Whiter Shade of Pale was a great song but you’ve gone too far in Nigeria. – Wise King Aido
This week, our videos are a couple of commercials. The first (via Zenon Evans) is a Danish PSA intended to encourage young people to vote; it was pulled after only 24 hours, not for its mockery of nanny-state micromanagement but rather for “sexism”. The second (via EconJeff, who also contributed “Tom Lehrer”) is a sweet ad for a new airport in a remote part of Turkey; you don’t need to speak the language to appreciate it. Everything down to the first video was provided by Radley Balko, and those between the videos by Jesse Walker (“headline”), Furry Girl (“Pygmalion”), Wikileaks (“Sweden”), Dave Barry (“crocodile”), Rick Horowitz (“electrocute” and “contempt”), Cop Block (“together”), Ally Fogg (“conspiracy”), and Grace (“libertarianism”).
I think I’m in favor of this but I would not want to go to court for a 5- or 10-year-old and say: “You’re charged with a misdemeanor” – Lula Davis-Holmes
A little busier this week, except for videos; still, I thought you’d enjoy this lovely example of why correlation does not equal causation, contributed by Pope Shakey. Everything above it is from Radley Balko, who also wrote the last one above the video; however, I gave credit to Rick Horowitz for first calling my attention to an earlier (but less powerful) report of the incident. The video was provided by Zander Falcon, and the links above it by Clarissa (“honest”), Michael Whiteacre (“important”), Jason Kuznicki (“garbage”), Jesse Walker (“hypocrites”), Grace (“guns”), and Gideon (“throat”).
Continuously doing what doesn’t work… – Nick Andre, “Stupid”
This was such a disappointing year for Halloween items, I’m glad I recycled a bunch of old ones for tomorrow’s column. Since I wasn’t about to let the occasion pass without a couple of spooky videos, I spent over 90 minutes yesterday screening candidates and found exactly three I thought worthwhile: the first one isn’t scary but it’s fun and spooky; the second is very subtle and mysterious and rewards close attention; the third I’ll share next week. Everything down to the first video was contributed by Jesse Walker, including the first of only three seasonal links; the other two appear directly after the first video and were provided by Aspasia and Nun Ya (who also gave us “headline of the week”). Grace supplied “knife”, “never call” and “meth”, Jason Kuznicki “WTF?”, Lenore Skenazy “student”, Jillian Keenan “names”, Amy Alkon “note”, Cop Block “tase” and Radley Balko “toy”.
…Benny Johnson from BuzzFeed…messaged me, asking…about…an innocent yet charming flirtation I had…with…mayor [Cory Booker] at the beginning of the year… the [resulting]…article…was cute and, to me, satirical…[then] calls and emails start pouring in from reporters. It was surreal. How could something so simple be seen as a scandal? Oh wait, I’m a stripper and nude model (how dare someone flirt with my kind!)…Gawker released a story…[implying] that…anybody I associate with is a bad person, especially men…strippers, or anyone in the adult industry, are real people, with real lives and real human relationships. What we do for income doesn’t mean we are doing those things 24 hours a day. Accountants don’t sit at home with calculators at the dinner table, nor do proctologists go around sticking their fingers in people’s butts at the grocery store…
A reader called Daz sent me a DVD I’ve been curious about for some time: Doctor Mordrid starring Jeffrey Combs, which was originally meant to be an adaptation of Marvel’s supernatural superhero Doctor Strange. Thank you, Daz!
The Silk Road, a Web based black market for…narcotics…and other illicit goods, has been shut down by the FBI, and its alleged mastermind, Ross William Ulbricht, has been arrested…I can’t help but conclude…that the world is actually going to be a more dangerous place in [its] absence…The FBI…[wrote] “the site has sought to make conducting illegal transactions…as easy and frictionless as shopping…at mainstream e-commerce websites”…compared to the epidemic violence that has characterized the drug trade for the entirety of the War on Drugs…that…[seems] like a relative utopia…[and] successor sites…are…already up and running…
…Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, the friends who became household names when the Profumo affair was exposed in 1963, are no longer even on speaking terms…[and have] not seen [one another] for three decades…Rice-Davies has leant her support to Lloyd Webber in the making of Stephen Ward, a stage show about the society osteopath who also played a pivotal role in the scandal…
A new…proposal would isolate…strip clubs in industrial areas…City administration is recommending a 160-metre separation for adult entertainment venues from residential neighbourhoods, schools, parks, childcare centres, preschools…recreational facilities…[and] other adult entertainment venues…”You don’t [get] more street crime because of strip clubs,” said Mariana Valvarde, a professor of criminology at the University of Toronto…”It’s a myth”…Saskatoon’s proposed bylaw would [also] require [strippers] to be licensed…
…Saskatchewan…does NOT allow nudity in a business that serves alcohol…[and] this is NOT changing…[the government’s own website states] “full frontal nudity will continue to be prohibited”…[only] wet t-shirt contests and striptease without nudity will be allowed…[but] the public AND the media…are reacting as though the opposite is the case…
A plan to protect Oslo prostitutes…has been dropped after [officials] ruled it would violate people’s privacy…Bjørg Norli, director of Prosentret, said…”The problem is that buying sex in Norway is illegal. We would have been keeping a register of criminals, which the police would have been able to demand access to”…
…Sex workers from three flats in Soho were evicted…after police issued enforcement notices on landlords warning they could be prosecuted if they were found to be allowing “immoral activities”…On [October 9th] sex workers and activists…gathered outside the offices of Soho Estates, one of the main property owners in the area, and called for them to “stand up” to police. “Soho has always been one of the safest places in the country for women to work”…said Niki Adams from the English Collective of Prostitutes…Members of the local Soho Society said the character of Soho was under threat from developers…
When it awarded the Palme d’Or to Blue Is the Warmest Colour, the Cannes Film Festival jury took the unusual step of sharing the prize between its director Abdellatif Kechiche, and its two principal actresses Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos…but…the actresses were apparently unhappy with the director’s methods…Seydoux [said] “We had fake pussies on…I don’t make love on screen…it was kind of humiliating sometimes, I was feeling like a prostitute”…
Alicia Beltran found herself handcuffed, shackled…and detained in an inpatient drug treatment facility for being honest about a medical history that included past dependency on prescription painkillers. The State of Wisconsin provided an attorney for her fetus, but not for her. Without evidence of harm to either herself or the fetus, Alicia was made a ward of the state, all her rights and liberties suspended – including her right to have an abortion if that had been what she wanted…
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was an 18th-century biologist who believed that characteristics acquired within an individual creature’s lifetime could be passed to its descendants; this was among the first steps toward evolutionary theory, but was disproved about a century ago. However, certain political cults (such as Soviet communism) still clung to it long afterward as a pseudoscientific means of supporting their beliefs, and apparently Swedish state neofeminism is among them:
Around the world, women are on average shorter than men. Purely biological evidence suggests that it should be the opposite…if women generally were larger risks associated with childbirth would…decrease…New theories suggest that the imbalance of power and discrimination underlie the size differences…we unconsciously give boys more food than girls, making the size difference between the sexes…persist over generations…
If this were true, the size difference would have vanished by the late 20th century in Western countries, where food has not generally been scarce in generations. But it must please neofeminists tremendously to believe that if not for “Patriarchy”, women would be bigger and stronger than men.
…As…governments have imposed…restrictions on where sex offenders can live or even set foot, members of this highly stigmatized group…have formed associations…to [argue]…that indiscriminate laws…are unconstitutional and ineffective…“I find it very offensive that…sex offenders are trying to defeat the measures we have put in place to protect children,” said Nina Salarno Ashford …with Crime Victims United. “They created their own issues…somebody was assaulted, in many cases a child”…[prosecutor] Susan Kang Schroeder…[said] “The pro-sex-offender lobby likes to bandy about percentages, as if even 1 percent is acceptable”…
The dysphemisms and lies should seem familiar. Crime Victims United are vengeful badge-lickers who support mass incarceration and the abrogation of rights of the accused; the pretense that public urination, prostitution and sex while teenage are forms of “assault” is typical for them, as is pretending most “victims” are children. And branding those fighting for human rights “The pro-sex offender lobby” is right out of the prohibitionist playbook.
…Kaitlyn Hunt…entered no contest pleas to…misdemeanor battery and felony interference with child custody…[she will] remain in jail until December 20, followed by three years of felony supervision…she will not be branded a convicted felon or registered sex offender and can ask for her case to be sealed or expunged…
…21-year-old Matthew E. Lyons approached [a] woman…[bird-watching] in a [Florida] gazebo…Lyons repeatedly complimented the woman…[when she said] she was not interested…in…sex…Lyons…threw [her] to the floor…and pulled off her shorts and underwear…[but fled after he] was unable to pull on a condom…Lyons admitted meeting with the woman but said he thought she was a prostitute…
Police in [Sunrise]…have hit upon a surefire way to make millions. They sell cocaine. [Cops] and their army of informants lure big-money drug buyers…from [all over the Western Hemisphere]…then bust the buyers and seize their cash and cars…the…money…fuels huge overtime payments for the undercover officers…and cash rewards for the confidential informants…one femme fatale informant [made] more than $800,000 over the past five years…Last year, the city raked in $2 million…the year before…twice that…
…“The World’s Largest Sugar Daddy Dating Website” says it has recorded a 50 percent jump in average daily sign-ups since the start of the government shutdown…“We usually have a lull in September and October,” Seeking Arrangement’s public relations manager Jennifer Gwynn told NPR…“Half of the new members are single moms, so we’re thinking that it’s tied directly to the government shutdown, since programs like WIC…have been stalled”…
Lest you forget: “pimp” is copese for husband, driver, landlord, roommate, service owner, bodyguard, phone operator, parent…
…Lindsey Roberson, a [North Carolina] assistant district attorney, said…if [whores] complete certain mandated steps, the charges will be dropped…they [must] accept responsibility, go through trauma counseling, a vocational assessment, and – if needed – substance abuse treatment…Thom Goolsby…said [his] new law makes North Carolina the “toughest state in the union on pimps and johns”…
So women are infantilized and brainwashed and men are “hammered”.
…the policy…is a paternalistic perception that strips women of agency in an attempt to protect them from their own choices. “Saving” sex workers, after arresting and arraigning them, will not accomplish the court’s goals…special courts fail to recognize the people who are not hurting themselves or anyone else, but are criminals only by law…sex workers are potentially human trafficking’s most effective foes, as they are ideally situated to identify sex slavery and alert the authorities. Or they would be if they did not risk arrest and prosecution for doing so…
It’s not something you expect to hear from a women’s rights group: our prostitutes are better than yours. But that’s the tone struck by Equality Now in their new campaign against United Nations recommendations that sex work be decriminalized. Claiming that the UN “ignores survivors of prostitution,” Equality Now and their allied anti-prostitution organizations have offered their own experts who have worked in the sex trade – who all also happen to agree with them that prostitution must remain illegal…despite evidence that illegality is dangerous, and despite even sex workers’ own demands. This is why you will find a former prosecutor…now leading this ostensibly human rights campaign…
Sex workers consider the promotion of the Swedish model and other forms of criminalization not just part of an ongoing “debate” on sex work, but a matter of life and death. – Melissa Gira Grant
“A West Virginia sheriff raped a teenager and sodomized her with a cucumber, threatened to kill her if she told, and subjected at least five other women to forced sex, at least once in a courthouse…Brittany Mae Keene sued Barbour County Sheriff John Wesley Hawkins and the Barbour County Commission…[who] essentially let Hawkins conduct a reign of sexual terror against women in his custody…” Hawkins’ victims ranged in age from 16 to 19.
A [Polish] prostitute with HIV has been arrested for…having unprotected sex with clients [although]…she knew she was HIV positive…Fellow sex workers tipped off cops about the woman over fears that her actions would give prostitutes a bad [name]. But officers only arrested her after two of her clients came forward and admitted they had tested positive for HIV…
Kristin Davis is running for office again, this time for New York City comptroller against her old client Eliot Spitzer. She was interviewed in The National Review by Charles Cooke (himself an advocate of legalization), and though she claims to be a libertarian she also seems to be advocating the sort of avails and bawdy house laws which may soon be struck down in Canada because they endanger sex workers. Every time she opens her mouth, she reaffirms her membership in my Hall of Shame.
The law doesn’t care if you profit from sex workers, as long as you don’t have any direct contact or actually help us in any way. In a new French video game players manipulate a cartoonish, stereotyped streetwalker who must make $150,000 to “escape her pimp” by performing fake orgasm sounds into a microphone and avoiding hazards like cops and STDs (no skill involved in the latter because whores are just stupid victims of fate). The writer of the linked review also profits by using various prohibitionist tropes to save himself the effort of original thought.
Anthony Weiner found himself caught in another sexting scandal…like the one that destroyed his congressional career, but…won’t drop out of the race for mayor of New York…Weiner admitted sending a woman sexually explicit photos and messages…more than a year after he resigned from the House in disgrace for the same sort of behavior…
Another example of cops’ filthy efforts to subvert the means by which sex workers attract business and keep ourselves safe: “…a Long Island couple [was arrested for]…running an international escort service called Aphrodite Companions…Vincent and Melissa Lombardo…are currently being held without bond…the only basis…was…postings on…The Erotic Review…”
A South Carolina man targeted a sex offender at random, killed him and his wife and later told deputies he planned to kill others on the state’s sex registry…Jeremy Moody and his wife, Christine, were arrested and charged with murder…Moody only knew 59-year-old Charles Parker in passing, but came to the mechanic’s…home…with plans to kill him…Surveillance cameras outside Parker’s home showed Moody and his wife driving up…and popping the hood on their car as if it wasn’t working…Gretchen Parker wasn’t specifically targeted, but was killed because she was in the house…
…UCLA researchers say sex addiction does not appear to be a disorder…Nicole Prause and her colleagues monitored…volunteers’ brains while showing them erotic images. “If they indeed suffer from hypersexuality…their brain response to visual sexual stimuli could be expected to be higher, in much the same way that the brains of cocaine addicts have been shown to react to images of the drug”…Prause…thinks that so-called sex rehabs should be examined…
Two readers sent presents for my third anniversary (they arrived while I was in Las Vegas, so I didn’t know about them until after I got home last Sunday): Kevin Wilson sent Unlearning Liberty, and Krulac sent Absolutely Mad and Blak and Blu. Thanks so very much to both of you!
Make a note of this one, because you won’t often see a judge side with a sex worker against cops:
A federal judge has ruled that Nebraska cops must return over $1 million confiscated at a traffic stop from a woman who saved the money $1 at a time during her 15 year career as an exotic dancer…Tara Mishra, 33…began putting aside her earnings when she started dancing at age 18…to start her business and get out of…stripping…State troopers confiscated the money in March 2012 when they pulled over Rajesh and Marina Dheri…[who] had been given the cash so they could buy a nightclub in New Jersey. Mishra would own half of the business and the Dheris would own the other half…police did not find any evidence of drug activity…and…analysis found only trace elements of illegal drugs on the cash…[the judge] ordered that Mishra receive cash or a check in the value of $1,074,000 with interest.
Another supposed “victim” is caged to force her cooperation in the state’s ugly little morality play: “[An Illinois] woman who claims she was forced to work as a prostitute for her boyfriend remains held…without…bail because she is considered a flight risk and might not return to testify in her boyfriend’s trial…”
Though the story is somewhat amusing, note that “end demand” policies turn innocent whores into unwilling Judas goats: “A man caught with a prostitute in his car told police she was there to show him where to buy tomatoes…officers found the [known sex worker] sitting inside Muhammad Ikhlaq’s car while he withdrew £20 from a cash machine, which he said was to pay for tomatoes…”
The Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of Charity, Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, and Good Shepherd Sisters will not apologise to survivors of the Magdalene laundries…Neither will [they] make a financial contribution to the Government’s reparations scheme…Co-operation voluntarily given does not compel the nuns in any legal sense. Their negative response invalidates the Government’s assertion that survivors are being afforded restorative justice. There is no justice without the nuns’ apology and/or financial reparation…the orders expect an amnesty for gross human rights violations…
Lest you forget, these same orders still receive tremendous amounts of aid and political support from the Irish government for their anti-whore scheme Ruhama.
Just in case you think it’s only Las Vegas “authorities” who hate whores so much they’re willing to make themselves look like idiots by parroting ludicrous prohibitionist drivel, here’s an unusually-ridiculous example from Reno:
An increasing number of the young women…began working as prostitutes while in their teens. They are manipulated by men who control every aspect of their lives…Some girls are branded – or tattooed – with their pimp’s name…others are forced to perform while their children are held ransom, usually at gunpoint…Girls as young as 11 are being exploited…the average age…is 14…Since 2002, the FBI and local law enforcement agencies have rescued about 100 children identified as possible victims of juvenile sex trafficking…That number does not include the adult women being trafficked, which experts say would be impossible to produce because many women don’t acknowledge that they are under the control of a pimp…[Ron] Chalmers heads the…[police division] that focuses on these types of crimes…about 10 years ago, the women arrested…were generally in their 30s to 40s [and] were drug addicts, he said. But today, the prostitution demographics are completely different…They’re much younger than they used to be, he said…”A significant number of what we see, 80 to 90%, are being exploited – forced into the lifestyle”…
You may remember that the claims made in the “Satanic Panic” similarly became much more extreme, bizarre and demonstrably false as the hysteria drew closer to the point of implosion. That last bit is more than just Maslow’s Hammer at work; it’s an example of the incredible mathematical and sociological illiteracy of hysterics. Whenever a person tells you there’s been a major demographic shift in any human behavior in only one decade – from nearly nothing to “80 or 90%” – it’s a safe bet the speaker is an imbecile who is incapable of considering even rudimentary thought experiments like “where did all the old ones go?” We see the same principle at work under the Swedish model, which claims to have dramatically decreased the number of men who have ever paid for sex.
The sex workers in the Solutions Not Punishment Coalition (SNapCO), the Atlanta group which defeated the proposal to banish arrested sex workers from the city, need to get control of their “allies”; not only is the group supporting involuntary diversion programs, its spokeswoman Misty Novitch is belching up the “average debut at thirteen” myth for the media.
Yet another religiously-based “diversion program” chock full of prohibitionist rhetoric which claims to “help” streetwalkers while refusing to question the justice of the laws by which cops repeatedly victimize them: “Prostituted women” were all sexually abused as children, pimps give us drugs to control us, blah blah blah blah blah…
Council bosses have [suspended] half a dozen [Edinburgh sauna] licences following a string of police raids…[in] a radical shift from the typically pragmatic approach to prostitution which…[kept] sex workers safer and off the streets…Peter Donoghue, 69, a former sauna operator…said: “It was a lot of nonsense. Some girls have worked at the saunas for ten or 12 years. They’ll simply work for escort agencies instead. We’re going to appeal, but I don’t believe we have a chance”…
[Kenyan] women…accused commercial sex workers of invading the town and “stealing” their men…[they] are planning to drive the twilight girls out claiming they are spreading sexually transmitted diseases. The women said the sex workers have taken their men and they are left cold and lonely on their marital beds…sex workers who dress scantily have created a brothel…where secondary school and university students go for cheap sex instead of concentrating on their studies…even primary school children have fallen into the traps…
I was a bit timid about the idea of going into a conference that was specifically about sex, but my passion against human trafficking led me to go…with…my mom…When I entered…I was…greeted by a woman with such a cheerful presence and smile, that it put me off guard. In fact, this was the common air of everyone there: happiness. Everywhere I looked I found people wearing bright colors, hugging, laughing, and enjoying themselves. I initially thought that at a Sex Worker’s Conference that it was going to be the exact opposite. I was expecting victims — people just out of the Taken film, tears that warned of a gruesome past, and consoling. There was none of that in sight. The media and society has always presented the sex industry as this taboo area…where [the] only people who were in this profession were forced to be…
Caty Simon of Tits and Sass interviewed Kemal Ayrikotu of the Red Umbrella Sexual Health and Human Rights Association on the cultural background to the murder of Dora Oezer; Ayrikotu discusses the lack of rights for both sex workers and transgenders, and criticizes LGBT activists who wish to stress that Dora was a transwoman while ignoring that she was a whore (despite the two being nearly synonymous in Turkey). Meanwhile, Melissa Gira Grant wrote on the protests for both Dora and Jasmine: “If you passed by the Turkish or Swedish consulates in New York on [July 19th], you may have seen…sex workers and their supporters holding red umbrellas…the…action accompanied rallies in 36 cities and on four continents…demanding an end to the stigma and violence against sex workers’ communities…”
Looking to send her nerdy son off to Harvard in style, this helicopter parent to end all helicopter parents has taken to Craigslist’s “casual encounters” section to seek a young woman who can help claim the “socially awkward” boy’s virginity, and turn him into a “cool college kid.” The plan is simple: You, a 19 to 20-something seductress, pick up a pair of complimentary tickets to “some great concert,” where your target, a handsome 18-year-old varsity cross country team member with “almost zero body fat” will be waiting unsuspectingly…
Anu Mokal wasn’t breaking the law when she was out walking…when a police officer viciously attacked her…beating her severely…SANGRAM and…Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP)…demanded that Maharashtra politicians investigate the beating and institute…a grievance commission to address abuses of sex workers’ human rights…the attack echoed a deeper culture of oppression that sex workers face around the world at all levels of society…funded in large part by the foreign aid that pours into the Global South from Washington’s coffers…the Supreme Court recently dealt a potentially lethal blow to the so-called “anti-prostitution loyalty oath”…[for] U.S.-based groups…[but it] still looms large over the Global South…SANGRAM…has proudly defied PEPFAR…but…faces a political climate suffused with the pernicious pressures of America’s “soft power.” When aid comes with political strings attached, poor governments are pressured to mirror Washington’s culture wars…
Sex workers have been fighting to enjoy their right to dignity. For this to happen, they say, prostitution has to be decriminalised…Ntokozo Yingwana, of the Sex Workers Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT)…[argues] that it is not sex-work but the stigma and discrimination that sex workers have to endure that strips them of their dignity…Marlise Richter, a public health researcher with the International Centre for Reproductive Health, said: “[The] evidence shows that the decriminalisation of sex work would serve public health and individual sex worker health best. Criminalisation of any aspect of sex work, including [the Swedish model]…means that the sex industry is driven underground and sex workers and their clients away from health, social and legal services”…The World Health Organisations (WHO) recommends that all states decriminalise sex work. It then becomes easier to take action to protect sex workers from HIV and sexually transmitted diseases…
Once again: the existence of a movie featuring “lurid tall tales” about sex work does no more to prove them than the existence of The Wizard of Oz proves the existence of flying monkeys and talking scarecrows:
…Alexander Perlman…logged thousands of miles and hundreds of hours to make [Lot Lizard, his new documentary about truck stop prostitution]…braving roach motels, crack highs, and homicidal pimps…None of the women…profiled had pimps…and…one of the concerns [Perlman] had…[was] that selecting them downplays the prevalence of pimps and trafficking in the industry. There’s an amazing organization called Truckers Against Trafficking that addresses the issue…
In other words, they couldn’t find any “trafficking” but it must exist because an NGO says so.
A plan by the Social Affairs Ministry to close down 50 red-light districts across Indonesia has caused nervousness among inhabitants of…Sunan Kuning…one of the ministry’s five main targets in a crackdown on prostitution…Ari Istiyadi, field coordinator of NGO Griya Asa PKBI Semarang… expressed his fear that the closure of the prostitution center would create new problems in the social and health fields…
…Polk County, Florida [is] unique in the nation for its unadulterated hostility to legal pornography and the people who make it…[its main city is] Lakeland…[whose] police department…is at the center of a sex scandal…[involving] a…crime analyst, Sue Eberle, who was apparently having sex with nearly a dozen of her co-workers…Coercing people into having sex is something sex traffickers do, but in Lakeland it was apparently the pastime for the police…the person asked by legislators to help get Lakeland PD “on track” is none other than…Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd…
Three people who allegedly sourced more than 100 sex workers for Melbourne brothels would be likely to continue operating their lucrative syndicate…a magistrate…said [so] Mae Ja Kim, Moon Ja Kim and Huan Wen Ye were denied bail…Investigations are continuing into possible human trafficking and sex slavery…workers were allegedly transported to Australia, given accommodation, and driven between there and the brothels by about 10 “overseers”…The worker was paid $75 for each appointment, with the syndicate paid at least 50 per cent of the rest…
Spitzer’s return to politics has accomplished at least one good: it has emboldened journalists to speak out against criminalization. Here’s Michael Smerconish of MSNBC:
…we should have an adult conversation about the laws [Spitzer] violated…it’s time to bring the world’s oldest profession aboveboard in communities willing to allow it…let government share in the revenue, but otherwise stay out of the private affairs of consenting adults. Beyond the role of the taxman, prostitution doesn’t warrant the involvement of federal authorities…[to catch him] “they used 5,000 wiretaps. They intercepted 6,000 e-mails. Every hour spent on going after prostitution is an hour that could have been spent on going after…people who victimize”…another argument in support of legalizing…[is that] some among us are never going to find companionship for a variety of reasons…it can’t be healthy for some people to feel the amassed pressure of [sexual] images, and have their personal expectations go unfulfilled…
…Disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner and disgraced former governor Eliot Spitzer have come back…would the same kind of comeback be possible for the women on the other side of their scandals…could a former prostitute ever run for office and have a real shot, the way that Spitzer, former patron of prostitutes, now does?…Kristin Davis is also running for comptroller…she previously ran…the escort service that Spitzer once used…[but] her bids for office…are seen as little more than publicity stunts…Linda Fondren was a candidate for mayor in Vicksburg, Miss., when it was revealed that she worked as a prostitute decades ago…she broke no laws…was a nationally recognized leader in the field of public health…[and is] intelligent, articulate, telegenic and able to inspire people…[but] lost the primary…Tracy Quan…said…that even for legal sex work, such as exotic dancing, there is a double standard when it comes to stigmatization…a woman who works her way through law school as a stripper would have a tough time being elected to the…Senate but a man who visited strip clubs while in law school would not find that to be an obstacle to the White House…feminists share as much of the blame for this double standard as misogynists…[because they] are dismissive and suspicious of other women who have used their bodies and their beauty to succeed in a professional capacity…
Caty Simon of Tits and Sass interviewed Pye Jakobsson of Rose Alliance about Jasmine’s death and the horrible Swedish model which created the climate that enabled it. Nor was she the only sex worker whose recent stigma-provoked murder has angered sex workers around the world: “A 24-year-old trans woman was stabbed to death in her own home in Turkey…[on] 9 July…Dora Oezer…was found dead by her housemate…sex work is not illegal in Turkey but [because] they are not allowed to work in regulated brothels, trans woman are often left in vulnerable and dangerous positions…” Activists used social media to coordinate “Justice for Jasmine and Dora” protests in many cities yesterday, such as this one in London.
Nepal’s Supreme Court has accused a prominent anti-trafficking group of detaining a woman against her will so she could undergo counselling for being a lesbian…The court ordered the release of the woman from a centre run by…Maiti Nepal…which has been championed by…Joanna Lumley and…Demi Moore…The group’s founder, Anuradha Koirala, was awarded a “CNN Heroes Award”…in 2010…and Moore hosted a television programme called “Nepal’s Stolen Children” highlighting the organisation’s work…
When “whore as criminal” and “whore as victim” collide: “…a [Nebraska] human trafficking bill…would [have given] immunity from prosecution to [minors]…arrested for prostitution…Amanda McGill…offered an amendment that…would place [them]…under the jurisdiction of a juvenile court…[for] treatment…” Because indefinite commitment is so much better than a criminal charge.
A woman…in Connecticut [called] police to complain about how she was being treated by a pimp…they did not find the pimp…but…did find…Jennifer Lowery with a…customer. Police charged Lowery with prostitution and 60-year-old Ricard Burford…with patronizing a prostitute…Lowery told them she…decided to conduct some business while waiting…
Melbourne artist Paul Yore is likely to be charged with producing child pornography following the seizure of several of his art works…which allegedly depicted sexual acts with children’s faces superimposed on them…Yore described the…seizure as “very small fragments of a collage of…thousands of different objects…basically junk I’ve been collecting”…
…Mary Setterholm…was a teenaged prostitute…[she] will graduate from Harvard Divinity School (HDS) with…a plan to help others find their way back from the edge of despair…She married young and had five children. The union was rocky and abusive. Once divorced, she returned to prostitution as a…way to take back some control…In 2003, a meeting with an inspiring nun named Sheila McNiff helped Setterholm to confront the abuse she had suffered as a child at the hands of clergy, and guide her back to education…Setterholm…[founded] Serenity Sisters…[a] support group…for exploited women and recovering prostitutes…She hopes to enter a Ph.D. program…expanding on her…thesis work, which explored the way prostitutes have been used in religious teachings as a stand-in for deviant or disbelieving members of society…
…Over the last 30 years…Iran is…moving in the [sexual] direction of Britain and the United States…Declining birth rates…signal a wider acceptance of contraceptives…the country has experienced the fastest drop in fertility ever recorded in human history…the average marriage age for men has gone up from 20 to 28 years old…and…women…five years later than a decade ago…The rate of divorce…has also skyrocketed…[previously] sex workers were virtually invisible…Now…there [are] close to 85,000…in Tehran alone…
…Adam was, until recently, making a living as a self-employed web designer in South Carolina…he was hired to make a porn site…[with male] masturbation videos…after the site had been online for…24 days, Adam’s home was raided by [a SWAT team] and all of his computer equipment was seized…Adam [said] “the [customer] was [allegedly]…paying guys to let him give them blowjobs and film it…it definitely wasn’t…on the site…I wasn’t expecting four armed guys to bust into my mother’s home and steal all of my assets. They’ve…ruined me…”
Note that Adam wasn’t charged with anything; the police stole his entire business to be indefinitely held as “evidence” of someone else’s misdemeanor.
…every defendant who has gone to trial has either been acquitted or had their conviction thrown out. The government’s case was weakened when…a key witness…refused to testify, saying he is afraid for himself and for his family. So prosecutors charged Abdullahi Farah with two counts of contempt of court and obstruction of a child sex trafficking case. He was convicted…in April…and…is facing a maximum of 20 years…for the obstruction conviction…and…life in prison [for contempt]…Legal experts say…it’s almost unheard of for prosecutors to come down so hard on one of their own witnesses…
Considering that “agents said Farah gave conflicting accounts and sketchy details” and the judge “said he had problems with Farah’s credibility”, I think the truth is obvious: sleazebag prosecutor Van Vincent tried to pretend a bunch of petty thugs were a gigantic conspiracy, but drew a judge who wouldn’t roll over for him and is taking it out on the only available scapegoat. Consider the prospect of life in prison for a contempt charge, and then tell me the US isn’t a police state yet.
Paladin Deception Services, the self-proclaimed…”Leading Fictitious Reference Provider,” can “put together almost any fictitious scenario that you require”…Our agency can provide you with…testimonials over the phone in the local area code that you require. We’re confidential, professional, innovative, and affordable. Most importantly, we keep it legal…For only $54 (and $19.95 for each additional month), you get set up with a phone number, alibi verification and even options including…creation of a fictitious boss…
Melissa Gira Grant published a short photoessay on sex worker participation in the current demonstrations in Istanbul, in earlier demonstrations in Madrid, New York and Mexico City, and in the Lyon church-occupation that launched the sex worker rights movement.
…On 30 May 2013…Ye Haiyan was detained by police after being assaulted at her home…[she] is an advocate for the rights of sex workers and people living with HIV/AIDS…[who] has been consistently targeted…because of her work…[she] managed to send out a series of messages on Twitter appealing for help…
…politicians have called a roundtable meeting…to look for ways to control street prostitution in South Auckland. The meeting…may lead to amending or abandoning a bill…to give…the Auckland…police powers to arrest both prostitutes and clients who engage in commercial sex in a banned area…
Adult entertainment attorney Marc Randazza filed two civil cases against revenge porn site UGotPosted.com on counts of distributing child pornography and failing to comply with 18 U.S.C. § 2257…the site posted…“sexually explicit images” of 14-year-old Abigail Talley’s [genitals]…2257 requires individuals or entities hosting adult content to inspect a government-issued form of ID to determine the name and age of every performer featured and to keep records of such information…had the defendants complied, it would have been apparent that the plaintiff was a minor…Despite the ongoing case, and intervention by an FBI agent…the defendants have yet to…remove the photos…
…Kyle Evans with the Murfreesboro [Tennessee] Police Department…said sex offenders tend to congregate at hotels…”It meets the statutory requirements for them when they can’t live elsewhere”…The TBI confirmed 16 convicted sex offenders listed their home address at the Regal Inn…[and] said there is nothing illegal about hotels renting to sex offenders…
…Twenty-five years after it first indicted [Jesse] Friedman, the Nassau County [New York] District Attorney’s Office…could completely exonerate him. Out of a dozen major child-sex-ring cases that roiled the country between 1984 and 2005, Jesse’s is one of the last convictions still standing…in November of 1987…postal inspectors intercepted…child pornography addressed to [his father]…police admitted that not one of the 30 children they…interviewed…reported any kind of abuse. But…they kept re-interviewing the children—some as many as 15 times, and often for hours at a stretch…The children began to buckle, telling tales of extraordinary abuse…the Friedmans’ computer class was [claimed to be] a nonstop nightmare of coerced sex acts, where Arnold and Jesse abused kids…in plain view of other students…playing “naked leapfrog,” sodomizing kids as they jumped from one to the next…[children were supposedly] molested an average of six times during every one of the 20 90-minute classes they took…
…Of those who report their rapes, around 4–5% also describe experiencing orgasm. But the true numbers are likely much higher…[one] child therapist…[wrote on Reddit]…“There have been very few studies on orgasm during rape, but the research so far shows numbers from 10% to over 50% having this experience…In professional discussions, colleagues report similar numbers”…Despite what many rapists would like to believe, arousal does not mean that an assault was enjoyable or that a victim was asking for it…our bodies respond to sex…entirely without our permission or intention. Orgasm during rape isn’t an…expression of pleasure. It’s…a physical response…like breathing, sweating, or an adrenaline rush. Therapists commonly use the analogy of tickling. While tickling can be pleasurable, when it is done against someone’s wishes it can be very unpleasant experience…[yet] the one being tickled will continue laughing…
Sex trafficking is real in South Dakota and won’t…be tolerated…”I still think there are a lot of naive people…who don’t feel it happens in their community but it is happening in their community,” Dawn Stenberg…of the Junior League of Sioux Falls…said…awareness…includes…hotel employees watching for young women who frequently come through their doors, and banks watching for suspicious transactions…[such as] “backpage.com transactions. They see a lot of that illegal activity through that,” Stenberg said…
If that kind of surveillance state doesn’t scare you, consider instead the rather disgusting sexual fantasies of Florida cops and bureaucrats: “Orange County announced the creation of a task force aimed at stopping human trafficking in central Florida…Some of the victims…forced into prostitution are as young as 12 years old…most of the victims are children…Kathy…was 11 when she was sold to sex traffickers before being rescued by the FBI…”
Informally known as “mooning,” exposing one’s buttocks is a practice often intended as a sign of defiance or disrespect. – Will Greenlee
Another quiet week, and I’m disappointed there weren’t even any memorable April Fool pranks except for this one from REI discovered by my husband. That is, of course, unless you count has-been comedian Jim Carrey making an April Fool of himself over gun control a few days early; today’s first video mocks the fact that opposing vaccination (as Carrey does) probably kills far more people than guns do. The second video continues our Star Trek theme of the past few weeks, and was provided by Grace; everything above the first video was contributed by Radley Balko, and those between the two by Jolene Parton, Popehat, Lenore Skenazy (two items), Jesse Walker, Amy Alkon and Aspasia (in that order).
Your typical “good feminist” engages in “sex-positive activism” by assuring one another that they are bold “revolutionaries” for watching punk porn or buying buttplugs…mainstream feminists know that you don’t change the world with a Hitachi Magic Wand. – Furry Girl
Melissa Gira Grant presents an excellent short history of the first 200 years of prostitution in America, “When Prostitution Wasn’t a Crime”; New Orleans is of course prominently featured, but is by no means the only city covered. Grant looks at how whores were often the first women in colonies, how cops and politicians harassed us before our trade itself was criminalized, and how the social purity movement established criminalization as the American norm.
Most California cities can no longer afford to persecute hookers, so San José has had to fall on that reliable fund-raising technique, lying: “…San Jose Police…acquired a human trafficking grant from the federal government…[which funded] a very successful…sting operation…[arresting] johns and pimps…is extremely important, because they are the ones who…force these women [into] illicit activity…”
The US Department of Justice reported that every two minutes a child is trafficked for…sexual exploitation in the United States…Parents, stepparents or guardians force their children to perform sex acts in exchange for money or items of value…a sex victim who was abused throughout her childhood [says] “Normally it’s in places where there’s lots of people, anytime when there’s a ball game”…child sex [traffickers] are ordinary people…[but] force their children to take addictive drugs and usually threaten them…In 2011 the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) revealed a study that showed there were more than 100 cases reported of child sex trafficking in Knox County…Tennessee…
I described reading neofeminist hate-sites as “like opening the viewing window into a padded cell.” Well, a Tweeter named Caprica collected this group interaction from the recent “RadFem 2013” convention; the specific focus of this malice is transgender people, but there’s plenty for men as well. Warning: don’t look if you are easily disturbed by vile, psychopathic, literally genocidal hatred.
The madam of a nationwide Korean prostitution ring…was sentenced to [two years for] immigration fraud…Miyoung Roberts, 42…arranged illegal immigration for more than 24 Korean women who…[worked] at…nightclubs…[and] counseled…[them] on how to avoid detection by immigration authorities. She set up apartments…and supervised some of [their] prostitution…Roberts…gained U.S. citizenship through a fake marriage…
…sex-positive, pro-autonomy, anti-victimhood feminists are a small minority compared to all the other feminists they…dismiss as “not real feminists.” Large national feminist organizations and women’s studies departments are not run on “good feminist” principles, they are run by the oppressive and anti-sexuality feminists who represent mainstream feminist values. “Good feminists” aren’t the ones being brought in as experts by governments to write new anti-sex worker and anti-porn laws…Feminists who have any shred of influence invariably use it to be “bad feminists,” whether it’s criminalizing indoor prostitution in Rhode Island or holding tenured women’s studies jobs so they can terrorize impressionable young women into feeling victimized by the world around them…
…the Dominican Sisters of Peace in Columbus [Ohio] have joined forces with SOAP…[in claiming that] human traffickers…flock to major sporting and other public events. Their current focus is the Arnold Sports Festival and Fitness Expo…[they] call and visit hotels to alert them to the potential for prostitution and trafficking…and…distribute bars of soap…with the phone number of a…trafficking hot line…
A new bill…in Hawaii’s state senate would expand asset forfeiture to include petty misdemeanors…the Hawaii…ACLU posits that [this]…could lead to all sorts of ridiculously-cruel consequences. Homeless people could lose their property if they camp out in a park after hours. Protestors could have their signs, petitions and other assets seized—a chilling effect on the First Amendment. The bill is backed by Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources as a way to protect “natural, cultural, historical and recreational resources”…Hawaii County Prosecutor Mitch Roth has lambasted [SB 1342] as “draconian“…state Sen. Russell Ruderman called [it] “outrageous,” [saying] “we should have more safeguards, not less, to protect people from forfeiture abuses.” The Institute for Justice gave Hawaii a D for its atrocious…forfeiture laws…
The Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery (PASS) supports SB1342…[as part of a campaign to] stiffen penalties for patrons of prostitution…This bill…would be very beneficial in ending the demand for prostitution in Hawaii and would provide another deterrent for patrons who buy humans for sex…
This letter from a group of Indian feminists in response to the incredibly patronizing behavior of Harvard do-gooders is a perfect example of what Southern ladies call “vinegar pie”: a dish so sweet it makes your teeth hurt. I have read it three times now and enjoy it more each time.
ARGUS produces a high-resolution video image that covers 15 square miles. It’s all streamed to the ground and stored, and operators can zoom in upon any small area and watch the footage of that spot…it’s the culmination of the trend towards ever-more-pervasive surveillance cameras in American life. We’ve been objecting to that trend for years, and many of our public spaces are now under 24/7 video surveillance—often by cameras owned and operated by the police. But even in our most pessimistic moments, I don’t think we thought that every street, empty lot, garden, and field would be subject to video monitoring anytime soon. But that is precisely what this technology could enable. We’ve speculated about self-organizing swarms of drones being used to blanket entire cities with surveillance, but this technology makes it clear that nothing that complicated is required…
The gradual closure of…state-run brothels is emerging as a controversial tactic in Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s declared war on prostitution. While Erdoğan’s supporters denounce brothels as a form of “slavery,” sex workers fear the campaign poses risks to their health and safety. Closing…brothels “will not keep men from visiting prostitutes,” explained 48-year-old Istanbul sex worker Berna, “but it will push even more women into illegality and the back streets, where they will be without protection, and without any rights”…Several state-run brothels around the country reportedly already have been closed down – with official reasons including proximity to a new mosque and the nearby discovery of historical artifacts – and others should soon follow…
In last year’s Les Miserables…Anne Hathaway plays Fantine, a single mother [who]…turns to prostitution…Hathaway…[made] various comments…[about] “the lives of sex slaves”… and her attempts to “honor” the experiences of women who are “forced to sell sex”…Much media attention has also been given to the work on her own body Hathaway did to prepare for the role…[including] hair-cutting and drastic weight loss…What seems strange to me…is that Hathaway and the lady bloggers who love her apparently can’t see any similarities between her use of her body in work…and the experiences of sex workers. Like sex workers, Hathaway’s physicality is central to her job. Like sex workers, Hathaway has to make decisions about how to deploy her body…but somehow, when she diets to the point of frailness (her words), we call that work; when women in a film give hand jobs, we call it “the darkest place imaginable.” Fantine cuts off her hair for money and we cry. Hathaway cuts off her hair (also for money) and we nod admiringly…
Employing females as cashiers is a form of human trafficking like sexual exploitation, forced labor and organ trafficking…Objectifying women comes in different forms, such as exploitation in media, advertising, flight attendants, receptionists, and supermarket clerks or cashiers, argues…a graduate research paper at the Imam Mohammad bin Saud Islamic University…Mohammad al-Bogami…writes that Muslim scholars consider it human trafficking if the goal of hiring women is to use their looks to attract customers…
An increasing number of people in Norway are starting to see through the evil…It is in the nature of a moralist a desire to remove something he or she doesn’t like. Recently, this moralistic mind game has become more and more unmasked…Did you know that children and young people in Norway grow up in a society in which they learn that consensual sex is prohibited?…More and more people are becoming extremely angry and feel that their private sphere is violated. It is very easy to explain, in a factual and logical way, why this law is one of the greatest assaults on humanity ever…So, why doesn´t Amnesty International or the United Nations take solid action, demanding the Sex Purchase Law to be removed immediately?…The Sex Purchase Law violates absolutely all citizens in a country where it is in effect. Not only sex workers, because any kind of sex is in fact a trade or transaction. Thus, any consensual sex would logically be illegal…
The government has decided not to treat voluntary sex workers above the age of 18 years as victims of trafficking…Following objections by human rights and women organisations, the government is set to delete the term “prostitution” as one of the forms of exploitation which constitutes the offence of trafficking…which…stated that “…the consent of the victim is immaterial”…Justice JS Verma panel…clarified that amended law ought not to be interpreted to permit law enforcement agencies to harass sex workers…and their clients…
Dr. Brooke Magnanti on the fantasy that porn prohibition via internet censorship will somehow work in Iceland (despite the fact that it can’t even stop physical contraband like drugs), and the even more farfetched fantasy that it could work in the UK (because, like Iceland, it’s a magical island kingdom separated from the evil, evil world by floating rings of fire).
A Zimbabwean politician has…[suggested] the spread of HIV can be curbed if women…deliberately make themselves…unattractive. Morgan Femai…said the measures were required because men were finding it difficult to resist well-dressed, attractive women…“…I propose…a law that compels women to have their heads clean-shaven…they should also not bathe because that is what has caused all these problems.” Senator Femai also appeared to suggest female circumcision would help stop the spread of disease…“Women have got more moisture in their organs as compared to men so there is need to research on how to deal with that…because it is conducive for bacteria breeding”…another…Senator, Sithembile Mlotshwa…recently suggested men be injected with drugs that reduce their libidos. She also called for prisoners to be given sex toys to satisfy their sexual desires.
You may laugh or cry, but are these suggestions really any more stupid than Western “end demand” rhetoric?
…police authorities in…Gulu…raided [a sex worker drop-in centre] and arrested two staff and three members of the Women’s Organization Network for Human Rights Advocacy (WONETHA)…This raid…appears to be part of a deliberate strategy by the Gulu Police to play tough…[it] is in direct violation of the rights of…human rights defenders at WONETHA…“they are accusing us of promoting prostitution…of sleeping with other women and recruiting girls into prostitution.” All five arrested advocates were finally charged with “Living off the earnings of prostitution,” an accusation that they vehemently denounce…
Compare with attacks against Backpage and other advertising venues for “facilitating prostitution”.
“It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail,” wrote Abraham Maslow; Wendy Lyon writes at length on how Irish authorities who desperately need “human trafficking” cases to justify their crackdowns are using the label for everything from undocumented immigration to attempted rape.
Organized persecution of Canadian whores continues to crumble in the face of the recent court decisions; under the embattled law, even a landlord who knowingly rents an apartment to a hooker could be prosecuted for “brothel keeping”, but one Vancouver charity openly violates it anyway:
…Janice Abbott, CEO of the Atira Women’s Resource Society, said tenants of…housing complexes for low-income women are entitled to the same rights as any other renter…even if they are sex workers…when Atira opened Bridge Housing in 2001…there was no conscious decision to create a safe…space for women to do sex work…[but] Atira decided not to question the women’s guests… “They’re paying rent and it’s their home and they get to do everything all the rest of us take for granted in our homes, which is have guests come and go, among many other things”…
The article also mentions that “…the City of Vancouver has proposed a new…policy…indicating that consensual adult sex work is not an enforcement priority for the police and that their priority should be ensuring the safety of sex workers.” Apparently, Toronto feels the same way:
…The Toronto Police Service confirmed…the force has put “on hold”…sweeps in which female officers pose as street prostitutes to arrest men willing to pay for sex…spokesman Mark Pugash said…the decision…is based on the force’s reluctance to use “finite” resources to arrest people when so much “uncertainty” currently surrounds prostitution laws…[however] investigations into illegal massage parlours, brothels and escort agencies will carry on as usual…City Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti…[criticized] the policy…”When you’re sleeping with a prostitute, you’re probably sleeping with 150 guys at the same time”…
It’s good to see officials brushing aside politicians spouting the “dirty whore” myth to justify imposing their personal morals on others.
Kimberly Hoang…won the American Sociological Association’s…award for her doctoral dissertation on sex work in Vietnam. The winning entry, New Economies of Sex and Intimacy in Vietnam, was based on 15 months of ethnographic research in Ho Chi Minh City, where Hoang worked as a bartender and hostess in four bars that catered to different groups of clients…Hoang’s research “highlights not just the structure and practices of sex work in Vietnam, but demonstrates how it serves as a vital form of currency in Vietnam’s political economy.” In her nominating letter, [sociology professor Raka] Ray called the dissertation “a stunning piece of work” by “an absolutely fearless and creative thinker,” adding that Hoang had done “the sort of fieldwork few others dare”…
Contrary to what you may have heard, the upcoming 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) does not greatly increase the number of things labeled as “addictions”; in fact, it entirely eliminates the word “addiction”: “Instead, they are labeled ‘use disorders’…[because the] group thought the word…was less pejorative and stigmatizing.” I’m willing to bet it’s also to put a stop to pop psychologists’ labeling everything an “addiction”:
Despite substantial pressure…the…workgroup rejected proposals to recognize addictions to sex, food, the Internet, and caffeine…[workgroup chairman Charles O’Brien, MD] said…emphasis on scientific justification precluded listing them…”We looked at sex addiction, but there was no science at all. None.”
Another positive change is the replacement of DSM-IV’s false dichotomy of “drug abuse” and “drug dependence”:
…research conducted in recent decades pointed to substance-related problems as occurring on a continuum, such that the abuse-dependence distinction was purely arbitrary…[a new] requirement [is] that the patient…demonstrate craving for the particular substance…[which is] the key symptom that separates addiction from mere heavy use…
Here’s a generally objective article on prostitution in Turkey which demonstrates the problems of legalization. The country has licensed brothels since the late days of the Ottoman Empire, but it will surprise none of my readers to hear that 97% of Turkish harlots prefer to work illegally than to be registered and subjugated to politically-connected brothel owners who keep their employees in conditions virtually indistinguishable from slavery. This government-approved abuse is now being used by Islamist politicians to justify closing all brothels and forcing the girls onto the street, thus establishing the state as their pimp by setting them up for fine-garnering police “crackdowns”.
This week, Rob Arthur sent me a copy of his book You Will Die, and a reader who prefers to remain anonymous sent me a DVD of The Wicker Tree, writer/director Robin Hardy’s “re-imagining” of his classic, The Wicker Man. My sincere thanks to both of you for thinking of me!
The police have always used sexual assault as a weapon of oppression, but in the US the tactic was generally reserved for sex workers; however, as police brutality and immunity from prosecution have increased, amateurs have been on the receiving end as well. Female Occupy protesters are now reporting being repeatedly groped by cops:
…No doubt it’s partly…to brutalize those you think are weak, and more easily traumatized. But another reason is, almost certainly, the hope of provoking violent reactions on the part of male protestors…Soldiers who oppose allowing a combat role for women almost invariably say they do so not because they are afraid women would not behave effectively in battle, but because they are afraid men would…become so obsessed with the possibility of women in their unit being captured and sexually assaulted that they would behave irrationally. If the police were trying to provoke a violent reaction on the part of studiously non-violent protestors, as a way of justifying even greater brutality and felony charges, this would clearly be the most effective means of doing so…
Women’s groups and progressive organisations in India are shocked that Ms. Anu Mokal, a pregnant sex worker in Satara, was beaten up by police inspector Dayanand Dhome on April 2, along with her friend Ms. Anjana Ghadge. Three days later, on 5th April, she suffered a miscarriage…[the women] were bringing dinner for their friend…in the…hospital…[when] Dhome accused them of soliciting and when they refuted it abused them and called them liars. Dhome and his subordinates started beating…[and kicking] them and said that women like Anu are a ‘shame’. Her pleas that she was four months pregnant fell on deaf ears…Women’s organisations are outraged that…no action has been taken against the policemen…Anu…feels that the [incident is]…not taken seriously because she is a sex worker. In fact, the police had the audacity to tell these women that sex workers cannot be mothers…
…Status of Women Minister Gail Gago and former minister Steph Key [spoke about]…Bills aimed at decriminalising prostitution. Ms Key aims to introduce her Bill…on May 31 – the eve of International Whores’ Day…It would decriminalise all forms of prostitution…but retain soliciting as an offence where it occurred in the presence of other people…Minors would be banned from sex work and there would also be provisions making it an offence to practise unsafe sex…Ms Key believes there is growing support for the move…
It’s good to see that at least one tech writer has his eyes partially open on the subject of sexbots; though this article by Sebastian Anthony still buys “sex trafficking” myth, it at least understands that any gynoid real enough to please a normal man (as opposed to one with a robot fetish) is also real enough to be considered a sentient being with rights.
After a journalist made shockingly clueless statements about the Secret Service prostitution scandal, Christopher Ryan (co-author of Sex At Dawn) published a reaction which echoes many of the same points I made in this column:
NPR’s Scott Simon…suggests that the real scandal may be the original decision to hold the Summit…in Cartagena…”Why were world leaders meeting in a place with legalized prostitution?”…there are a host of very ugly realities often associated with prostitution…But all these things are mitigated by legalization, and Simon wasn’t suggesting the meeting shouldn’t have been held in a place where prostitution exists, but in a place where it’s legal…Simon asks, “Would you want someone you love to live that way?” No, probably not. But…I wouldn’t want someone I love working in a steel mill or a coal mine, either…nor…sent off to distant deserts…in defense of jingoistic abstractions…But nobody’s proposing that we make industry [or] the military…illegal…we gain nothing from legally prohibiting the expression of human nature, and what we lose is…the opportunity to…mitigate the damage…If someone you love chose to work as a prostitute, would you rather she had legal and medical protection, or would you prefer she be forced into the shadows…That’s the question we need to be asking.
Add Malaysia to the list of countries the US State Department encourages to violently persecute whores: “In 2008 the US…gave Malaysia the lowest rating in its annual Trafficking In Persons Report…Now nearly all brothels…have been shut. Sex workers are forced to work in dangerous and difficult conditions on streets throughout the capital. For its violent efforts to suppress the sex industry the US Government raised Malaysia to tier 2 level in its 2009 TIP report.”
One Year Ago Today
“A Procrustean Bed” explains how a new Massachusetts law defines women as helpless infants and men as international gangsters.
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