sexually toxic environment,” increasing the demand for prostitution and ruining families. Sen. Todd Weiler…is…asking that the state recognize that porn is creating a public health hazard…The politician [fantasized]…that porn was more addictive than powerful drugs, and the public needed to start seeing adult films as a national epidemic. “I have read books and I have experts tell me pornography is more difficult to overcome than cocaine,” he said…He said he hopes to shift the public opinion on [pictures he doesn’t like] the same way it has on cigarettes…”These are scientific facts, just like global warming”…

I presume he envisions an anti-porn firewall around Salt Lake City, or something.

Surplus Women

Butterfly (Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network) mourns the death and honours the memory of Tammy Le…[who] was found dead early morning on January 23rd at a hotel in Hamilton [Ontario]…Following the murders of Jiali Zhang and Evelyn Bumatay Castillo, she is the third Asian sex worker in Hamilton and Mississauga to be murdered within the past two years. Violence against Asian sex workers is a direct result of repressive laws and a climate of hatred towards sex workers and sex work…Since December…six sex workers – also members of Butterfly – have been arrested, detained or deported. Sex workers with legal immigration status have been charged and harassed arbitrarily by city police. These conditions encourage sex workers to work and live in isolation and to avoid mainstream services and protections. They encourage a targeting of migrant sex workers and create a climate of impunity for predators who are aware of the vulnerabilities migrant sex workers face because of criminalization and their risk of deportation…

See No Evil

A slight glimmer of sanity in the totally mad world of “child pornography” prosecution:

Jack Weinstein, a federal judge in New York City who for years has criticized penalties for…child pornography as excessively rigid and harsh, was recently called upon to sentence a man who had pleaded guilty to possessing two dozen photos and videos. The federal sentencing guidelines recommended a prison term of six-and-a-half to eight years. Instead Weinstein sentenced the defendant—identified by his initials, R.V.—to time served (five days), a fine, and seven years of supervised release. “The applicable structure does not adequately balance the need to protect…juveniles…against the need to avoid excessive punishment, with resulting unnecessary cost to defendants’ families and the community, and the needless destruction of defendants’ lives,” Weinstein wrote in a 98-page explanation of his reasons for departing so dramatically from the guidelines…

They Still Don’t Get It

This truly bizarre article uses the arrest of two petty thieves who also did sex work as a springboard to launch into…well, see for yourself:

Chloe Marie Schutz…and Cynthia Leshay Reichow…were arrested Tuesday and charged with burglary. Reichow was also charged with prostitution…prostitution in Idaho pale in comparison to neighboring states — in 2010, Utah reported 414 arrests for prostitution, Nevada documented 3,738 and Idaho reported 13…In September, the Washington Supreme Court ruled in favor of three girls who sued Backpage.com after they were sold as prostitutes on the site*…More than 70,000 people are arrested for prostitution each year in the U.S., costing taxpayers an estimated $200 million. Seventy percent are female prostitutes and madams, 20 percent are male prostitutes and pimps, and just 10 percent are johns, or clients. About 40 percent of prostitutes are former child prostitutes who were illegally forced into the profession through human trafficking**…Sgt. Bryan Lovell…said drug use is common…[and fantasized that]…runaway girls…are pimped out and then dumped off in eastern Idaho…

*No, it didn’t. **No, they aren’t.

Feeding On Their Own

Much more of this, please:

Migrant children in the government’s care were placed in U.S. homes and left vulnerable to human trafficking due to sometimes nonexistent screening by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a congressional report…HHS failed to run background checks on the adults in the sponsors’ households, failed to visit sponsors’ homes and failed to realize some sponsors were accumulating multiple unrelated children, which can be a sign of human trafficking. Some lawmakers contend that the government weakened its child-protection policies as it was overwhelmed by tens of thousands of children crossing the border…HHS officials declined to fully answer many of the senators’ questions…saying they did not have the legal authority from Congress to follow up on the children…

Monsters

The nation’s first reported murder of a transgender person in 2016 is…Monica Loera of Austin [Texas]…Loera…was…reportedly involved in sex work…In the wake of her death, Loera was misgendered by both police and the media, referred to by masculine pronouns and her birth name…

Stupor Bowl

I figured I’d wind up this year’s “trafficking bowl” coverage with a couple of debunkings; the first one is from J.D. Tucille & quotes me directly:

…That term–not “prostitution,” but “trafficking”—is a deliberate choice, selected to confuse people…44 percent [of Americans now] favor…legalization of prostitution…That’s up from 38 percent…in 2012…Opponents of commercial sex find themselves on the wrong side of shifting public opinion, so they pull a little rhetorical sleight of hand to get around that inconvenient word “consensual”…”Coercion is much rarer than ‘trafficking’ fetishists pretend it is,” insists Reason contributor and former call girl Maggie McNeill. “The term ‘trafficking’ is used to describe many different things along a broad spectrum running from absolutely coercive to absolutely not coercive, yet all of them are shoehorned into a lurid, melodramatic and highly-stereotyped narrative.” Evidence for McNeill’s take is apparent in the difficulty authorities often have in convincing the trafficking “victims” they rescue that they’re in need of heroic intervention into their lives…And government officials and anti-trafficking activists are poised to rescue a wave of such trafficking “victims” when the Super Bowl comes to town. Once they convince them that they’re victims, that is…

The other, from Dr. Marty Klein, (perhaps unintentionally) paraphrases me without attribution:

…Simple economics would explain why event-specific trafficking rarely happens: it makes no sense for traffickers to spend huge amounts of money dragging victims across the country, housing them, advertising for business, and charging reduced rates to undercut local prostitutes, all for a single weekend of illicit income—in a place crawling with law enforcement…

Check Your Premises (#422)

Under Swedish-flavored criminalization, underage boys are claimed to have more sexual agency than adult women of any age:

Visalia [California] police, working with the FBI…arrested eight suspected female prostitutes, along with their suspected pimp — a 17-year-old Fresno boy. The women…range in age from 18 to 47…the teenage boy…[was] described as a pimp and “one of the main players in this operation”…some of the women appeared to be victims of human trafficking…they didn’t want to engage in prostitution but “they’re being forced by pimps to go that route”…the women were arrested [anyhow] because…they reportedly broke the law…

Consider that both these cops and the reporter parroting this idiocy are supposedly rational adults.

Eternal Vigilance

Until prohibition is itself outlawed, decriminalization of any consensual activity is at best a temporary respite:

The Labour Party’s “shock, horror” response to the exposure of a growing sex-for-rent trend amongst some landlords and tenants is ironic given Labour was [pivotal in achieving decriminalization in New Zealand]…says [an anti-sex worker] group…Stop Demand Foundation…notes that [politician Ruth] Dyson and her colleagues have been avid supporters of decriminalising and destigmatising the sale and purchase of sexual services…Stop Demand…supports the Nordic model of prostitution…and…notes that if New Zealand had followed the Nordic model…these landlords could be prosecuted [for consensual sexual arrangements]…

Choke Point (#593)

Lux Alptraum on financial discrimination vs sex businesses:

…frustrated with the high rate of chargebacks related to porn sites (…likely due to shame-induced buyer’s remorse on the part of porn consumers), Visa and MasterCard made the decision to classify adult sites as “high risk,” and require anyone hoping to process payments for adult content to pay an upfront registration fee, plus annual renewal every year after…this might seem like nothing more than an annoying additional expense, one easily borne by any successful business. But in practice, it provided payment processors with a license to discriminate against anyone working in sex—even in situations that have nothing to do with their work. Shortly after the Visa/MasterCard announcement, PayPal announced that it would no longer be processing payments for anyone tied to sex…dig into the TOS of virtually any popular digital payment platform, and…you’ll find some sort of ban on adult content and services…There are mainstream payment processors are slightly more adult friendly…but oftentimes these processors are obscure, complicated to use, and much shadier than their competitors. It can be difficult to get a client to connect their bank account to a payment platform they’ve never heard of, and it’s hard to feel comfortable using a service that could easily shut down overnight, taking whatever money that might be owed to you with them as they cut and run…

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In the News (#574)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, adolescence, agency denial, Australia, bisexuality, bogus studies, brothels, Buttons Bags & Banknotes, Challenge, end demand, End Demand (updates), escort review sites, Florida, hysteria, Illinois, Imaginary Crises, India, Innocence Never Had, Israel, Lack of Evidence, law, neofeminism, North Carolina, Not the Leading Players, Now They Notice, Ohio, politicians, red-light districts, Seizing Power, Still a Child, stripping, Texas, The Course of a Disease, They Still Don't Get It, underage on September 26, 2015| 7 Comments »

Raising the minimum age perpetuates the notion that sex workers are naive individuals with little to no agency or understanding of their own situation. – Laura Marks

Lack of Evidence

A fine example of barking up the wrong tree:

During a recent trip to Miami, San Francisco residents Heather Cox and Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa visited Dean’s Gold strip club in North Miami Beach…they were denied entry…[because] they’re women and weren’t “accompanied by a man”…”The message that women must be accompanied by men is totally infantilizing,” says Otálvaro…”it’s a direct statement of exclusion targeted at bisexual women and lesbians”…

Nope and nope. It’s not “infantilizing” and it isn’t “targeted at lesbians”; the Florida policy is an anti-whore measure intended to keep us from “poaching” clients from the clubs. Don’t like it, lesbians? Fucking lobby for decriminalization, then, because as long as we have no rights yours will continue to be infringed. And guys, don’t think these laws don’t affect you, too:

…The YouTube video’s original caption to the video…“Bought a burger and pulled over to have a few bites. I suppose that constitutes probable cause?” Fortunately, the citizen…pulled out his phone and started recording when the Austin cop approached the vehicle…Rick asked, “Why am I getting pulled out of my car?” “Because you’re being detained.” answered the unknown Austin PD officer…Rick immediately asked, “Why am I being detained?” “Let’s see. It’s 2 o’clock in the morning and you’re in a parked here by yourself in a high prostitution, high drug area”…

They Still Don’t Get It

This “editorial” cannot have possibly been written by an actual editor, unless this paper hires its editors from the local eighth-grade class. It is also virtually fact-free and if its nose were any higher up the arse of authority it would suffocate:

…Prostitution has always been a money-making endeavor. It generates an income for the women and the men who often control them. But, the profession has become more dangerous because many of the prostitutes are desperate for money to support drug addiction. That, of course, means crimes related to prostitution have increased dramatically…Most of the women are not street-walkers, but advertise themselves on a website called The Back Page…police respond to ads to snare women, and place fake ads on the site to entice the male customers…Fewer women are now advertising on the site, but the demand from male customers was still too high…prostitutes were more numerous 40 years ago and they frequented the heart of the downtown. Development in the center city that has attracted families chased the prostitutes away. We appreciate the police for continuing to work on the prostitution problem and…the developers who continue to make the downtown a better place…

End Demand

Ever wonder what kind of sick propaganda men are subjected to in “john school” for the “crime” of sexual desire?

Imagine your mother or the person you think of like a mother. Now picture her on the street, offering sexual services for $10 at least a half-dozen times a day…The goal of the day was to outline not only the “what ifs,” such as being assaulted and robbed, but to impart that many prostituting are forced there by circumstances, whether that’s another person, addiction, or mental illness…the men also hear about possible health impacts, from HIV to pubic lice, sexual addiction, and the impacts of prostitution on communities…

Challenge

All anti-sex laws are repeatedly supported by courts until the day they aren’t:

A…judge has refused to find the laws that outlaw prostitution in Ohio unconstitutional in the case against two women who were operating a massage parlor…“Ohio prostitution statue compromises the protected right to sexual privacy by denying consenting adults the right to make decisions about sexuality in the commercial market place,” [defense attorney] Blake Somers wrote in his motion. “Such an instruction is not justified or mitigated by societal moral concerns…making the sale of sex illegal violates the right of sexual privacy derived from the due process clause and the defendant herein seeks nothing more that to invoke the principals of liberty that already exists”…

Still a Child

Twenty-five years ago, Jim Kelly argued before the New Orleans City Council that women ages 18 to 20 shouldn’t be allowed to work as exotic dancers…The proposed ordinance was approved…but after a recent murder case involving 19-year-old dancer Jasilas Wright, Kelly realized it was not being enforced. In July, he returned to City Hall to put teeth into the existing ordinance…Local dancers say the ordinance shouldn’t exist at all…”Don’t tell women they can’t work a f—king job when they’re adults,” says Lilith, a 27-year-old dancer at Babe’s Cabaret who started when she was 20. “To assume we’re all victims and have no other options or are forced to be there is simply disrespectful.” Kelly says he is trying to protect young women…

Buttons, Bags & Banknotes

…Bauer Media announced that Zoo Weekly would be closing “due to tough retail conditions”. It has been declared that its October edition will be its last…it is a victory that Collective Shout, Australia’s most vocal anti-porn campaigners, is claiming as its own. In August…Zoo Weekly was removed from Coles’ shelves after a “successful online campaign” was waged by Collective Shout…history has shown that Collective Shout’s real problem lies with the idea of women displaying their bodies in men’s magazines…The women who appear in these magazines, often dressed in string bikinis, have done so consensually and have been paid for their work…there have been no instances where Zoo Weekly has placed a woman on their cover without that woman’s approval…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#419)

Americans disapprove of teaching kids about sex, but they’re all for filling their heads with stupid anti-sex propaganda:

…North Carolina Senate Bill 279 would amend state sex-education standards to require all schools teach age-appropriate info on “the threats” of sex trafficking…The bill also says school administrators must collaborate with law enforcement agents when developing or presenting this material…Training cops on sex trafficking issues is often a collaborative effort by religious nonprofits and the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) who preach the new gospel of prostitution: that almost all women…were…forced into it and should be treated as victims; that the Internet fuels a thriving child sex-slavery trade; that “ending demand” for adult prostitution by targeting johns and using other tough-on-prostitution measures are necessary to stop children from being sold into sexual slavery; and that there’s a rampant and escalating problem with sex trafficking in the United States. But there is no solid evidence that any of these things are true. A DOJ-orchestrated, law-enforcement-centered sex trafficking “awareness” program for public school kids seems likely to spew the kind of fact-lite, panic-heavy propaganda that fueled school anti-drug programs like DARE…

The Course of a Disease (#423)

The Israeli journalist who wrote this article on brothels in Tel Aviv presents a much more nuanced view of sex work than one would see in the American media:

…Reports on prostitution tend to focus on exceptional cases, such as…an underage sex ring…[or] human trafficking, a phenomenon of the 1990s…They concentrate on…“notorious drug and prostitution den[s]”…[such as] the Hasan Arfa area…a warren of tin shacks and garages supposedly overrun by drug users and sex workers…[prohibitionist] Rebecca Hughes…writes, “Most women do not choose to be prostitutes.” The actual face of prostitution is more nuanced. There are hundreds of brothels in Tel Aviv. Many of them operate openly, advertising their services on the street with business-sized cards scattered on sidewalks throughout the city by young men…

Innocence Never Had (#428)

Yet another attempt to cast young people as passive vegetables without agency:

On Tuesday night Sean ’Diddy’ Combs tweeted a petition asking the Associated Press to stop using the phrases “child prostitute” and “child prostitution” in their style guides and news stories. “They are victims [and] survivors of rape,” he wrote, sharing a link to the Change.org campaign…Because the terms deal with the issue of people who are too young to consent to sex, let alone sex work, the group argues that saying “child prostitute” or “child sex worker” is both insensitive and factually inaccurate. Instead, the group suggests that outlets refer to these children as “victims and survivors of child rape”…

No. The number of underage sex workers who are “children” in any meaningful sense is virtually nil; the vast majority are above the age of consent, albeit below 18. To call them “victims of child rape” is both insulting and factually inaccurate.

Imaginary Crises (#445)

The people who profit from rape panic just won’t stop creating new bogus “studies” designed to uphold their cherished “1 in 5” myth:

More than 20 percent of female undergraduates at an array of prominent universities said this year that they were victims of sexual assault and misconduct, echoing findings elsewhere…The survey from the Association of American Universities drew responses from 150,000 students at 27 schools…Researchers acknowledged the possibility of an overstated victimization rate because there was evidence that hundreds of thousands of students who ignored the electronic questionnaire were less likely to have suffered an assault…

Here’s another hint: counting everything under “sexual assault and misconduct” as assault is the same as counting everything under “murder and assault” as murder.

The Leading Players in the Field, Not (#449)

This Indian critique of anti-whore “feminists” has especially strong words for Gloria Steinem:

…[Steinem’s] opposition to the AI proposal is based upon a rather parochial view of what sex work means to impoverished women, especially in developing countries…Since 2010 I have been engaged in ethnographic research with Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC)…Steinem visited Sonagachhi in April 2012 on a six-day “learning tour”, under the guidance of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, an anti-[sex work] organisation…She called this tour a “life changing experience” because she met several women who were…victims of unspeakable abuse. However…In the last five years I have only met a handful of women in Sonagachhi who were trafficked. In the initial phase of this research I gathered stories of how the women arrived in Sonagachhi and a pattern soon emerged consisting of abject poverty, abandonment, hunger, motherhood, familial responsibilities, and finally survival. Most women told me that they arrived in Sonagachhi through a friend, a relative, or a neighbour who was either working in and/or had contacts in Sonagachhi…The women also do not necessarily see their work as “making a choice” in the classic dyad of forced into, or chose to engage in, prostitution or sex work. Rather, it is the absence of choice and the structural barriers of poverty that lead them to sex work…

Seizing Power (#567)

…Backpage wants a federal appellate court to prohibit Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart from pressing credit card companies to de-fund the site…The company set the appellate process in motion…when it filed…paperwork to appeal U.S. District Court Judge John Tharp, Jr.’s refusal to grant a preliminary injunction against Dart…

Now They Notice

In another example of how the Rentboy raid is being treated differently from the many raids on female escort sites which preceeded it, here’s an interview with a gay Rentboy client; how often have you seen interviews with the clients of female sex workers, despite their far greater numbers?

…I now enjoy my sexuality in a way in which I don’t think would have happened unless I hired escorts. It’s specifically because the cash makes it professional. It’s bad customer service for him to judge me for my interests…I’m not saying he has to put up with everything I want. In fact, there’s some things that I’ve asked for that he says not to…If he says no, then it’s no…That professionalism and that distance is profoundly helpful. It takes me to a place where I can just enjoy sexuality. It’s nice and clean…I see laws against prostitution as intolerant…We know from Romer v. Evans, that mere moral prohibition against something is not sufficient grounds for making a practice illegal. In Lawrence v. Texas, for the life of me, I cannot see how Kennedy’s reasoning about an ordered liberty about private choices between consenting adults doesn’t cover prostitution. He has that weird declaration at the end of his opinion that this case has nothing to do with prostitution. It comes out of nowhere, he just stuck it in there to cover his ass…It strikes me as profoundly cruel for people who have more barriers to an enjoyable sex life, to just criminalize a method that works for both parties…

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In the News (#572)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Perception, Tyranny, tagged adolescence, agency denial, Backpage, Canada, cops, dehumanization, dirty, Divided We Fall, drugs, FBI, Florida, Germany, Harm Magnification, hysteria, Illinois, Indiana, Lack of Evidence, language, law, Madonna/whore, Michigan, Moloch, Pennsylvania, porn, prisons, rape, Rough Trade, sex offender registry, So Close and Yet So Far, South Carolina, The Proper Study, They Still Don't Get It, Torture Chamber, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, video, What's In a Name?, yellow journalism on September 16, 2015| 7 Comments »

Crowding what I do into the larger umbrella of “sex work,” without its own name, makes it seem as if I’m supposed to experience what I do as shameful. – Charlotte Shane

What’s In a Name?

I agree with Charlotte Shane on words like “prostitute”:

I’ve called myself a prostitute for about as long as I’ve been one…it felt like the most accurate term given the service I provide, and I like the solidarity of it, the refusal to kowtow to class-related stigma or what is sometimes called the “whorearchy”…I believe the difference between “escort” and “prostitute” is that one term relies on euphemistic window dressing while the other is unapologetic and unashamed…I’m at odds with the party line in this stance, though…Increasingly, prostitute is…regarded as a slur…Taking euphemisms on permanently and in a political context, outside of marketing material or work-related correspondence, feels to me like ceding way too much power. The state forces me to use certain language to protect myself in some contexts; I don’t want to willingly employ that language in all others…

Rough Trade

One rather nasty side-effect of prohibition is that it gives moral retards like Mary Mitchell leave to vomit their odious bigotry all over the pages of major newspapers:

Authorities say Roy Akins went to Backpage.com and agreed to pay a prostitute $180 for sex. When the unidentified woman showed up at his…home…Akins…pulled a gun. I imagine most prostitutes in this situation would have run straight to a pimp. But after leaving Akins’ home…the…woman called the police…I’m grateful [Akins] isn’t being accused of snatching an innocent woman off the street…the way this case is being handled makes it look like sex trafficking is a legitimate business…because this incident is being charged as a criminal sexual assault — when it’s actually more like theft of services — it minimizes the act of rape…For law enforcement to put what happened to a Backpage.com prostitute on a par with [real] rape victims…is an insult.

A few observations:

“I imagine most prostitutes…would have run straight to a pimp.” I’ll leave you to imagine what she’s doing while she “imagines” this.
Note the conflation of sex work and sex trafficking, and the badge-licking idolization of the clownish tyrant Tom Dart.
For another example of a woman using the “theft of services” slur, see the original of this title.
Given that last line, would Mitchell be more sympathetic toward the rape of a prostitute like me, who advertises somewhere other than Backpage?

Lack of Evidence

It’s rare to see someone attempt this defense with a straight face:

Lisa Marie Carroll, 34, was charged with one misdemeanor count of prostitution…Police [pretend] that she offered to perform various sex acts…for [specific] pricing…”I did not agree to have sex with that cop…I’m an escort companion and go on dates and sometimes clients make a donation and that doesn’t have to do with sex”…[a sleazebag cop accompanied her] to her room where…they both undressed and laid in bed. The [cop then tried to get her to commit to specific prices for specific acts] “And I said, ‘No, honey. This is not how this works'”…A little while later, [the cops invaded] her house…

She’s lucky; many Pennsylvania cops rape women in order to arrest them.

Harm Magnification

Kerry Porth discusses the Harper government’s campaign to harm as many people as possible via increased prohibition:

…After winning a majority government in 2011, the Harper government quickly…introduced mandatory minimum sentencing for drug possession…despite warnings from current and former law enforcement from the United States…and respected Canadian drug policy experts…the Harper government has waged a costly war against Insite…[and] established 26 new requirements…that are costly, onerous and designed to prevent future sites from opening. Then…the…government…reintroduced the old laws [that the Supreme Court had struck down] and introduced a prohibition on the purchase of sex and the explicit advertising of sexual services for the first time in Canadian history. Despite a great deal of florid rhetoric about the government’s desire to ensure the safety of sex workers, the real intent behind the new laws was memorably stated by Senator Donald Plett: “Of course we don’t want to make life safe for prostitutes; we want to do away with prostitution. That’s the intent of the bill”…

The Proper Study

…a…new Canadian study…concludes the average porn user holds, if anything, more egalitarian views regarding women than non-users. Many pornography aficionados might even be “useful allies” in women’s struggles for equality in work, income and public office, the researchers…argue…Taylor Kohut…and his colleagues analyzed data from 35 years of the General Social Survey…the 23 per cent who reported having watched an “X-rated” movie in the previous year were no more or less likely than porn abstainers to identify as feminists, or voice support for the traditional family. And the blue-movie watchers expressed on average more positive attitudes toward women in positions of power, and less negative attitudes toward abortion and women in the workforce than those who refrained from pornography…

Divided We Fall

Unfortunately, this revolting attitude is not unusual among picket-fence queers:

…had there been a sequel to [Pretty Woman], it would have been salacious. We would watch Richard Gere struggle with the fact that his girlfriend was a confirmed whore and had been with hundreds, maybe even thousands of men…There would be a scene at a dinner party when other women were whispering about Julia Roberts, all of them knowing that she could be found at one time on Hollywood Boulevard spreading her legs for any man with $200 in his pocket…I have been poor…and never once was selling my ass an option…When you make a choice to work in the sex industry…you are immediately shrinking your dating pool…I would never subject myself to a How-was-your-day,-honey? conversation with a partner who took anonymous loads for a living…

Moloch

The robed simian who presided over this case planned to use this young man to “send a message” about having sex without a state license to do so; he should be caged for several years and then put on the “sex offender” registry for life.

A young man from Indiana who had consensual sex with a 14-year-old girl who told him she was [17] has been removed from Michigan’s sex offender registry pending his resentencing. Zach Anderson [who was 19 at the time]…spent 75 days in jail after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor. He was given a five-year probation that banned him from using computers or the Internet and also had faced 25 years on Michigan’s sex-offender registry. But…Anderson’s lawyer successfully argued prosecutors failed to remain neutral on a key part of the plea deal, which would have erased Anderson’s record if he stayed out of trouble…Anderson’s resentencing will be Oct. 21…

What “crime”? He had consensual sex with a physically-adult woman he believed to be a peer. The concept of strict liability is an abomination in any civilized society.

They Still Don’t Get It

The jaw-dropping stupidity of this article takes precedence over the FBI money grab it talks about:

At the click of a mouse, almost anyone can buy a girl online, anytime…ads with identical phone numbers can be traced to other cities…a sign, police say, that the women are on the move with their traffickers. Some ads even state “only in town for three days, special.” That’s the pattern of traffickers, always on the move, according to…Charlie Benton, who is known locally as the foremost law enforcement expert on sex trafficking. The ads give no clue, though, which women are being forced to sell themselves or are under 18. And the men who often answer the phone aren’t about to volunteer that information…

Yes, that’s what touring looks like to the warped mind of a pig obsessed with BDSM masturbatory fantasies involving adolescents. Guys, have you EVER called an independent escort’s ad and had a man answer? Ever? It’s almost idiotic enough to distract the reader from the FBI agent asking for more money to fulfill his sick dream of attempting to entrap and cage literally every single escort on Backpage.

Reframing

So Close and Yet So Far

Why do so many would-be allies insist on including vile, insulting garbage like this in otherwise-supportive essays?

…You may not approve of prostitution, and many quite reasonably do not. It raises serious, ethical questions. Having sex with people for money is degrading. It transforms an intimate and private act into a commercial transaction. It can pose a threat to those involved, especially women…

Torture Chamber

This is what our society refers to as “correction”:

…Gesnerson Louisius…was slammed in the back of his head with a bar of soap stuffed inside a sock. Six inmates pinned him down, and one grabbed him by his throat, as two others dragged him across the carpeted floor by his ankles…The young prisoners, between the ages of 18 and 20, kept demanding that he pay them money to stop the beating, but Louisius refused…The extortion ritual is so common and well known by both inmates and corrections officers that it has a name. It’s called a “test of heart”…Hakiem Blount, 18, grabbed a broom and began pushing it into Louisius rectum…as far up as he could push it…there were no video cameras in the room, and the one corrections officer assigned to the dorm that afternoon was inexplicably nowhere to be found…Louisius…lost a lot of blood. His rectum was ruptured and he underwent an emergency colostomy…he…served out the rest of his three-year prison term while wearing a colostomy bag, and had five or six surgeries in prison that likely cost Florida taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars…

Uncommon Sense (#557)

The Professional Association Erotic and Sexual Services [of Germany] (BesD) criticises the draft bill by the Ministry for Family Affairs for a “Prostitutes Protection Law” in the strongest terms…the BesD concludes, “A law that pretends to aim at strengthening the right to self-determination of a group of people but then denies them the maturity to make their own decisions, attempts to paternalistically ‘protect’ them from those decision, needlessly interferes with their basic rights, and that, quasi in passing, also creates regulations to save society from this group of people, allegedly in need of protection, via arbitrarily expandable ordinances…should be rejected in its entirety.” Instead, the association calls for a complete decriminalisation of sex work…

R.I.P. Candida Royalle

Elizabeth N. Brown on Candida’s legacy:

Candida Royalle is the kind of sex positive, free-speech-friendly artist and advocate that…is…relatively rare in feminist circles…[she] founded the (now defunct) nonprofit Feminists for Free Expression (FFE), which described its mission as “working to preserve the individual’s right to read, hear, view and produce materials of her choice without the intervention of the state ‘for her own good'”…The group opposed speech-censoring legislation; defended free speech in court cases, on college campuses, and in the media; and opposed the book, movie, and music banning efforts that were popular at the time. Royalle and FFE’s other leaders believed that “freedom of expression is especially important for women’s rights” and that the suppression of sexist messages “will neither reduce harm to women nor further women’s goals”…

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That Was the Week That Was (#33)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Q & A, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Moral Cancer, A Tale That Grew in the Telling, adolescence, Africa, Against Their Will, agency denial, An Enormous Big Nothing, archeofeminism, Australia, bad customers, Blackball, California, Cambodia, Childish Things, comics, Convenient & Inconvenient Victims, cops, Damned If You Don't, dating, drugs, East Asia, FBI, hysteria, India, Legalization a Good Idea?, Madonna/whore, Nevada, New York, oral sex, Presents, prohibitionist myths, rescue industry, sex work is work, Shifting the Blame, sisterhood, stereotypes, streetwalkers, They Still Don't Get It, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Zimbabwe on August 18, 2012| 11 Comments »

The truth is always easy to write. – Chi Mgbako

Damned If You Don’t

Because “prostitution” is defined purely by a motive, charges depend solely on the statements of cops and are often directed against any convenient victim:

…Guillermo Cuadra says…an apparent prostitute asked him, “Do you want a fuck?” as he was stopped at a traffic light [in Miami. He said “no” but she signaled another cop anyway]…and…Cuadra…was…ordered into a motel parking lot where…cops pulled him out of the car, pushed his face into gravel, stepped on him and handcuffed him, then…[broke his] left upper arm, [tore] his shoulder ligament and [caused] nerve damage to his elbow and hand…[when] Cuadra [complained about his arm one of them]…responded, “Fuck you…” Though he had just $3 in cash on him…the city falsely charged him with “solicitation of prostitution, allegedly offering the undercover police officer $60″…

The charges were later dropped, and Cuadra is suing. If you’re wondering why the cops were so stupid as to claim he offered $60 when he only had $3, it’s because “police reports” are just boilerplate, with the details written long before the actual “sting”. See also “Zimbabwe” below.

Updates

An Enormous Big Nothing

Reader Casey Nelson shared this story of his own experience as the target of “sex trafficking” hysteria:

…I’m 50+ years old, white, a businessman and have lived in Cambodia for more than 18 years. I’m married to an Asian woman…and have two beautiful children – a 9 year old girl and 7 year old boy…though they are not distinctly Asian, they are darker than me and not 100% European in appearance…[one Sunday while on an outing] I noticed a woman…taking photos…She held up her camera, pointed at it and said…“Photo you, internet, you pedo…for police,” in a distinctly Italian accent. I said something like “These are my children.” She just shook her head and started to raise her camera again. I said, “You want police?…I’ll call police”…her mind [was] probably…twisted by the constant stream of sensational, repetitive and often wildly-overstated stories of western pedophiles and abused children in Cambodia. And not only by the western press but by NGOs that profit from it and feed the beast with exaggerated stats and a constant stream of rehashed horrors stories that keep the funds flowing…I figure that when my photo turns up on some Italian website as another pedophile operating…in Cambodia, it will also include a story of my powerful police connections that were on their way to protect me and how she had to flee for her life…

There’s a lot more; I urge you to read it in its entirety as yet another example of the fallout from moral panics.

Convenient and Inconvenient Victims

An excellent essay on victimhood from law professor Chi Mgbako:

When many people think of typical victims of human rights abuse, they often conjure up stereotypical images of passive and powerless people…waiting to be saved. The biases underlying these notions can lead some human rights advocates to favor “perfect victims” in advocacy and publicity campaigns, and…to disregard injustices faced by other marginalized individuals who may inspire more ambivalent and complicated responses from the public. The privileging of “perfect victimhood” is misguided because all people have human rights regardless of subjective determinations of “worthiness”…the danger of the…construct is illustrated by two examples: Anti-prostitution advocates who privilege abuses experienced by victims of trafficking over violence faced by those voluntarily involved in adult sex work; and society’s failure to view economically disenfranchised black men as victims of the devastating ‘war on drugs’…

For another excellent essay on human rights being independent of “worthiness”, consult Ken White’s “Deserve’s Got Nothing To Do With It”.

A Moral Cancer

The adult obsession with adolescent oral sex isn’t at all creepy or perverse: “The popular notion that teenagers …are experimenting with oral sex en masse is being challenged by new data…[which shows they’re] about as likely to engage in oral sex before intercourse as they are to have intercourse first…”

May Q & A

Another view of the issues that can arise when a whore falls in love and tries to give up harlotry in order to be faithful to her man, courtesy of Cathryn Berarovich writing in The Gloss.

Against Their Will

As many as 45 sex workers…[escaped from a social institution in Jakarta and]…are currently being pursued by the police…30 [visitors] …were turned away at the entrance gate by 3 guards because it was not visiting hours yet…[then broke in and] urged the inhabitants to escape with them…one of the [intruders]…who was suspected [of being] the sex workers’ pimp was arrested…those social institution inhabitants would undergo guidance in terms of social, mental, physical, and other skills…

Obviously, they were forced to escape by the “pimp”; clearly they couldn’t have wanted to ~~flee a brainwashing attempt~~ be trafficked away from their rescuers of their own free will.

Blackball

I’ve explained how escort services blackball bad customers, and now the UK is introducing a nationwide plan to do the same. But Douglas Fox of Harlot’s Parlour has some reservations:

…Although in this “article” it is claimed that local sex work projects have operated ugly mug schemes for twenty years, real sex workers…have operated them for as long as there have been sex workers…in theory [the plan] should work nationally…however…[it] relies on local [outreach] projects…who…work only with…street workers…[and] have little or no contact with the vast majority of sex workers…The scheme also relies heavily upon the co operation of the police. Sex workers do not trust the police, with very good reason…Although the new…scheme promises that sex workers can report crimes anonymously through their local project, the real advancement would be if sex workers were able to report crimes against them…directly, with out fear of arrest or harassment. One is tempted to suggest that the first ugly mug listed…should be the police themselves…

Presents, Presents, Presents!

Thanks so very much to Chester Brown for sending me a copy of his graphic memoir Paying For It. And as if the gift itself were not cool enough, he autographed it AND drew a cartoon just for me on the title page! I’ll tell you about the book in an upcoming column, probably around mid-September.

They Still Don’t Get It

Another stenographer who fancies herself a journalist presents yet another collection of prohibitionist myths vomited out by cops. This one’s especially fascinating in a train-wreck sort of way:

…21 suspected prostitutes [were] arrested during a two-day sting by the regional Street Enforcement Team…Federal grant money was used [because]…the focus was finding underage prostitutes and their pimps. None were found…prostitution activity in the community …is a mix of local women desperate for money…and an emerging trend of younger Northern California women who work for pimps and target Reno, especially during special events…“Before, it would be older, local women just trying to get a motel room and a rock to smoke,” said [Sgt. Ron] Chalmers…“Now they are younger, from Sacramento being run by their pimps. We are trying to help these women, and provide victim services,” he said…

This one has it all: the “gypsy whores” myth, conflation of escorting and streetwalking, internet demonization, “trafficking” mythology, agency denial, a demonstration of the flaws of legalization (the stings were in Reno, Nevada, not far from legal brothels), illegal diversion of federal funds, whore as addict, victim and nuisance all at once, “rescue” as an excuse for criminalization and even Maslow’s Hammer!

Zimbabwe

Here’s a hint, ladies: if you want this to stop, you need to campaign for decriminalization because whores look just like other women:

Hundreds of Zimbabwean women are protesting in Harare against a spree of arbitrary arrests by local police…[who] are detaining any women they see out after dark for soliciting…police said they have only been arresting commercial sex workers. Human rights groups, however, claimed hundreds of women have been arrested every week…Inspector Sabau said the crackdown…would continue as long the constitution prohibits prostitution…

Childish Things

Dr. Paul Maginn of the University of Western Australia says it’s time for people to get over their childish attitudes toward sex work:

…the stereotypical image of a sex worker…is a woman forced to work on darkened streets…to feed her drug habit and pay her pimp…[but] the world of sex work is much more complex…Some work…out of economic necessity. But don’t we all work to pay the bills? Some people are coerced or part of forced trafficking. However…research suggests the proportion of these…is very low…Yet we tend to let our minds be overtaken by…those who seek to initiate moral panics about sex work…and other forms of so-called ‘abnormal’ sexual practices, such as homosexuality …Effective policy is based on hard evidence, not media stereotypes or moralistic posturing by politicians or religious groups…

Metaupdates

A Tale That Grew in the Telling in October Updates (Part Three)

This article on a Brooklyn “john school” is like many others CNN has published since it turned completely yellow, but it’s interesting in three respects: first, that the title calls it a “trafficking class”; second, that it states ordinary men cannot tell adult women from prepubescent children; and third, that they’ve once again lowered the “average age of entry”:

…Rhonnie Jaus, the chief of the Sex Crimes Bureau, said the class attempts to sensitize and educate the men on the dangers of prostitution to both the John and the prostitute. “You think you’re having sex with an adult, and it…could be…a trafficked child brought from China…” [Assistant DA Grace] Brainard emphasized that most girls enter prostitution between the ages of 11 and 14…

If the average prostitute starts at 12.5, that means there are two girls out there who started at age two to balance my entry at 33. Clearly, basic arithmetic is not a requirement for a government position in Brooklyn.

Shifting the Blame in TW3 (#12)

Has anyone else noticed how the search for the Long Island Killer ground to a halt as soon as they recognized he was probably a cop?

…There are arguably lots of reasons why Suffolk County investigators have had a difficult time tracking down the so-called Long Island Serial Killer (or killers, there is much debate) including the condition and age of the bodies…and the difficulty of getting sex workers and their johns to work with active investigations. But the Post today argues that at least part of the blame can be placed on the local PD not wanting to give up any PR glory to the Feds: “Despite repeated signals by the agency that it was ready and eager to deploy units, Suffolk brass have ignored the FBI in an effort to retain control of the high-profile case”…

Chimeric phrase of the week: “sex workers and their johns.” Kind of like “African-Americans and honkies.”

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea in TW3 (#29)

Indian sex workers again demonstrate their awesomeness:

The Board of All India Network of Sex Workers has taken exception to an affidavit filed by Ministry of Women and Child Development… “Sex workers expressed strong reaction about the affidavit filed by the Ministry of WCD before the Supreme Court that sex workers are devoid of dignity and that all sex workers should be rehabilitated by all means,” AINSW said in a statement…”Human dignity cannot be robbed by the state based on occupation, caste, creed or economics”…

This Week in 2011

“Blackball” (noted above) was followed by an example of prohibitionist cockroaches fleeing from light, a survey of my “Top Ten” columns at that time, a two-part examination of whores who think they aren’t and short articles on anti-streetwalker laws, diseased amateurs, selective partisan blindness, and a small sex worker victory against Google, plus cops harassing strippers while ignoring serial killers, the absence of “trafficking” in New Zealand and ignorant sexologists.

This Week in 2010

My first Friday the 13^th, film review and miscellanea columns, escort service callers and client behaviors that drove me up the wall, “The Clipboard Effect” and “The Empress Theodora”.

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Posted in Current Events, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged archeofeminism, cops, dirty, end demand, ethics, internet, law, lawheads, Nebraska, prohibitionist myths, Shazam!, stereotypes, streetwalkers, They Still Don't Get It on April 12, 2012| 32 Comments »

It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled…constancy. He cannot be…baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence. — Eric Hoffer

On several occasions I’ve mentioned Maier’s Law, “If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.” But when the facts cannot be disposed of because they’re too well-known, the true believer must indulge in complex mental gymnastics which tend to make him look like a complete idiot to anyone unencumbered by the flawed theory. One such unsupportable theory is that prostitution is a “crime” (in a real sense rather than just by arbitrary definition) and that prostitutes are “criminals”. No other major Western nation but the US defines prostitution itself as a crime (though many define various ancillary actions as such), every methodologically-sound study ever done demonstrates that decriminalization virtually eliminates what cops are pleased to call “associated crimes”, and even the vast majority of prohibitionists have shifted to the more-easily-defensible “victimization” model. But to a dyed-in-the-wool lawhead, anyone defined as a criminal must actually be a criminal, just as anyone defined as a “child” must actually be the equivalent of a four-year-old in a real moral and neurological sense (until he commits a “crime”, at which point he instantly transforms into an adult criminal and is treated as such). And so lawhead cops (and their journalist henchmen) must come up with elaborate and ludicrous explanations as to why “prostitution is not a victimless crime” (the Prohibitionist Creed). I presented one rather amusing example one year ago today, and though today’s example isn’t at all funny its descent into tautology is illustrative of the inevitable result of attempts to defend the indefensible. This comes from the Omaha (Nebraska) World-Herald and is encumbered by the pompous title “Omaha Prostitute Speaks Out”:

…Prostitutes don’t have to stand out on the street corner anymore, lean into a car window and negotiate a deal for sex in exchange for money. That’s what the Internet is for, said Melissa Sykes, 23, who is serving time in the Douglas County Jail for prostitution. Like any criminal enterprise, prostitution has evolved. Sykes said the new wave of prostitutes can be self-employed. They post an ad on the Web and just wait for a call. It’s a system that worked for Sykes for about a year, until Wednesday, when she got arrested by an undercover Omaha police officer.

Regular readers are of course familiar with the popular but astonishingly ignorant belief that before the internet, all whores were streetwalkers. But reporter Sam Womack’s ignorance goes even beyond that; I daresay he has never read as much as a single word on the history of prostitution, or he wouldn’t claim that self-employment – the norm in the trade since its earliest beginnings in the mists of prehistory – was some sort of recent innovation. Though he doesn’t say it, the statement carries the reek of the “pimps and hos” myth. But the most telling phrase here is “like any criminal enterprise.” I’m sure Womack isn’t such a fool that he doesn’t understand that businesses use the internet to a far greater extent than any “criminal enterprise” does; he’s just struggling to force Sykes’ story into the “crime” narrative.

City Prosecutor Marty Conboy said Sykes is one of more than 50 people charged with prostitution and solicitation this year. He said the recent crackdown on sex for money in Omaha is part of a larger FBI investigation into human trafficking…but the solicitation and “john” arrests are also crucial. “It’s important to deter the crime, to remind them it is illegal and people are watching. It’s like putting up radar on a busy street,” he said.

It’s obvious that Conboy doesn’t recognize the moral bankruptcy of his statement (or at least hopes we won’t). He claims prostitutes are the “victims” of “traffickers”, but says they need to be arrested as a “deterrent”; that’s like claiming that arresting robbery victims will deter theft. Conboy clearly isn’t stupid; in the next paragraph he states that “while there continues to be a relationship among street prostitution, violence and drug abuse, the same can’t be said for online solicitation…women arrested say they chose this path for economic reasons.” His is the typical moral retardation of the prosecutor, which holds conformity to completely arbitrary laws above real people’s economic survival.

It’s after Conboy’s statement that the story gets most interesting; Womack goes into detail about how and why Sykes became a hooker:

Sykes, a single woman with a 5-year-old son, said she was working at a mall in Portland, Ore., making barely more than enough for gas money. She has her high school diploma and took a few college courses, but lost her financial aid last year…[she] knew a few girls in the sex business and decided to give it a try. Her son remained in Oregon with family…[while she] traveled from city to city…[charging] $120 for 30 minutes and $180 for an hour — definitely more than her mall job paid…

Yet even after hearing this story, Womack doesn’t get it; he doesn’t recognize that Conboy’s whining “the women who move from town to town make enforcing the law difficult” conflicts with his earlier claims about deterring “human traffickers”, nor does it arouse his suspicion that women smart enough to use language which “isn’t explicit enough to bring a criminal charge” in ads suddenly become stupid enough to use such language in person. He apparently went back to the office from the jailhouse, made no attempt whatsoever at further investigation, ignored the clear absurdity of classing a young mother as a “criminal” for asking to be paid a living wage for a service that would have been totally legal if she had done it for free, and typed “the law is the law”. But it’s not Maier’s Law; he hasn’t even bothered to dispense with the facts because he is too deeply invested in lawheadedness to recognize the glaring contradiction.

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Posts Tagged ‘They Still Don’t Get It’

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