Think of the Children!

Posts Tagged ‘Think of the Children!’

That Was the Week That Was (#23)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Music, News, Obituary, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Africa, archeofeminism, Australia, avails laws, Backpage, Canada, censorship, condoms, cops, dirty, disease, Don’t Take My Word For It, Down Under, drivers, Europe, fantasy, Feminine Pragmatism, Finding What Isn’t There, gangs, Hard Numbers, harm reduction, Higher Education, Hollywood, hysteria, Illinois, imaginative fiction, internet, Ireland, Kenya, law, male prostitutes, marriage, Michigan, neofeminism, Part of the Picture, porn, psychology, serial killers, sex rays, Shifting the Blame, streetwalkers, stripping, Swedish model, Texas, The Course of a Disease, The Scarlet Letter, Think of the Children!, Traffic Jam, transgender, video, Washington (state), Wise Investment on June 9, 2012| 23 Comments »

Only death goes deeper than sex. – Mason Cooley

One obituary, ten updates and three metaupdates.

R.I.P. Ray Bradbury

The beloved fantasist died Wednesday morning at the age of 91; he was one of my favorite authors and wrote one of my favorite books and one of the scariest stories of all time. Here are a story and an article from Bradbury himself (courtesy of the New Yorker), my tribute tale “Penelope”, lovely remembrances from Neil Gaiman and regular reader Hal 10000, and a video from singer and comedienne Rachel Bloom; Bradbury had a great laugh when he saw it and gave her an autographed copy of The Martian Chronicles.

Updates

Think of the Children! (September 30^th, 2010)

So, school personnel, think you’re safe because you’ve never done sex work and/or don’t have direct contact with kids? Think again:

…Des Moines school superintendent Nancy Sebring resigned last week…for sending sexy emails at work…Sebring was forced out of her position because school district staffers discovered…emails she’d sent…to an adult man with whom she was engaged in a consenting sexual relationship…district…policy forbids using school computers…for personal correspondence…

Had the emails been about him taking her to a movie nobody would’ve said boo; she was sacked for being sexual, because sex rays can flow through the school’s computer system or become embedded in memo paper and thus imperil students (i.e. helpless, asexual fetuses) in a different part of town.

The Scarlet Letter (March 29^th, 2011)

Public shaming of whores and clients without due process is evil and twisted enough, but this takes it to a new level of piggishness:

…[In Chicago] a disproportionate number of transgender individuals are apparently being arrested for patronizing or soliciting for prostitution…Transgender “buyers” are much more likely than non-transgender buyers to be black…[and] are also, on average, almost 10 years younger. We should note that 10.5% of the arrestees were transgender, a shocking statistic…It seems much more likely that these individuals were “sellers,” not “buyers”…

As the Swedish Rot begins to pervade more American jurisdictions, it has become less politically popular to arrest women; so, Chicago cops simply lie and accuse transgender hookers of being clients instead due to their biological gender. Since neofeminists hate transgender people anyway, this is a bonus for them.

Down Under
(One Year Ago Today)

Australian politician Craig Thomson is under fire for misappropriation of funds, and though less than 6% of those funds were spent on whores guess what everyone’s talking about? Kelly Hinton of Project Respect comments:

…The question of whether or not [Thomson] actually did this has been lost…as a woman…dared not only to come forward publicly saying she could identify him from a photo, but accepted money to do so. It seems that what she has to say is irrelevant – we have already scrutinized, judged, degraded and discredited her in a public trial by media… from all sides. Owners of escort businesses and brothels in Sydney…have been quick to discredit her (and ultimately, other women in the sex industry)…[by] depicting [them] as stupid…[or] manipulative…Mr Thomson is quoted as saying: “To buy a story from a prostitute is cheque book journalism at its worst”…Is he suggesting that because she has been in the sex industry, we must assume she has no morals, is a liar and will do anything for money?…

This is yet another demonstration of why sex work must be completely decriminalized: any arbitrary limitation which doesn’t apply to other people besides hookers will be used as a weapon by those in power:

…A local sex worker…said prostitution laws in Queensland were much harsher than in other Australian states…sex workers may only enlist the services of a registered bodyguard and a driver. They are not permitted to have a receptionist book their service or handle payments. Detective Superintendent Brian Wilkins…said enforcing these laws helped prevent the exploitation of sex workers…

So to “protect” the girls, cops trick and arrest them, “helping” them into a criminal record and “helping” the state to some of their money. I’m sure they’re very grateful.

Part of the Picture (August 29^th, 2011)

Behold the result of the childish belief that pictures of sex are magically different from all others:

Young women who report that their romantic partners look at porn frequently are less happy in their relationships than women partnered with guys who more often abstain… said…Destin Stewart [of]…the University of Florida…Discovering explicit material on a partner’s computer “made them feel like they were not good enough, like they could not measure up”…women who reported that their boyfriends or husbands looked at more pornography were less likely to be happy in their relationships than women who said their partners didn’t look at pornography very often. When women were bothered by their partner’s porn use, saying, for example, that they believed he was a porn addict or that he used porn more than a “normal” amount, they were also more likely to have low self-esteem and to be less satisfied with both their relationship and their sex life…that doesn’t prove that porn necessarily caused the women’s self-esteem to drop…women who feel bad about themselves might seek out or stay with porn-loving guys more often than secure women…

Or, women who believe in nonsense like “porn addiction” might be labeling a normal amount of porn-watching “excessive”, or might even be classifying as porn materials that more secure women don’t think of that way (e.g., I don’t call Playboy porn). Or, a woman with self-esteem problems, or who is dissatisfied with her relationship, could be much less interested in sex, which drives her man to look at more porn. There’s just no way to tell anything at all from sloppy studies like this, but that sure didn’t stop the anti-sex crowd from trying.

Wise Investment (September 19^th, 2011)

I’m really pleased to see more sex businesses counterattacking with civil litigation. Escort review and message board ECCIE is suing a blogger who refers to the owners as “pimps” and has repeatedly accused them of “human trafficking” (sound like anybody we know?); the buffoon doesn’t seem to comprehend that actual felony accusations cross the line from criticism into libel. Meanwhile, Backpage is suing the state of Washington to prevent implementation of a new law which would require escorts to place ads on websites in person rather than over the internet, and would hold any website (including Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc) criminally liable for outside submissions, which as the lawsuit points out would “bring the practice of hosting third-party content to a grinding halt.” Apparently federal judge Ricardo Martinez recognizes the implications, because he has temporarily blocked enforcement of the new law while the suit proceeds.

Don’t Take My Word For It (September 29^th, 2011)

When one of Dan Savage’s readers asked him for advice on how to become a straight male escort, he enlisted the aid of an expert:

“There is no gigolo industry,” says Dominick, the former escort who writes Ask Dominick, an advice column…at Rentboy.com…“What STUD is seeking is a fantasy—one that has been fueled by cultural products like American Gigolo and HBO’s Hung,” says Dominick. There are no reputable agencies…that book male escorts to see female clients, just as there are no websites like Rentboy.com for straight male escorts. “The fact of the matter is, almost all clients for escorts are male…” When [Dominick] was working as an escort in New York City, his ads stated that he was available for male or female clients. “Over three years, I went on exactly one call with a female client…and one call with a married couple for a cuckolding scene, which was initiated by the husband. During that same period, I averaged about 5.5 calls per week with men”…

Higher Education (December 11^th, 2011)

I think you’re probably better off just learning on the job (from the Spanish with Google’s help):

A “serious” Spanish company offers a €100 course in “professional prostitution”, at least according to a poster…in the city of Valencia…adult students (both male and female) are trained to charge for sex. They learn the Kama Sutra, both common and uncommon positions, and the use of toys; the number of classes is optional according to student needs. Upon graduation, a student can apply to be a teacher in the school, or explore a world of other possibilities to “make big money quickly and easily”…

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

Swedish Model proponents just won’t give up trying to inflict their filth on Canadian society, and are even trying to hijack the term “decriminalization”:

The Quebec Council for the Status of Women is calling on the government to decriminalize prostitution, and instead go after the clients and escort agencies…[The group claimed] the average age young women become involved in the sex trade is between 14 and 15 years old. Many, they say, have been sexually abused as children…[and that] bodies need to stop being objectified, including in strip clubs…

Finding What Isn’t There (April 17^th, 2012)

The Irish Police have been forced to admit that prohibitionists are full of crap:

…Gardai…are examining information gathered in last week’s…raids on apartments that were being used mainly by foreign prostitutes…all the young women who were detained or questioned said they were working in the sex trade here voluntarily…Gardai disagree with claims by Catholic and feminist groups that there are high levels of human trafficking involved in Ireland’s sex trade…

Hard Numbers (April 20^th, 2012)

This account from a Congolese whore clearly demonstrates why criminalization and legalization schemes are dangerous both for women and for public health:

When Redempta…came to Kenya, she quickly had to find a source of income to feed and house herself and her two younger siblings. But as an illegal immigrant with no knowledge of local languages, her options were very limited. “I met some women from my country…and they introduced me to sex work…When I refuse to have sex with [men] without a condom, some threaten to report me to the police. They say they will tell the police I stole from them…I don’t have any papers to allow me [to stay] here, so I just have sex with them without a condom when they want.” Redempta sometimes has up to eight clients in two days, but…has only been tested for HIV once in the last two years. “I just tested once when they conducted a public one [testing campaign], but I fear going to a facility to test for HIV. I don’t know what the health workers will tell me when I go there because I am not a Kenyan,” she said…

Metaupdates

Shifting the Blame in TW3 (#18) (May 5^th, 2012)

These are obviously the same two who were questioned before: “Two men have been arrested in connection with the Backpage.com murder investigation…[they] were questioned by homicide detectives and will be held pending expected charges.”

Feminine Pragmatism in TW3 (#18) (May 5^th, 2012)

Nadya Suleman accepted a topless dancing gig in order to promote her porn video and says “that she would accept adult entertainment offers, although she ‘wouldn’t even kiss somebody for money’.” But despite her “dreams of building a business ‘empire’ that will pay for food, shelter and college educations for her 14 children” and her “hopes to become a role model for other women facing major struggles”, she backed out of the contract after “the club’s bartender said [in a TV interview]: ‘She must be a little crazy, normal people don’t have that many children’… and…the club’s manager said that ‘maybe after a few shows she gets comfortable, we’ll see more’ [than just her tits].” Wake up, Octomom; your kids can’t eat your pride, and if you’re that easily offended how the hell do you hope to handle Howard Stern’s comments when you ride a Sybian on his show on June 20^th?

Traffic Jam in TW3 (#21) (May 26^th, 2012)

Another gang leader was sentenced on “human trafficking” charges for the prostitution of female gang members; the story is chock full of the sort of melodramatic language one expects from a 1930s B-movie and of course portrays female gang members as innocent lambs.

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That Was the Week That Was (#11)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Moral Cancer, A War for Peace, An Ounce of Prevention, Arizona, California, Canada, censorship, condoms, cops, courtesans, crypto-moralism, dirty, disease, drugs, ethics, Europe, harm reduction, hysteria, India, Iran, law, lawheads, Maggie in the Media, Middle East, neofeminism, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, pimps, porn, Real People, red-light districts, serial killers, Sex Lies and Busybodies, sex rays, stereotypes, streetwalkers, stripping, Surplus Women, Switzerland, teachers, The Cold Grey Light of Dawn, The More the Better, The Prudish Giant, The Sky is Falling!, Think of the Children!, Uncommon Sense, underage, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers on March 17, 2012| 8 Comments »

The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry. – William F. Buckley

Twelve updates and three meta-updates.

Think of the Children! (September 30^th, 2010)

Richard B. Haydock is not amused.

In California, crime is whatever school officials say it is: “…Stacie Halas, a…teacher at Richard B. Haydock Intermediate School in Oxnard, was removed from the classroom…after pupils reported spotting her in a series of X-rated clips. ‘Maybe it’s not a crime as far as the penal code is concerned, but we feel it’s a crime as far as moral turpitude is concerned,’ said [superintendent] Jeff Chancer…” Because we certainly can’t have “sex rays” corrupting the innocent minds of nasty little snitches who watch internet porn and even make videos of their own: “…a boy and a girl engaged in oral sex during class at Richard B. Haydock Intermediate School in Oxnard…[and] students…videotaped the…act on their cell phones…School officials have placed the teacher on paid administrative leave. They won’t say what actions, if any, have been taken against the students…”

Thanks to EconJeff for alerting me to the Richard B. Haydock Grammar-School Gomorrah, and see “Metaupdates” below for more “sex ray” hysteria.

The Cold, Grey Light of Dawn (January 3^rd, 2011)

Mainstream feminists are slowly coming to the realization that neofeminist attitudes hurt women, and Oregon State University graduate student Virginia Martin argues that they even hurt feminism itself:

Stereotypes and misinformation about sex work…only foster distrust and separation…between men and women…we were assigned a reading…that [claimed] “activists…are working…to eradicate prostitution – a practice rarely distinguishable from sex trafficking – by ending the demand for it” …prostitution is a consensual act between two adults and sex trafficking is slavery therefore making it nonconsensual by nature. Additionally, the tenet that ending prostitution would simultaneously end human trafficking is naïve and juvenile…The assumption that all sex workers…are oppressed and need saving is incorrect and an oversimplification of a complex issue…

Maggie in the Media (February 3^rd, 2011)

I’ve appeared on several other websites lately. ”Sluts, Whores & More Ongoing Insanity” on Amazing Women Rock (March 5^th) is a spirited defense of sex workers and a criticism of those who use words like “slut”, “whore” and “prostitute” as insults. It prominently features myself and this blog as examples of Amazing Susan’s point that “Being educated and independent AND in control of one’s sexuality are not mutually exclusive.” The London School of Attraction published a two-part interview with me last Monday and Tuesday, and on Thursday I published a guest column on Nobody’s Business entitled, ”Rick Santorum vs. Marc Randazza: A Dichotomy of Zealotry“.

Real People (February 6^th, 2011)

“Healing Power of Sex Work” by Wrenna Robertson is an excellent essay which includes short profiles of a number of different sex professionals. Wrenna herself is a 36-year-old stripper who entered the profession at 18 to pay for university and never left despite earning two degrees and publishing a book, I’ll Show You Mine, which I mentioned last August.

A Moral Cancer (March 6^th, 2011)

Politicians have long held that election or appointment to political office automatically grants degrees in medicine and pharmacology, but in the UK just being a cop confers expertise in oncology research:

…After a “drugs factory”…was raided, local yokel police passed on this dire admonition to a wide-eyed public:

Police are warning that when cannabis plants reach the final stages of maturity the odour they release has carcinogenic properties…Officers who deal with the plants use ventilation masks and protective suits and people who have plants in their home, especially anyone with young children, may be exposing their family to a health risk.

…Of course, that’s complete horse shit…Those who have bothered to actually look into the topic before making fools of themselves…know that…the terpenes, which are distinctive for marijuana’s distinctive odors, are in fact anti-cancer agents…

The Harborough Mail was apparently so embarrassed by its own gullibility that the story was pulled, as you already discovered if you tried to click that link.

A War for Peace (May 12^th, 2011)

Just because Femen is clueless in proper application of topless protests doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the concept, as nursing mothers have demonstrated. And now exiled Iranian women are protesting their homeland’s misogynistic policies in the same way: “After a nude photo and short video of a popular Iranian actress baring her breast…several online campaigns have sought to raise awareness about repression of women in Iran. The latest…came from a group of European-based Iranians posing…to promote…the Nude Photo Revolutionary Calendar…”

Uncommon Sense (September 20^th, 2011)

American “authorities” often justify their brutal mistreatment of streetwalkers by labeling them a “public nuisance”, but the Swiss prefer a more pragmatic and civilized approach:

Residents of…Zurich [voted]…to build dedicated garages…in [order to move] streetwalkers away from residential zones…The site will be shielded from sight by signs, be fitted with showers and toilets and will feature a gynaecologist for any medical problems and volunteers from the Flora Dora women’s group for any advice. The…site aims to eliminate…Zurich’s Sihlquai area, where about 60 streetwalkers work every night. Besides nightly traffic jams…[residents complain of] used condoms…[and other] trash…Ursula Kocher, who heads Flora Dora…said that the proposal had the support of the prostitutes themselves, as it could offer better security…

So the residents are happy, the hookers are happy and the politicians are happy. What a concept!

Surplus Women (September 27^th, 2011)

Canadian police now believe that more than 30 unsolved murders of prostitutes in Edmonton, Alberta, may be the work of a serial killer:

…Since 1975, the bodies of at least 30 women…have been found…[and] dozens more are…listed as missing. Staff Sgt. Gerard MacNeil is…convinced a serial killer is still on the loose…”I can’t say whether that person is alive, whether they are in custody for other offences, or whether they have left the province…” [he said]. Project KARE, a joint task force between the RCMP and Edmonton police, was formed in June 2003 to investigate the deaths of women living high-risk lifestyles…members…hit the streets two to four times a week to connect with sex trade workers…The response from the women themselves has been warm…”Ninety-five percent of girls talk to us…[they] know exactly what we do and who we are. They understand we are not trying to bust them for doing their job…we are there to…make sure they are doing OK”…

But despite stories like this, fanatics who support criminalization still refuse to comprehend that it creates conditions which are far more dangerous for women.

An Ounce of Prevention (October 15^th, 2011)

Michael Weinstein opposes HIV prevention measures:

…HIV/AIDS researchers are testing an injectable version of a drug normally used to treat people already infected…[in hope of developing] a long-lasting version that may be given to people who aren’t HIV-positive, but are at high risk of becoming so. Three clinical trials have shown that antiretroviral drugs may help prevent uninfected people from acquiring HIV…but…the AIDS Healthcare Foundation…has filed a petition urging the Food and Drug Administration not to approve…[the drugs] for use by uninfected people. The group [claims] that people won’t take the drug as indicated and that they’ll stop using condoms or other prevention methods…

AHF’s true concern is that since they can’t provide such a drug, it would cut into their profits.

The More the Better (January 9^th, 2012)

Despite the incredibly annoying headline, “Streetwalker to Cat Walker”, I was pleased to see another example of a sex worker accepted into the mainstream:

Former call girl Zahia Dehar has unwrapped her debut lingerie collection…in Paris…The Chanel designers says Zahia is, “a very French courtesan, like Liane de Pougy or the Belle Otéro“. She became notorious a couple of years ago when the then underage prostitute was allegedly paid thousands of dollars for sex with some of France’s most famous footballers. Her face caught the attention of magazine editors and she has since appeared in magazines like V and Vanity Fair.

Coincidentally, La Belle Otero is the subject of this month’s harlotography, coming on March 30^th.

The Sky is Falling! (February 20^th, 2012)

The pompous Michigan sheriff quoted in this column opined that “It’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt” from a sugar baby arrangement, but I doubt he was thinking of this sort of thing: Bob Caldwell, the 63-year old editor of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Oregonian, died of a heart attack last Saturday while visiting his 23-year-old sugar baby. The cops magnanimously decided not to pursue prostitution charges against the understandably distraught young woman, but that mercy obviously didn’t extend to protecting the dead man’s reputation or sparing the feelings of his wife and three daughters.

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (March 3^rd, 2012)

Once again, Indian charities demonstrate a wisdom far in advance of that of the self-important Americans who insist that they know what’s best for Indian sex workers:

…in Kamathipura, Mumbai’s red-light district…[there is] a bank…[which] serves only prostitutes…A vast majority of the area’s 4,000 sex workers have accounts with…Sangini, Hindi for “female friend.” As Sangini sees it, sex workers with even a modest financial buffer are able to refuse clients wanting unprotected sex. And savings build confidence, providing the wherewithal to change professions if they choose. Often, women will leave their passbooks here so husbands or pimps don’t discover and squander their earnings. Men can deposit but can’t withdraw funds without the woman’s permission, says Diane Cross, the charismatic social worker running the bank…“We get lambasted by churches that we’re encouraging prostitution,” says Krishna Sarda, head of the India800 Foundation, a civic group funded by grants that’s underwriting Sangini’s $75,000 annual budget. “The idea you can stop this trade altogether is cloud-cuckoo-land. Our focus is on trying to stop the exploitation”…

Metaupdates

Sex, Lies and Busybodies in That Was the Week That Was (#3) (February 11^th, 2012)

“…Arizona…[has] been targeted as [one possible home]…for the adult business…But…Maricopa County attorney Bill Montgomery said…’Under Arizona law, anyone paid to appear in a pornographic movie may be guilty of the crime of prostitution, which carries mandatory jail time as well as the possibility of other penalties’…” I hate to agree with a district attorney, but anyone who thinks that porn acting isn’t prostitution is either delusional or a hopeless lawhead. Americans don’t need more ridiculous laws exempting certain kinds of sex work from persecution under certain arbitrary conditions; what we need is for the government to stop interfering in the private affairs of adults altogether.

Think of the Children! in Metaupdates (March 2^nd, 2012)

Another good, clean, moral organization refuses charity from nasty, dirty whores:

The [cash-starved] Lennox Little League…[returned a $1200 donation from a gentlemen’s club named] Jet Strip…president Robert Aguirre told KTLA…”It was a shocker to us. We do not want the money from the strip club…” [The club’s manager]…said that the club has been giving back to the community for years, [donating to]…raise money for school supplies for [underprivileged] children…[and contributing] to…sheriff’s deputies…This isn’t the first time a Jet Strip donation has been returned. In 1993, according to Yahoo! Sports, the American Red Cross refused a $5000 donation from the club…

The Prudish Giant in That Was the Week That Was (#9) (March 4^th, 2012)

PayPal…is backtracking on its policy against processing sales of e-books containing themes of rape, bestiality or incest after protests from authors and anti-censorship activist groups. PayPal’s new policy will focus only on e-books that contain potentially illegal images, not e-books that are limited to just text…The service will still refuse…to process payments for text-only e-books containing child pornography themes…[but]…will…focus on individual books, rather than entire classes of books…E-book sellers will be notified if specific books violate PayPal’s policy, and the company is working on a process through which authors and distributors can challenge such notifications…

If people would always resist infringements on our rights this vehemently, even governments would be compelled to back down.

One Year Ago Today

“Jill Brenneman Q & A (Part Two)” concluded the feature drawn from the comment threads of the Jill Brenneman interview columns.

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Metaupdates

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, tagged A Moral Cancer, Arizona, bogus studies, California, cops, crypto-moralism, cult of the child, dirty, disease, ethics, illegal aliens, Madonna/whore, porn, semen, sex rays, Shazam!, stereotypes, teachers, The Camel's Nose, Think of the Children!, Thinking with the Wrong Head on March 2, 2012| 23 Comments »

A priest, a rabbi and a leprechaun walk into a bar. The leprechaun looks around and says, “Begorrah, I’m in the wrong joke!”

The prefix “meta” means “after” or “beyond”, sometimes in the sense of a recursive function; for example, “metacognition” means “thinking about thinking” and a “meta-joke” is a joke about jokes. A “metaupdate” is therefore an update of another update, in this case items which have appeared in previous update columns. I’m going to organize these in chronological order of the updates, rather than the order of the original columns the updates reference.

Think of the Children! in Further Developments (November 18^th, 2011)

Child Cultists apparently believe that sexually-active adults emit invisible “sex rays”, and that if any of that sex wasn’t entirely vanilla the intensity of those “sex rays” increases exponentially and never, ever fades away. Therefore no such person, no matter how long ago she committed these dreaded acts, can ever again be allowed with 10 meters of children lest her pervy emanations induce the dreaded “premature sexualization”, which might {Gasp!} cause innocent children to have sexual thoughts or feelings at some point before the magical Advent of Shazam at exactly midnight on their 18^th birthdays.

That was in reference to outcry over former porn star Sasha Grey’s presuming to actually read to children in a volunteer program. Though she was initially accepted by administrators, they now seem to believe that sex rays can even contaminate the money handled by harlots, and magically seep from bank accounts into educational programs, thence to schools and into the brains of poor, innocent little soap-bubble urchins:

…being deep in the red isn’t deterring one [educational] group from publicly rejecting money [from]…former adult film star Sasha Grey…Although she retired…last April, one of Grey’s scenes is featured [apparently without Grey’s consent] in adult film “Anal Artists,” set to debut this week…In support of her “recent efforts to expose children to the world of literature,” Assence Films will donate a portion of the film’s proceeds to the National Education Association’s Read Across America program…But…NEA officials said…”Sasha Grey is not affiliated with the…program nor has she been invited or endorsed…to read at any…events, and NEA will not accept any proceeds from…any of her films”…Howard Levine of Exile Distribution …[said this] is discriminatory. “Anyone that’s supporting reading and helping kids and donating money to their cause should be accepted…they’re trying to be politically correct”…

I’ve got news for the NEA; if money which has paid for sex work is “contaminated” then every child in the country is already affected, because the money earned by sex workers of all types flows into local economies just like everyone else’s does. It is virtually a statistical certainty that some of the money you’ve given your kids this month as allowance or whatever was paid to a sex worker at some point between leaving the mint and ending up in your hands. If our money is “dirty”, then every church and school in the world is hopelessly polluted by our “sin” because they’re all supported by money we’ve handled or even directly contributed.

A Moral Cancer in That Was the Week That Was (#2) (February 5^th, 2012)

Actually, this is a double meta-update; remember the “bacon causes cancer” scare story? Well, it turns out that it was not only inconclusive, but promoted by a radical animal rights group of the same ilk as the PCRM, which I discussed in That Was the Week That Was (#3):

Link between eating processed meat [such as bacon or sausages] and pancreatic cancer in Swedish research is bogus and paid for by animal rights groups…But the…World Cancer Research Fund suggested the link may be down to obesity…Prof Susanna Larsson, who conducted the study at the Karolinska Institute, [said] links to…cancers [other than bowel cancer] were “quite controversial”…

As JunkScience.com pointed out, “This is a meta-analysis of 11 studies, none of which…link processed meat-eating with pancreatic cancer. So 11 x 0 = zero.”

The Camel’s Nose in That Was the Week That Was (#5) (February 18^th, 2012)

The disgusting saga of Mark Berndt, the third-grade teacher who fed his semen to children for years and documented it with photos, just keeps getting worse. The original story broke on January 11^th, then on February 3^rd a second teacher from the same school was arrested:

…The arrest of Miramonte Elementary School [second-grade] teacher Martin Bernard Springer, 49, came three days after L.A. prosecutors accused former teacher Mark Berndt of bizarre acts in his classroom …The allegations against Springer…come from two students he allegedly touched improperly within the last three years…Springer was ordered out of his classroom Thursday morning…Authorities are looking for other potential victims in both cases as well as past episodes of possible misconduct…Supt. John Deasy said he wants to fire Springer as soon as next Tuesday, when the Board of Education will discuss the case in closed session…At the same meeting, Deasy said, he also will urge the board to fire Hamilton High music teacher Vance Miller…[after] two former students, now adults…accused Miller of having sexual relationships with them…

By Monday, the district had decided on a scorched-earth policy instead:

…Los Angeles school officials said they will temporarily replace the entire staff of an elementary school…where two teachers have been accused of lewd acts…Supt. John Deasy announced the action at a tense public meeting…in which…parents chanted “cover-up!” and accused the school system of failing to protect their children…More than a quarter of the students enrolled at Miramonte didn’t show up Monday as parents kept them home…Officials emphasized that no other educators at the school are under suspicion but that a bold act was needed…Many, maybe all, of the current Miramonte staff will be returned to the school eventually…In the interim, their places will be filled by teachers and other workers on a rehiring list. The Miramonte staff will continue to be paid…Once students return, each will be interviewed by the district, and a psychiatric social worker will be present in every classroom, Deasy said…

So much for not traumatizing the kids. I can’t even begin to imagine how much a social worker in every classroom will cost, but obviously the district has plenty of money:

The Los Angeles Unified School District paid Mark Berndt…$40,000 to drop the challenge to his dismissal last year. The payout consisted of four months of back salary plus reimbursement for the cost of health benefits. Berndt was fired by the Board of Education in February 2011…but…fought to keep his job…until he settled with the school system and resigned in June…counsel David Holmquist [said]…”We were told we could not do any investigation” to avoid interfering with a law enforcement probe…”We didn’t have any evidence, and we couldn’t put on any witnesses. We didn’t have anything to successfully defend a challenge.”

The cops are still being proprietary about the whole thing, and on the 18^th told the parents to butt out:

The investigation into a former third-grade teacher…could be hampered by the flood of civil cases related to the scandal and public statements made by alleged victims, according to Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives…Since the charges were announced, civil attorneys say they are representing more than 60 victims…Earlier this week two alleged victims appeared with their attorney on the “Dr. Phil” television show. “The lawyers are making it that much more difficult,” [said] William McSweeney, chief of detectives…”It is going to raise issues of credibility.” The civil attorneys have made claims about Berndt that are not contained in the original charges, including some accusations…that Berndt fed the alleged victims cookies with his semen on them…Detectives are still investigating and are urging families to contact the Sheriff’s Department before seeking private counsel.

I’m glad the cops get to see how it feels to have outsiders interfering with their work for a change.

One Year Ago Today (Meta-edition)

“Thinking with the Wrong Head” discussed Chris Lee, the congressman who stupidly documented his indiscretions with photos. Well, here’s another example of the same syndrome, this time from Arizona:

…well-known border hawk Sheriff Paul Babeu, who’s now running for Congress in Arizona, was…[accused by] a Mexican immigrant who said he dated the sheriff for years and was threatened with deportation if he ever told anyone about their romance. The Phoenix New Times…broke the story on its website…complete with text messages…[and] compromising photos…reminiscent of recent sex scandals that ended the careers of Congressmen Anthony Weiner and Chris Lee…The New Times identified the accuser only by his first name, José…he met Babeu through the dating website gay.com in 2006…Babeu was a police officer in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler at the time and was elected as sheriff of Pinal County in late 2008… José volunteered for Babeu’s campaign, maintaining his websites and social media accounts…They were apparently together during Babeu’s fast rise to becoming a national figure in the fight against illegal immigration…[but] their relationship went sour…when [José] began to suspect that Babeu was using a website for casual hookups…

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Updates Galore (Part One)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, tagged animals, Aphrodite, archeofeminism, Australia, bad customers, courtesans, dirty, disability, ethics, harm reduction, Jill Brenneman, Massachusetts, naturalness, neofeminism, No Other Option, Older Than You Thought, pathologization of males, porn, psychology, sacred prostitutes, sex rays, sex work is work, stage names, stereotypes, Swedish model, teachers, Think of the Children!, United Kingdom, Validation, yin and yang on December 9, 2011| 38 Comments »

A man’s jealousy is a social institution; a woman’s prostitution is an instinct. – Karl Kraus

What is it about the end of the year and prostitution-related news? Last year saw an explosion of such stories after mid-November, so that I ended up doing a number of miscellanea columns between then and Christmas; one year ago today “Bits and Pieces (Part One)” appeared, featuring Derrick Burts’ self-outing, a Melissa Petro follow-up, the duplicitous Annie Lobert of “Hookers for Jesus” and an astonishingly ignorant “child sex trafficking” story from NPR. Well, this year was much the same; I had so many short articles I had to spread them across six different columns! Don’t worry, I won’t throw them at you all in a row; we’ll start with a two-part update column and a miscellanea column on Sunday, then save the others for the end of next week.

Think of the Children! (September 30^th, 2010)

The list of teachers “outed” as porn actors continues to grow; first Tera Myers, then Benedict Garrett, and now Kevin Hogan of Malden, Massachusetts, whose stage name was “Hytch Cawke”. But if reporter Mike Beaudet of WFXT in Boston imagined he would be hailed as a hero for exposing the dirty porn-making fag lurking in our schools to corrupt innocent children, I’m sure he was unpleasantly surprised. Oh, he was easily able to find the usual assortment of sheeple to bleat out quotes like “I’m disturbed. I’m surprised…This is scary” and “he’s teaching our children. Everyday. It does bother me a lot.” But take a look at the comments on the story, which are not only overwhelmingly defensive of a person’s right to do (legal) sex work, but also overwhelmingly condemnatory of the TV station and reporter. Beaudet actually went on the air the next day to defend his actions, probably because there’s a “Support Kevin Hogan, FIRE Mike Beaudet” Facebook page and a Fire Mike Beaudet petition at Change.org. I don’t believe for one second that the furor would be this strong if the teacher were a heterosexual woman, or if Hogan had been a gay prostitute rather than a gay porn actor, but any vociferous public support for any flavor of “sex work is work” is a huge step in the right direction.

An Older Profession Than You May Have Thought (October 12^th, 2010)

In this post I explained that in some species of cricket, males give females large bags of low-quality food as their payment for sex; I compared them to human clients who pad their pay envelopes with low-denomination bills hidden among the large ones. Well, this November 13^th article from Physorg.com introduces us to the arthropod equivalent of clients who try to cheat hookers with envelopes full of worthless paper strips:

Male nursery web spiders (Pisaura mirabilis) prepare silk-wrapped gifts to give to potential mates. Most gifts contain insects, but some gifts are inedible plant seeds or empty exoskeletons left after the prey has already been eaten…New research…examines the reproductive success of deceitful males and shows that females are not impressed by worthless gifts. [In the experiment] male spiders were provided with either a potential gift of a fly, or a worthless item, such as a cotton wool ball, a dry flower head, a prey leftover (previously eaten housefly), or no gift at all. All the gifts were approximately the same size, so the females would not be able to tell what the gift was without unwrapping it. Males that offered any gift were more likely to successfully mate than males without. However the length of time the females allowed males with worthless gifts to spend transferring sperm was shorter than those with edible gifts (and even shorter for those with no gift at all!) It appears that both male and female spiders are apparently able to assess the value of the gift and modify their behavior accordingly…Maria Albo who led the research explained, “The evolution of male deceit involves a complex equation of costs and benefits. It costs the males to find and wrap a gift, but these costs can be reduced if the male does not have to first catch his gift, or gives one that has already been eaten. The benefit of the gift is longer mating, which leads to more sperm being transferred, and potentially a higher number of offspring. However, the females are wise to deception and terminate mating early for worthless gifts”…

Keep this in mind next time some neofeminist tries to tell you that gender-based human sexual behavior is “socially constructed”.

No Other Option (October 17^th, 2010)

Most severely-disabled men and many whose handicap is less severe are completely unable to acquire sex by noncommercial means, so prostitutes are their only recourse. Neofeminist fanatics declare that sex is not a “need” and that such a transaction still constitutes “male oppression”, but sane, moral, decent people know better and fortunately many whores are happy to help these men experience sex. A newly-released documentary named Scarlet Road follows an Australian professional who specializes in helping disabled clients:

Australian sex worker Rachel Wotton works with many clients who have disabilities. Her work has become the subject of the latest documentary from award-winning director Catherine Scott and producer Pat Fiske. Filmed over a three-year period, Scarlet Road follows Rachel in her relationship with John, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 26 years ago, and Mark, a client with cerebral palsy. It reveals the therapeutic aspects of human touch and sexual intimacy. This unique documentary gives voice to two men generously sharing moments of sexual self-discovery. “People with disability are not seen as sexual beings and on the other hand sex workers are often portrayed as oversexed, victims or damaged goods. I really wanted to tackle these stereotypes head on”…Scarlet Road shows Rachel in her daily life and follows her on a journey to the UK, Denmark and Sweden, where she meets with sex workers, people with disabilities and their families, as well as making quite an impression as a speaker at the World Congress for Sexual Health.

Aphrodite bless Rachel and her work; I’ve added a link to her charity, Touching Base, to my “Resources” box at the right.

Interview: Jill Brenneman (starting February 21^st, 2011)

On December 2^nd our friend Jill spoke at the Sex Worker Summit in Asheville, North Carolina hosted by the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition and several other organizations (including New Orleans’ own Women With a Vision). Local newspaper Mountain Xpress covered the event and according to Jill even got it mostly right. I don’t have a lot of hope for North Carolina becoming a center for sex worker rights in the U.S., but I’d love to be proven wrong!

Validation (May 25^th, 2011)

“Even when one already knows something, it’s good to get validation from others. And when one is beset by enemies on all sides, particularly ruthless enemies who are willing not only to lie but to distort or completely fabricate bogus “research” to support their lies, every extra bit of academic research which soundly supports one’s position is another arrow in one’s quiver.” So I was quite pleased to see this November 11^th article on the Migrants’ Rights Network; we’ve seen this study before in my November 15^th column, but this article mentions a different aspect:

A new study on migration and trafficking in the UK sex industry has challenged the idea that trafficking is the main factor in trapping people in exploitative and abusive employment. Based on a survey of 100 people of migrant background involved in the industry, [Dr Nick Mai of the Institute for the Study of European Transformations (ISET)] has found that a majority of them had not been forced or trafficked into the profession…[and that] difficulties in exercising rights…were more likely to come from the issue of official immigration status than from forced labour. Many of the workers had entered the industry because the alternative employment available to them was likely to be more exploitative and unrewarding than sex work. They also felt that the stigmatisation of the profession had a negative impact on their personal lives…[and that] criminalisation of clients…[would] not reduce demand or exploitation but [would] mean more insecurity for migrants working in the industry. The report argues that better strategies to combat negative aspects of the industry would…[include allowing] migrants to become and remain legally documented…[allowing] the industry [to] operate legally…[and providing] victims of trafficking the right to remain in the country and the long-term support needed for integration.

This information needs to be pounded directly into the skull of every career politician and cop in the United Kingdom, United States and every other country which uses “human trafficking” as an excuse to persecute whores and/or our clients and partners.

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Further Developments

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, activism, censorship, Central Asia, cops, cult of the child, dirty, FBI, Hollywood, hysteria, law, Madonna/whore, Pennsylvania, porn, sex rays, stage names, The Crumbling Dam, Think of the Children!, Whores in the News on November 18, 2011| 72 Comments »

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” – Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (chapter 2)

One year ago today I published “November Miscellanea (Part Two)”, which explained how the U.S. government isn’t interested in prosecuting the trafficking of minors for sexual purposes when huge corporations like Time-Warner do it; reported that a Fox newsreader publicly advised another journalist to patronize sex workers; and linked an article called “10 Tips for Dealing with Cops”. And though I already published a three-part “November Updates” column two weeks ago, several more interesting stories have surfaced and so I present this special extra update edition.

Think of the Children! (September 30^th, 2010)

Child Cultists apparently believe that sexually-active adults emit invisible “sex rays”, and that if any of that sex wasn’t entirely vanilla the intensity of those “sex rays” increases exponentially and never, ever fades away. Therefore no such person, no matter how long ago she committed these dreaded acts, can ever again be allowed with 10 meters of children lest her pervy emanations induce the dreaded “premature sexualization”, which might {Gasp!} cause innocent children to have sexual thoughts or feelings at some point before the magical Advent of Shazam at exactly midnight on their 18^th birthdays. Here, courtesy of TMZ, is the latest example of a shameless harlot recklessly endangering children with her dangerous presence:

Porn legend Sasha Grey says she will NOT back out of a national elementary school reading program — despite pressure from parents — claiming she will “not live in fear” of her XXX past…Grey…participated in the “Read Across America” program at Emerson Elementary School in Compton, CA last week. Afterward, the school received complaints for letting Grey around the kids. For the record, Grey has been out of the adult business for 2 years. Now, Sasha has released a statement … saying, “I committed to this program with the understanding that people would have their own opinions about what I have done, who I am and what I represent…I am an actor. I am an artist. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a partner. I have a past that some people may not agree with, but it does not define who I am. I believe in the future of our children, and I will remain an active supporter and participant in education-focused initiatives.”

Good for Sasha; I just hope she doesn’t allow herself to be shamed into quitting as Tera Myers was.

Whores in the News (October 29^th, 2010)

On October 27^th of last year the FBI raided the offices of Escorts.com, and reports I received from working escorts in the ensuing months convinced me that the company had been taken over by the feds and was being used in an attempt to entrap working girls. Fortunately, the operation was sloppy and heavy-handed and nobody with two brain cells to rub together was fooled; the site was closed entirely at the end of May and since the big pigs were unable to sexually victimize women as they intended, they contented themselves with stealing six and a half million dollars instead:

Two Philadelphia-based companies have been charged with running a website used by prostitutes and escort services to advertise…National A-1 Advertising Inc. and R.S. Duffy Inc. agreed to plead guilty to money laundering conspiracy and will forfeit $4.9 million, pay a $1.5 million fine and serve 1½ years of probation, according to court documents…the companies…operated Escorts.com beginning in 2007. Prostitutes and escort services paid to advertise on the site, while customers were charged subscription fees. The companies have forfeited the domain name. National A-1 also operates phone-sex lines and a pornographic website. Those portions of its business are unaffected by its plea agreement in the escorts.com case…The government said it reserves the right to prosecute individuals associated with the companies.

As we’ve pointed out before, companies aren’t responsible for the content of their advertising so the government had no case even if there was a federal law against advertising sexual services, which there isn’t. But federal prosecutors are empowered with a whole arsenal of nuisance charges (“money laundering” and “conspiracy” being chief among them) with which to hound individuals and corporations to death based on the flimsiest of evidence or even no evidence at all, so National A-1 and R.S. Duffy clearly decided that paying the ransom demand was simply the cheapest and quickest way to get on with their corporate lives.

October Updates, Part Three (October 4^th, 2011)

In my update to “A Tale That Grew in the Telling” I discussed the way stories get distorted in the process of rumor-spreading, becoming progressively more lurid and exaggerated. Here, via Furry Girl, is a perfect example from journalist Anderson Cooper: after the tsunami which struck Sri Lanka on December 26^th, 2004, a man on a motorcycle took two injured children to a hospital. Some bystander decided he was actually kidnapping them, and it was so reported in a Sri Lankan newspaper; by the time the story reached New York a few days later dozens of storm orphans were being abducted into sexual slavery. It’s rather like And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, except not at all cute.

The Crumbling Dam (October 14^th, 2011)

Speaking of Furry Girl, I reported last month that she had to resort to a mobile billboard company for her sex worker rights ad after all the regular billboard companies rejected it (despite the fact that they’ve carried anti-prostitution ads in the past). Well, her billboard finished its run on November 9^th, and here’s a report from her (with photos) telling about how it went. Let’s hope her next project finds an advertising company which is more interested in making money than in promoting a moral view via censorship of paying advertisers.

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April Updates

Posted in Current Events, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged anecdote, Check Your Premises, cops, dirty, Egypt, ethics, How Old is Oldest?, hysteria, It's a Start, Lack of Evidence, law, Madonna/whore, Massachusetts, New Orleans, pimps, psychology, stereotypes, Think of the Children!, underage, virginity on April 5, 2011| 32 Comments »

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies are. – Friedrich Nietzsche

It’s time once again (though relatively early this month) for my monthly collection of articles which hearken back to previous columns.

Think of the Children! (September 30^th)

The considerable hysteria around child sexual abuse, which has grown to the proportions of a full-fledged witch hunt in which thousands of lives have been ruined, rests upon the belief that any sexual contact between two humans, at least one of whom is under the local age of consent, is inherently and devastatingly harmful, no matter what the circumstances. Yet, “playing doctor” was at one time very common among children, even children separated by a few years, and I’m not aware of any claims that practically the entire human race existed in a permanent traumatized state prior to the genesis of sex abuse hysteria in the 1980s. I’m not talking about rape or exploitative incest (which can be harmful indeed), but rather contact between children who are friends or voluntary contact between adolescents and adults. At one time it was common for girls of 14 or 15 to marry men in their 30s; are we to believe they were all irreversibly traumatized by it? And frankly, I’m highly skeptical of currently-fashionable claims that the average teenage boy considers being seduced by an adult woman anything other than fantastically good luck. What if most of the trauma associated with sexuality involving minors derives not from some mystical property of sex itself, but from the considerable fuss adults make over it when it is discovered (including endless invasive and uncomfortable interviews with creepy strangers asking highly personal questions), not to mention guilt over getting someone else in trouble?

Psychologists Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch and Robert Bauserman asked those questions, and in 1998 published a meta-analysis of 59 child abuse studies which found that, when physical abuse and other such factors were controlled for, university students who had experienced what authorities termed “child sexual abuse” (CSA) reported that “negative effects were neither pervasive nor typically intense, and that men reacted much less negatively than women. Basic beliefs about CSA in the general population were not supported.” But did the therapeutic and law enforcement communities breathe a collective sigh of relief upon hearing the good news that most of those kids weren’t as badly hurt by this “secret epidemic” as previously thought? Of course not! Therapists were unhappy at the prospect of a lucrative income stream being interrupted, and cops NEVER welcome the removal of excuses for harassing, controlling and destroying people. For their pains, the good doctors were widely vilified and even subjected to a vote of censure by the United States Congress, and since then the paper has been largely ignored except for misuse by child molesters attempting to defend their disgusting actions in court. This is particularly sad because, though child sexual abuse is relatively rare in comparison with physical abuse (beatings, etc), the sexual abuse gets vastly more money and attention due to its lurid appeal; the common problem with serious (sometimes fatal) consequences is therefore pushed aside in favor of a far less common one with less serious consequences. And that’s a damned tragedy.

Lack of Evidence (December 16^th)

I’ve often pointed out that as long as prostitution is criminal not even amateurs are safe because, since prostitution is defined by its motive, no actual evidence of the “crime” is possible and cops are allowed to claim almost anything as “evidence” of it. Well, a particularly horrible example came to light on March 23^rd as Amnesty International reported that Egyptian women arrested in last month’s protests were subjected to “virginity tests” and told that any who “failed” them would be charged with prostitution. Would these women have still been tortured if prostitution were legal in Egypt? Undoubtedly, but it would have been impossible to pass off a sort of medical rape as an “evidence-gathering” procedure for any other “crime”.

It’s a Start (December 30^th)

It looks like New Orleans may really be serious about curtailing its long tradition of harassing prostitutes; according to a March 25^th report by WDSU-TV, the NOPD fired two cops for arresting women on a charge of “loitering for the purpose of prostitution”:

The New Orleans Police Department terminated officers Beau Gast and Thomas McMasters on Friday after an administrative investigation…[which] revealed that both men falsified records and knowingly arrested two women on prostitution charges without a warrant…[both] admitted that they didn’t check to see if either of the women had a prior conviction of prostitution solicitation within the previous year…That check is required by law to arrest anyone on prostitution loitering charges. Both men said they were aware of the law, but they did not abide by it. The charges…include…false imprisonment, neglect of duty, failing to take appropriate and necessary police action and creating false and inaccurate reports. McMasters had been with the force for 13 years and Gast became an officer in 2007, NOPD said.

Thanks to regular reader Joyce for calling the story to my attention.

Check Your Premises (March 10^th)

Witch-hunting is apparently still a popular pastime in Salem, Massachusetts, where a journalist was recently convicted of “victimizing” two prostitutes by employing them in his low-end escort service. The following is paraphrased from a story which appeared in the Eagle-Tribune on March 19^th and was sent to me by regular reader Alex:

Former sportswriter Kevin Provencher, 52, was sentenced to 2½ years in jail after he pled guilty in Salem Superior Court to running a “prostitution ring” out of hotels in Andover, Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire. Assistant District Attorney Melissa Woodard accused Provencher of “taking” half of his employees’ earnings and charging them for the hotel rooms he booked for them. Provencher carelessly booked rooms for the hookers at the same hotel every weekend, eventually attracting the attention of busybody hotel staff who called the cops on them. The women earned $240 per hour or $150 per half hour with a 50% agency fee. Provencher was also charged with intimidating a witness after he “threatened to have his attorney shred the two women apart in the media if they spoke to the police,” Woodard claimed.

The two prostitutes, who were identified only as “Jane Doe” and “Jill Doe” during the hearing, decided not to appear in court but one said she believed Provencher took advantage of her, and the other said that she was held accountable after being arrested, and Provencher should be as well. Based on these claims, Woodard tried to get Provencher imprisoned for 35 years and was apparently disappointed when she didn’t get her way; “His crime was not a one time lapse in judgement,” Woodard said. “(Provencher) planned, thought out and ran these services on the expense of these two women.” Defense attorney Paul Garrity said that his client should only serve probation because he has no prior record, saying that the “side business” was started because the downturn in the newspaper business resulted in a significant salary reduction. He called it a bad decision on Provencher’s part and said the district attorney’s recommendation was not reasonable. “To call these women victims is really overplaying this,” Garrity said. “That’s just not accurate.” He said the two women and Provencher were “equal players” in the operation, and said there is evidence that the two women still may be active prostitutes.

Of course they were equal players, and of course they’re still working as whores; why shouldn’t they? They probably have extensive client lists now, and if they get caught again they have learned how to play the victim card by pointing a finger at a driver, boyfriend or other convenient male. Assuming the threat accusation was a prosecutorial fabrication intended to paint him as a dangerous criminal, Provencher made three major mistakes that I can see; he took too high an agency fee (50% is excessive if he charged the girls for the room), should have changed hotels and enforced discretion, and should have provided a lawyer when the women were arrested. But his greed and stupidity don’t automatically convert hookers into innocent lambs, except in the eyes of predatory DAs employing trafficking rhetoric to score convictions.

How Old is Oldest? (March 12^th)

In this column I mentioned the blog The Scientific Fundamentalist and described a correspondence I had with its author, Satoshi Kanazawa. He was very interested in what I had to say, and told me he was going to do a follow-up column on what we discussed. Well, he published that column last Sunday night (March 27^th) and not only was I very flattered by his praise, but also very pleased at the huge amount of traffic which came from the links in his post! That influx enabled me to hit a milestone I’ve been slowly approaching for a few weeks now: 100,000 total views as of the morning of March 28^th. That’s still just a small cloud in the blogosphere, but it’s growing fast (116,208 at the time this was posted) and is a big step toward my first million. Thanks, Satoshi!

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December Updates

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Backpage, bad customers, Barbie, Bits and Pieces, censorship, Colorado, cops, Craigslist, cult of the child, dating, dirty, Hollywood, hysteria, internet, law, neofeminism, New York, Not So Different, pimps, porn, psychology, rape, Something Rotten In Sweden, stage names, stereotypes, survivors, Sweden, Swedish model, The Biggest Whores, The Red Umbrella, Think of the Children!, United Kingdom on December 20, 2010| 20 Comments »

In poison there is physic, and these news,
Having been well, that would have made me sick,
Being sick, have in some measure made me well. – William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2 (I, i)

A collection of links, comments and items relating to previous columns.

The Biggest Whores (September 6^th)

In this column I reported that Craigslist had bowed to governmental pressure and blocked its adult services section from being accessed in the United States, though it was still available to everyone outside the reach of American censorship. But now the website has apparently bowed to pressure from the Canadian government and prohibitionist groups and removed the section entirely, thus allowing all those who advertised in it to return to posting free and unmonitored ads in other sections of the website. An article in yesterday’s New York Post reported:

The popular classified ad website Craigslist has pulled the adult services section from its websites around the world; the section has been removed from international Craigslist sites in Canada, Asia, Europe, South America and Africa. The adult services section was removed from US Craigslist sites in September after complaints from 17 states that it facilitated prostitution. The section was replaced on US sites with the word “censored,” but its removal from international sites came without announcement or comment from Craigslist. A spokeswoman for the site declined to comment on the removal of the section.

Craigslist apparently believes this will silence the fanatics, and it certainly may as the crusaders move on to annoy Backpage. Of course, it’s also possible that a few of them will recognize that most of the whores who advertised on Craigslist are still there in the personals, massage, etc as they used to be and demand that Craigslist control them, such as by creating a ghetto in which their ads can be confined and then requiring payment so courts can order the info turned over to them. Oh, wait, that’s what they just forced them to close. Oops.

Think of the Children! (September 30^th)

In this column I wrote:

The dogma of [the Cult of the Child] preaches that children are as emotionally fragile as soap bubbles and the merest hint of sexual imagery before puberty can cause irreversible trauma; its adherents also believe that teenagers (whom they equate with “children”) should be lied to, spied on or even criminally prosecuted to prevent them from engaging in any kind of sexual behavior, and some even believe that adults should not be allowed any form of entertainment or reading material which is inappropriate for even the youngest child, on the grounds that a child “might see it” and thereby be petrified as if he had looked into the eyes of the Gorgon. Child cultists can be recognized by their stated belief that any degree of tyranny is acceptable “if it saves even one child,” and by their fondness for promoting unconstitutionally broad legislation lugubriously named after dead little girls.

Until the Cult of the Child again goes into decline, you can be sure we’ll keep seeing proposed legislation of this type.

Yesterday (October 20^th)

In this column I opined:

What’s going to be needed [to achieve decriminalization] is for some big moneybags like Bill Gates to get behind sex worker rights so we can advertise and thereby attract a bunch of empty-headed Hollywood stars who are looking for a new cause to adopt. In the minds of the hoi-polloi, the opinion of one celebrity who knows nothing about the subject is worth the life-experiences of a thousand veteran whores, and once the cause becomes “sexy” enough all of a sudden people will be coming out of the woodwork to support it.

Here’s a case in point from yesterday’s MTV News. Neither Lady Gaga nor Katy Perry have horses in this race; they’re not in the military, they’re not homosexual and they’re not male. Yes, it affects lesbians too, but let’s be honest here; the opposition to the repeal of DADT came overwhelmingly from men for reasons which should be obvious. Yet somehow, the public considers the opinions of pop-tarts with no personal experience in the issue to be more important than those of activists who actually know what they’re talking about.

Something Rotten In Sweden (November 13^th)

In this column I talked about the rise of “Swedish Model” rhetoric in American police departments; by pretending that all whores are degraded victims, they can hide the outrageous sexism of prostitution laws from the gullible. One example of this infiltration is the increasing popularity of “john schools”, government programs which hire brainwashed ex-streetwalkers to scream neofeminist victimization propaganda at men arrested for soliciting prostitutes. Brandy Devereaux recently published a column in which she reports on a recent proposal for one of these so-called “schools” in Colorado, then explains her ideas of what a real “john school” might be like.

Barbie (December 5th)

In my column on Barbie I mentioned that I played with mine as though she were an action figure, and then I saw this hilarious spoof advertisement for toys that, unfortunately, do not actually exist. For those who slept through 19^th-century English lit, I should mention that Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte avoided the Victorian prejudice against female authors by publishing their works under the male pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.

Not So Different (December 8^th)

For years now internet escorts have employed sites like Date Check to screen potential clients, and now our amateur sisters have gotten into the act with some of the very same sites, proving once again that the line between prostitution and dating is far too fine to justify criminalizing the former but not the latter. And just as governments think escorts are mental incompetents who must be protected from ourselves, so they apparently think the same about women who date online; New York’s “Internet Dating Safety Act” now requires dating sites to post common-sense safety tips, like “meet in a public place,” for those who are too dimwitted to be dating without a chaperone in the first place. And the nanny state being what it is, I’m sure other states (and eventually the federal government) will follow New York’s lead.

Bits and Pieces, Part Two (December 10^th)

For weeks there have been conflicting stories about what Julian Assange has actually been accused of, but now Sweden has finally bothered to release a report detailing the exact claims. Assange calls the case a “smear attempt” filled with “incredible lies,” but even if the report is exactly true (and it may very well be), that doesn’t change the fact that Sweden, as pointed out in Saturday’s column, doesn’t expend nearly this much energy catching alleged rapists who have not embarrassed governments.

The Red Umbrella (December 17^th)

I don’t really approve of the concept of “hate crimes”; after all, if a man kills me just because I’m in his way I am no less dead than if he kills me because he hates me. But if we’re going to have any “hate crime” laws at all, it’s only fair that whores be among the protected groups because, as we discussed on Friday, we get far more than our share of violence. Well, the city of Liverpool is now treating violence against sex workers as a “hate crime”; what a difference from the United States, where the police themselves are among the worst perpetrators of that very same crime!

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Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged cops, Craigslist, cult of the child, dirty, Hollywood, hysteria, law, Madonna/whore, masturbation, neo-Victorianism, porn, psychology, sex rays, stage names, stereotypes, stripping, teachers, Think of the Children! on September 30, 2010| 71 Comments »

The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet – when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round. – Elizabeth Bowen

The witch friend who writes the descriptions of pagan holidays for me pointed out a few months ago that Western Society has descended into a new Victorianism. As in the Victorian Era we have become shockingly hypocritical about sex and grant our governments tremendous power to suppress it while simultaneously spending tremendous amounts of time and money on it (Victorian London had the largest number of prostitutes per capita of any place and time in history). We have revived Victorian ideas of government-enforced temperance and “social progress”, and the Victorian “Cult of the Child” has returned with a vengeance. The persistent adult myth that children live in some sort of state of Divine Grace which must be protected at all costs and extended as far into adulthood as possible has experienced cyclic popularity at least since the time of the Ancient Greeks, but rarely has it been interpreted in the extreme manner which began in the 1980s. The dogma of this modern cult preaches that children are as emotionally fragile as soap bubbles and the merest hint of sexual imagery before puberty can cause irreversible trauma; its adherents also believe that teenagers (whom they equate with “children”) should be lied to, spied on or even criminally prosecuted to prevent them from engaging in any kind of sexual behavior, and some even believe that adults should not be allowed any form of entertainment or reading material which is inappropriate for even the youngest child, on the grounds that a child “might see it” and thereby be petrified as if he had looked into the eyes of the Gorgon. Child cultists can be recognized by their stated belief that any degree of tyranny is acceptable “if it saves even one child,” and by their fondness for promoting unconstitutionally broad legislation lugubriously named after dead little girls.

One of the earliest victims of this cult was comedian Paul Reubens, better known by the name of his famous character “Pee-Wee Herman”; in 1991 he was arrested in a raid of a Sarasota, Florida adult movie theater by “detectives” who perjured themselves by claiming that they had observed him masturbating yet gave erroneous details of his anatomy including the claim that he was left-handed. As regular readers know, vice cops habitually make up lurid stories in order to persecute people for consensual acts, but once the media got ahold of the story Reubens’ career was essentially over. His award-winning children’s show was pulled from television, his line of toys vanished from stores and self-proclaimed “child experts” appeared on television advising parents to tell their children that “Pee-Wee” had done a bad thing and must be punished for it (I never heard even one suggest telling kids about “innocent until proven guilty”)…all because an adult character actor out of costume had the bad luck to choose to take in an adult movie on the night some vice cops decided to get their jollies by arresting people there. Then just as he was beginning to emerge from a long period of seclusion, in 2002 Los Angeles police raided his home and charged him with “child pornography” after finding a 1960s era art photography book which included some teenage nudes. After two years of harassment all charges were dropped, but Reubens’ career is only now beginning to recover thanks largely to old fans who never deserted him and young adult fans who watched his show as children.

Reubens’ case is representative because he was never accused of any inappropriate behavior toward children; those who persecuted him seemed to feel that the mere fact that an adult man had been discovered in a harmless sexual pursuit (watching a legal adult movie in a legal public theater) made him somehow tainted, and that if children merely watched his shows or played with his toys their “innocence” might somehow be magically damaged. A similar mindset appears to be at work in the case of Melissa Petro, a 30-year-old art teacher in the Bronx who has been “reassigned” pending an “investigation” which will no doubt result in her suspension. The reason for this? She wrote an article for The Huffington Post in which she admitted to a brief flirtation with whoring.

The following article is adapted from an article in The New York Post and edited to correct for the Post’s lax journalistic standards by removing such judgmental tabloid terminology as “tattooed former hooker and stripper”, “sexcapades”, “shenanigans” and “money honey”.

The Post has learned that former sex worker Melissa Petro has been teaching art in a Bronx elementary school for three years, and though well-liked by students has perhaps unwisely posted online accounts of past sexual experiences. But earlier this month, she admitted in an essay to a short-lived job as a prostitute.

“From October 2006 to January 2007, I accepted money in exchange for sexual services I provided to men I met online in what was then called the ‘erotic services’ section of Craigslist.org,” wrote Petro on The Huffington Post, using her real name and picture. The attached biography identifies Petro, who has an MFA in creative nonfiction from The New School, as a “former sex worker, researcher, writer, educator, and feminist.”

Her revelation seems to have caused ignorant parents to believe that she is somehow different from the woman she was a few weeks ago. “I don’t want nobody that used to do that to be around my kid,” said Grace Ventura, whose son is in third grade. “People like that should not be allowed to be anywhere near children.” Yocelyn Quezada said perhaps Petro had “managed to turn her life around,” but she still fumed that a former prostitute was teaching two of her three kids. “She’s not a good role model. I do not want my daughters to find out about this,” Quezada said, “and I do not want my daughters to be around that kind of person.”

Despite predicting in one online posting that “that this would be a conversation I’d someday be compelled to have,” Petro declined twice to speak with The Post. Principal Kerry Castellano referred questions to the Department of Education’s press office, which said Petro had been reassigned to administrative duties pending an investigation. Petro’s posts also indicate that she was warned by at least two school staffers — including one administrator — that her refusal to be more cautious about her history could land her in hot water. “In an off the record conversation, a sympathetic administrator kindly asked if I couldn’t publish under a pseudonym. I wish, for her sake, I could,” Petro recently wrote in The Rumpus, an online magazine.

Petro, who earns $61,000 a year as a teacher, also wrote that a co-worker had warned her that some of her colleagues were beginning to Google her. “There have been lots of rumors going around about her for a while now,” one school worker told The Post. “I wouldn’t want my kid to be in a school where she is.”

Now, unlike many of my colleagues I can’t really say I feel sorry for Miss Petro; unlike Reubens, she went into her trouble by her own choice and with open eyes. Though she was only a whore for four months she certainly learned of the need for discretion in our profession, and by choosing to reveal her real name and picture she knew very well what would happen. I smell a lucrative book deal and perhaps even some sort of test case, and that makes it very difficult for me to think of her as a victim. What makes this case interesting is not the predictable results of her voluntary actions, but the reactions of the 21^st century Child Cultists the reporter obviously hand-picked for the story. Clearly, nobody thinks that third graders are reading the Huffington Post, and since nobody questioned her ability as a teacher they obviously believe that her sexual history somehow renders her magically taboo; “People like that should not be allowed to be anywhere near children,” huffs one parent in the story, as though sexuality were a radiation which might contaminate the tissue-paper bodies of children. Like the Victorians, this woman clearly conceives of whores as monsters incapable of feminine sensibilities.

And then there’s this story, paraphrased from an AP article:

Sesame Street announced that it won’t air a taped segment featuring pop star Katy Perry appearing with the popular Muppet Elmo. The clip was previewed on Youtube and apparently sparked considerable negative feedback from people who felt that her clothing was “inappropriate” for a kid’s show. Though the clip will not air and has been removed from the official Sesame Street YouTube channel, it is still available elsewhere on YouTube and on Perry’s website.

Watch the video and tell me that you see anything intrinsically unwholesome about it. Apparently some dirty-minded people think that the slight jiggle of Perry’s tits above the top of her dress will “traumatize” young children; if that’s the case I cause irreparable damage to dozens of kids every time I walk into Wal-Mart. The problem here isn’t the fact that (like every child’s own mother) Perry has mammary glands, but rather her provocative stage persona, which even though it isn’t displayed here still magically radiates from her image and can destroy the “innocence” of children through the television set.

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