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In the News (#844)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Backpage, Bottleneck, California, Comfort Zone, cops, Cops and Robbers, dehumanization, Disaster, Elephant in the Parlor, fascism, Florida, hysteria, illegal aliens, Kentucky, law, Out of Control, politicians, porn, propaganda, Pyrrhic Victory, rape, rescue industry, Saving Them from Themselves, sex work is work, sexting, shame, Something Rotten In Sweden, streetwalkers, stripping, surveillance, The Last Shall Be First, To Molest and Rape, transgender, Uncommon Sense, Under Every Bed, United Kingdom, Virginia, West Virginia on June 6, 2018| 6 Comments »

Creating a…registry of strippers is not going to help stop exploitation. – Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Under Every Bed

The confused babble spouted by “officials” in low-population states is truly stupefying:

Assistant US Attorney General Andy Cogar, co-chair of the West Virginia Human Trafficking Taskforce, said one of the challenges…“is the learning curve we have with law enforcement…because they are on the front lines, but it’s also a cultural learning curve that we have to go through when it comes to sex trafficking…They blur those lines between sex trafficking and prostitution, and so there is a tendency— because…prostitutes are written off as almost subhuman at times. There’s a lack of concern or credibility that’s ascribed to sex trafficking victims because they are written off often times as just lowly prostitutes…We have to break through that and have a much more nuanced understanding of what prostitution is frankly. But also, and more importantly, the various ways that sex trafficking can manifest itself or that it is manifested”…

This guy actually sounds like he almost gets it, but his brain is too mired in “sex trafficking” propaganda and cop “NHI” doctrine that he can’t quite close the circle.

Saving Them From Themselves (#428)

Yeah, destroy their lives! That’ll teach ’em not to have sexual feelings, you betcha!

Police are investigating as many as a dozen teenagers at two separate schools in Falls Church, Virginia, as part of an ever-widening sexting inquiry. Police seized five cell phones and have recovered multiple “explicit images” that students shared with each other…Virginia police have a history of pursuing teen sexting cases with misguided zealotry…It’s well worth asking, then, whether the police should really be in the business of collecting sexually explicit images of teenagers as part of an effort to hold them criminally accountable…

The Last Shall Be First (#624)

Potty obsession is rotting politicians’ brains:

…Jazmina Saavedra, who is running for a House seat in California, accused a transgender woman of invading her privacy as she live streamed herself challenging the woman in a public restroom in Los Angeles. “I’m trying to use the ladies’ room and there is a man here claiming that he is a lady,” Saavedra said in the Facebook Live video, filming just outside the bathroom stall in a Denny’s restaurant…

Cops and Robbers (#632)

The rescue industry provides many opportunities for wealthy white folks to play cowboy:

Christian rock frontman David Zach of the band Remedy Drive recounts some of the chilling experiences he’s had while undercover as a covert operative to help rescue teenage girls trapped in sex trafficking rings in Asia and Latin America. While serving undercover over the past four years, Zach has spent most of his time undercover in brothels and red light districts searching for evidence of sex trafficking. Zach teamed up with Matt Parker, founder of the anti-[sex work] organization The Exodus Road…

To Molest and Rape

Why he wasn’t charged with rape isn’t at all “unclear” to me:

A cop…offered to drive a sexual assault victim home but instead took her to a motel and raped her. John Nissen…was charged with official misconduct, tampering with a witness and theft by deception over the incident…Why…he…was not charged with rape was unclear…the victim gave an interview at the Hillview, Kentucky, police station about the initial rape. Nissen agreed to take her home…[but actually] took her to…[a] hotel…[where he] demand[ed] oral sex from the woman and then rap[ed] her…Afterwards…he…[told her] she should move to a different jurisdiction and not pursue her rape case…Nissen’s own department became suspicious of his actions when reading the incident report and handed it over to the Kentucky State Police to investigate…

Something Rotten in Sweden (#662)

Summer Stephan has for years touted her personal animus against whores as “concern”:

Interim [San Diego] DA Summer Stephan, who’s running for election in June, doesn’t see any meaningful difference between sex work, or prostitution, and sex trafficking. In doing so, she and other prosecutors in California conflate sex trafficking with sex work and are confusing the public in…an attempt to inspire moral outrage…Anti-trafficking laws that conflate sex work with sex trafficking have forced sex workers into “safe houses” and rehabilitation programs against their will…During a two-year study with sex workers, I observed that sex workers felt comfortable working cooperatively with police officers when the police opted not to arrest sex workers and to treat sex work as if it were decriminalized. Similar findings have been observed in New Zealand…The conflation of sex work and sex trafficking…reduces…women…into a victim status in order to comply with a notion of womanhood tied to sexual purity that is compliant with dominant morality. A woman who chooses to take an alternative, often difficult path, for her family by becoming a sex worker is dismissed as a victim incapable of the choice…We need a district attorney who would build partnerships with sex workers so they feel comfortable coming forward to the district attorney’s office when they observe genuine human trafficking without fearing more prosecutions, not one who judges their choices…

Bottleneck (#728)

There are so many reasons sex worker licensing is a bad idea:

…Palm Beach County is the only local government in South Florida to license strippers…[under the pretense of] stop[ping] the exploitation of minors…But…Issuing a government ID creates a…public record. “They’re creating a registry of strippers” said Elizabeth Nolan Brown… “They’re opening up these dancers to having their information revealed to people”…Stalkers. Zealots. Violent ex-partners. Spouses in a child custody battle. Potential employers…because of the stigma attached to stripping, there are lots of reasons they may want to keep that information private…

Comfort Zone (#769)

Sometimes they don’t even bother with the “sex trafficking” excuse any more:

Migrant victims of crime are being handed over to [UK] immigration enforcement officials by police when they report crimes…There are fears the disclosure could discourage migrant victims of crime from coming forward, although the Home Office [lied] it would support vulnerable migrants “regardless of their immigration status…Victims of crime must be treated first and foremost as victims,” a spokesperson [lied]…

Uncommon Sense (#774)

The IWW was the first major union to support sex workers rights, but it won’t be the last:

At its 2018 Annual Conference, IWW Branch delegates from across Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England were asked to consider a motion presented by our members to publicly state its commitment to the full decriminalisation of sex work and a full pardon for any sex workers convicted under existing legislation…the motion was passed unanimously…

Out of Control (#782)

What is wrong with doctors who do this?

A University of Southern California gynecologist was allowed to continue practicing for many years, despite multiple complaints of misconduct…The complaints against George Tyndall date back to the 1990s and include allegations of inappropriately photographing students’ genitals, making sexualized commentary about patients’ bodies, and explicitly referencing sexual intercourse while inserting his fingers into patients’ vaginas. Some of the most unsettling accusations come from nurses and medical assistants—sometimes known as chaperones—who witnessed his exams firsthand. Tyndall, who resigned last summer, has denied the accusations and outrageously speculated that…“chaperones reported him because they had trouble reaching orgasm and were jealous of young patients with tighter pelvic muscles.” Let us pause for a moment to let that shit sink in: This gentleman argues that he is being set up by old ladies who wish they had tighter vaginas…

Elephant in the Parlor (#835)

I absolutely love Stormy Daniels’ honesty about her whoredom:

…Stormy Daniels…has become a political Rorschach test. Women thank her at the grocery store for inspiring them to speak up, sharing their personal #MeToo stories. Conspiracy theorists call her the “Deep State’s Plan B” if the multiple Russia investigations fail to bring down Trump…[others] hail…her as a saving grace that might lead to impeachment…The only person who sees Stormy’s story as not political is Stormy herself. “I’m fine with women coming up to me and saying, ‘You’ve inspired me’. That’s great. But I’m quick to point out that’s not my story,” she says. “I suck dick for a living. Nobody wants to know what I think about the wall or health care…it’s my job and my service to society to be an entertainer. Yes, my version of being an entertainer happens to be a porn star, which makes it even more important: I am an escape from reality”…

Disaster (#839)

Morons cheer when a highway is destroyed, then get upset when the traffic goes into side streets:

Some 60 residents…said over and over that prostitution [in San Francisco’s Mission district] has never been worse, and they made it clear to District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen and Mission Captain Gaetano Caltagirone that their official efforts have been too slow and ineffective…By the end of the night, Ronen and Caltagirone vowed to redouble their efforts to abate the sex work that has long operated on Shotwell Street…They were even receptive to almost unanimous support from the [useful idiots] to [establish a curfew on] certain parts of Shotwell and Capp streets on Friday and Saturday…residents…said the efforts had failed to abate a booming prostitution ring operating outside their doorsteps…

It’s because stupid people have been taught to believe in fantasies like “prostitution rings” that this happened in the first place; when politicians shut down inexpensive and accessible advertising, only a complete imbecile could fail to understand that the sex workers who used that advertising will now have to advertise in another way, such as by walking the streets.

Pyrrhic Victory (#841)

When it comes to mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down:

Amazon…has developed a powerful and dangerous new facial recognition system and is actively helping governments deploy it. Amazon calls the service “Rekognition”…[it] can identify, track, and analyze people in real time and recognize up to 100 people in a single image…[by] scan[ning] information it collects against databases featuring tens of millions of faces…Amazon is [specifically] marketing Rekognition for government surveillance…say[ing] Rekognition can be used to identify “people of interest“, raising the possibility that those labeled suspicious by governments — such as undocumented immigrants or Black activists — will be seen as fair game for Rekognition surveillance…

Because this story is on the ACLU website, naturally it doesn’t mention that the people who will be first spied upon by this software are sex workers.

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In the News (#826)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Africa, Blunt Instrument, brothels, cell phones, censorship, cops, Cosmopolitan, Craigslist, dirty, Disaster, Elephant in the Parlor, ethics, Finland, hysteria, I Spy, internet, law, Louisiana, Monsters, Morality Lessons, Negative Secondary Effects, New Orleans, New York, Not So Easy, Ohio, One Size Fits All, politicians, porn, propaganda, Pyrrhic Victory, Rhinoceros, shame, stripping, surveillance, transgender, Under Every Bed, violence vs. sex workers, What Were You Thinking?, Whatever They Need To Say, Wisconsin on April 4, 2018| 2 Comments »

Stormy Daniels is…not speaking out because it’s fun or a great career move. – Savannah Sly

One Size Fits All

This is almost three years old, but it’s too good to pass up:

Many children in west Africa are brought up in households belonging to people other than their own parents. There is a long tradition of fostering, yet in many cases the practice is now [claimed] to constitute “trafficking” or “modern slavery” because the children involved are put to work during their stay. This makes little sense, yet the terminology of “human trafficking” and its consequences—namely that the “traffickers” involved should be prosecuted—has remained in vogue since at least 2000 with the support of European and American funding. This has almost certainly caused more harm than good…ideas and methods imported from Europe and North America…have sought to prevent children from working away from home, rather than to protect children from harm regardless of where they live and whether they were at work or school. This approach fails to adapt to the realities of childhood in west Africa and the practicalities of growing up in villages with little infrastructure…

Pyrrhic Victory

Toward the end of privacy, everywhere:

…the CLOUD Act…was never reviewed or marked up by any committee in either the House or the Senate. It never received a hearing. It was robbed of a stand-alone floor vote because Congressional leadership decided, behind closed doors, to attach this un-vetted, unrelated data bill to the $1.3 trillion government spending bill…All the bill requires now is the president’s signature…Because of this…U.S. and foreign police will have new mechanisms to seize…your private emails, your online chats, your Facebook, Google, Flickr photos, your Snapchat videos, your private lives online…without a warrant and with few restrictions…the CLOUD Act…will…Enable foreign police to collect and wiretap people’s communications from U.S. companies, without obtaining a U.S. warrant…Allow foreign nations to demand personal data stored in the United States, without prior review by a judge…Allow the U.S. president to enter “executive agreements” that empower police in foreign nations that have weaker privacy laws than the United States to seize data in the United States while ignoring U.S. privacy laws…Allow foreign police to collect someone’s data without notifying them about it…Empower U.S. police to grab any data, regardless if it’s a U.S. person’s or not, no matter where it is stored…

Whatever They Need To Say

Gentrification is one of the most common motivations for persecution of all kinds of sex workers:

Gentrification is often seen as an organic process that cities undergo. Jeremiah Moss, the author of the book and blog Vanishing New York … says, “Gentrification was originally defined as the process by which working-class neighborhoods are changed into middle-class neighborhoods by the middle-class who buy homes there…Now we’re dealing with something much larger and more destructive — what I refer to as hyper gentrification which is not an organic process. It’s the government stepping in with policies and zoning to remake the city for the upper classes. In order to that, outlaws have to be removed, including sexual outlaws. So adult businesses have to go…The hyper-gentrified city must be safe, friendly, and welcoming for tourist families and major corporations”…Shutting down adult businesses was on the top of [New York] Mayor Giuliani’s list throughout his terms. Giuliani claimed strip clubs, peep shows, and x-rated video stores were “corrosive institutions” that contaminated neighborhoods and prevented “legitimate businesses” from prospering…

Blunt Instrument

“Sex trafficking” is such a convenient weapon to use against adult businesses:

The Milwaukee Common Council voted not to renew the license of a…night club [using] sex trafficking [claims]. The vote came after…neighborhood [complaints that]…the owner of Tatou Ultra Pub…planned to renew the club’s license and then sell the business to VLive, a nationwide chain of strip clubs…aldermen were warned that the city attorney’s office could have trouble defending the city in court if aldermen failed to renew the license…residents [pretended] Tatou had contributed to loud noise and reckless driving in the area…[yet] there…were no recent police records documenting any nuisance activity at the club…

Under Every Bed

Population 36,000:

The Westerville [Ohio] community is learning how to spot signs of human trafficking after police busted a local massage parlor for prostitution. [Cops pretend] they’ve seen an increase in human trafficking in the area…”It’s not the stereotypical human trafficking we’re used to. A lot of these ladies can come and go, but they are threatened to stay in that environment,” Chief [Pig] Morbitzer [fantasized while playing pocket pool]…”One we shut down for prostitution reasons, one we cited for taxation reasons and one that was trying to open up was prohibited because of zoning code issues”…a…community meeting was hosted by the [pigs, a “diversion” program protecting its funding]…The Salvation Army, and [another rescue industry group]…

Monsters

This brings the toll to 7 already this year:

[A trans woman was murdered] in Baton Rouge, LA…Amia Tyrae Berryman…was 28 years old. Her body was found at…a…motel…with gunshot injuries…local media stating WBRZ…misgendered her…

What the Hell Were You Thinking? (#603)

The next generation of sex worker security apps:

A new security application, Artemis’ Umbrella, has been developed for sex workers in Finland, and can be used anywhere in the world. The app alerts a trusted contact when sex workers are in trouble, and uses location services to track the smart phone…it is possible to alert a pre-arranged friend if something like a customer meeting goes wrong and needs help. The alarm can be triggered via the alarm button or via the timer (the alarm will be triggered if the function is not shut down in time). Both alerts will also include the person’s location information…the application was…tested…in both Helsinki and Mumbai…

Morality Lessons (#783)

“The National Center on Sexual Exploitation” is the new self-aggrandizing name for pro-censorship fanatics Morality in Media:

…After collaborative dialogue with NCOSE, Walmart will remove Cosmopolitan magazine from checkout lines at 5,000 stores across the country. Protecting minors from the sexually explicit material that Cosmopolitan embodies and perpetuates has been a long-time priority of NCOSE…

Agenda

Is this dumbass for real?

…I am pretty disappointed in the modern high-priced prostitutes of today. They have no sense of honor and ethics…I do think that at one time in history there were professional prostitution ethics, where whatever happened between a man and his paid companion, there was the security of keeping things private. In today’s world there seems to be no honor between a man and his contractual relationship between him and his paid companion…There is no honor among the profession…What’s the world coming to when you can’t trust a whore anymore?…

I can almost believe this ignorant weed’s claim that he’s never paid for sex, because he seems to know even less about whores than the average prohibitionist. Besides his obviously-wrong-on-its-face central theme, he makes totally backward assertions like “Solon, the great Athenian legislator, was the first to actually legalize prostitution…” No, you idiot, Solon was the first to try to criminalize prostitution. Where do morons like this get this shit? Do they literally look in the toilet and say, “Hey, that looks good, I’ll use it as a ‘fact’ in my next essay”? WTF? Why does every fuckwad think five minutes on Google make him an expert in my profession? But I guess I’d better stop now, before I infuriate myself.

Morality Lessons (#820)

It looks like Chris Sevier, the anti-porn fanatic behind the “mandatory porn filter” bills now making the rounds of US state legislatures, is about to do a massive pratfall:

Elizabeth Smart sent a cease-and-desist letter to prevent her name from being used to push a Rhode Island bill that would require a $20 fee to view pornography online…It is one of several similar bills pushed by Chris Sevier, who says the bill would protect children…Sevier said he chose Smart’s name as a tagline for the bill…[until he was] told…Smart was potentially pursuing legal action, [after which he claimed] the…name had been given to the [bill] by lawmakers…his website…specifically refers to [it] as “the Elizabeth Smart law”…[fellow anti-porn fanatics Morality in Media] has slammed Sevier for falsely claiming the[y]…supported his work…Earlier this month, a federal judge in Utah threw out Sevier’s lawsuit trying to target same-sex marriage by saying he should be allowed to marry his laptop…

Just in case you’re unfamiliar with Sevier, here’s an article from last year:

…Sevier has a warrant out for his arrest in Tennessee for failure to appear at criminal contempt proceedings….[arising from failure] to pay child support and violat[ing] a restraining order…[stemming] from Sevier’s 2011 arrest and conviction for assaulting his father-in-law…Sevier’s baby was also injured in the altercation…Sevier claims that the Human Trafficking Prevention Act was hatched in part due to the horrors he saw as a volunteer in Asian countries, where he was “physically fighting human trafficking” as a rescue worker with an organization called Orphan Secure…[but] the president of Orphan Secure, Ronaldo Lopez…said that Sevier’s time with the group…amounted to a few broken promises…Despite repeatedly claiming he can legally practice law in two states, official records suggest Sevier is not licensed to practice law anywhere…a petition against him for ethical violations was pending in 2011 when the court temporarily inactivated his license based on a mental disability…

Not So Easy (#821)

A deeper look at the sleazy lies politicians are using to destroy women’s jobs:

…The raids seem…connected to New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s new vision of Bourbon Street as a family-friendly tourist destination, a vain attempt to gentrify one of the country’s most legendary red light districts as it approaches its 300th anniversary. This vision…has the mark of Christian moralizing that has recently taken on new potency. In October, Mayor Landrieu hired conservative Christian lawyer Scott Bergthold, whose Chattanooga-based law firm has a reputation for targeting strip clubs across the country. The mayor also appointed a few key people to put together a study on trafficking, including councilperson Kristin Palmer, a longtime opponent of strip clubs; and Jim Kelly of Covenant House, part of a chain of nonprofit, Catholic-affiliated homeless shelters…The Greater New Orleans Human Trafficking Task Force says in its official documents that it’s targeting trafficking, but…they use words like prostitution and trafficking interchangeably, and they don’t recognize a categorical difference…[though an attempt at capping the number of strip clubs failed 4-3 in the City Council] clubs…must operate under new regulations. Dancers are no longer allowed to twerk (defined as a “simulation of sex” per the state lewd act law), fondle their own breasts, or have exposed nipples; these are now defined as “lewd and lascivious conduct.” Club managers must…post anti-trafficking posters from…Club Operators Against Sex Trafficking (COAST). COAST is in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security; the posters encourage workers to report abuse to a number which goes directly to ICE…if you’re an undocumented immigrant, there’s no guarantee your rescue won’t also include deportation…

Disaster

Even bootlicking Time seems to grasp that something bad has happened:

…The decision by Craigslist to stop hosting personal ads came as a preemptive move after Congress passed [FOSTA]…a sweeping piece of legislation intended to [harm sex workers]…The legislation targets websites that “promote or facilitate” prostitution, even in jurisdictions where prostitution is legal; individuals operating those sites face up to ten years in prison…The bill’s ambiguous terms threaten to impugn not only Craigslist, but any website or forum that accommodates discussion of the sex trade…these sites are crucial to [sex workers’] safety: they provide the community with a platform to share information about dangerous clientele (known as “bad date lists”) and other occupational hazards. Advocates for these communities have also argued that eliminating the sex trade’s online presence will in fact make cases of actual human trafficking harder to identify…

Elephant in the Parlor (#825)

I’m proud to see my dear friend Savannah Sly in Teen Vogue, which is turning into an important ally:

…Given how she’s described her situation, it makes sense that Stormy Daniels would sign a nondisclosure agreement…in exchange for $130,000…Many people (particularly sex workers and mothers) may do the same thing in the hopes of making a situation go away. Also, the odds that a porn star would be believed (or treated with respect) by the public are slim to none. Society callously condones the slut-shaming, misogyny, and discrimination that sex workers regularly suffer. Regardless of how we try to sanitize and make palpable our professions, sex workers are seen as irresponsible “sluts” who deserve what we get, even when we’re murdered. Porn stars, who are some of the most visible sex workers, suffer intense volumes of hate mail, doxing, stalking, and online bullying simply because they’re brazen enough to be publicly and commercially sexual…

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In the News (#821)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Alabama, bad customers, Banishment, bogus studies, California, Canada, Censor Chic, censorship, cops, drugs, escort review sites, Fallen Idol, fantasy, FBI, guest columnist updates, Here We Go Again, hysteria, If Men Were Angels, internet, Kansas, Lack of Evidence, language, License To Rape, Negative Secondary Effects, New Orleans, Not So Easy, Oregon, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, racism, rape, sex offender registry, sex work is work, stripping, Twitter, Under Every Bed on March 17, 2018| 11 Comments »

If you’re not supporting the way people are surviving, you’re not supporting their survival. – Kate D’Adamo

Here We Go Again

As I’ve been saying for the past 14 years:

The notion that prostitution…is a form of slavery…[is] a reprise of the Progressive Era [hysteria]…of the early 20th century, when a burgeoning national media, led by McClure’s magazine, established the “white slave trade” as an urgent and widespread peril facing the nation. The ensuing moral crusade led to “formal responses on both the local and federal levels, including the election of anti-trafficking candidates to governmental office; the proliferation of commissions to study white slavery and vice…the formation of special vice units…the passage of…legislation [such] as the Mann Act…and the expansion of the Bureau of Investigations [the precursor to the FBI]”…according to Gretchen Soderlund, author of Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism… “White slavery was largely a cultural myth for understanding sex work,” wrote social-work researcher Nicole Bromfield…“White slavery”…linked a moral crusade with the vilification of immigrants — especially nonwhite immigrants — who were painted as pimps and slavers. Women of color who did sex work were dismissed as “voluntary” prostitutes, unworthy of redemption or rescue. As for white women, their innocence might be presumed but their consent was considered irrelevant…

License to Rape

Cops raping sex workers is so ubiquitous, non-cop rapists often pose as cops to facilitate the crime:

Men are impersonating [cops] and using the broad powers of the job to sexually assault women…[because cops], too, have a long track record of committing sexual violence against women…experts say…not enough police departments are taking the issue seriously. “It’s so troubling when we hear about these cases,” said Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing, which includes a chapter about sex work…“a significant proportion of [sex workers] have had interactions with police that involved demands for sex or other kinds of abuse, so sex workers are going to be particularly wary to challenge a [cop]”…

Banishment

Actually, I think this is a good thing; the more people are subjected to this evil tyranny, the more will realize that nobody should be:

…[Politicians] have long justified sex offender registries as a way to notify people about potentially dangerous neighbors or acquaintances, while critics say they fail to prevent crime and create a class of social outcasts. Over the years, several states have expanded their registries to add [people convicted] of other crimes, including kidnapping, assault, and murder. Tennessee added animal abuse. Utah added white collar crimes. A few states considered but abandoned plans for hate crime and domestic abuse registries. At least five states publicly display methamphetamine producers. But Kansas went furthest, adding an array of lesser drug crimes; roughly 4,600 people in the state are now registered as drug offenders…[pigs pretend] that the registry helps keep track of people who may commit new offenses and cautions the public to avoid potentially dangerous areas and individuals…Kansas legislature is currently considering a bill proposed by the state’s sentencing commission that would remove drug offenders from the registry. “It is a drain on resources with no science, studies, or data to justify it,” defense lawyer Jennifer Roth told [politicians] at an early February hearing…

Under Every Bed

This is just the same old “interstate highway” nonsense, but the fact that it’s Alabama makes it even funnier:

A multi-billion-dollar industry is taking east Alabama by storm…“It’s a $150 billion worldwide industry…the target age is 12-14″…[hebephilic fantasist] Maryhelen Kirkpatrick said…“Because you all are so close to Atlanta there ’s a lot of trafficking that happens here”…easy interstate access provides a hot spot for predators in our area to lure victims away…“These…kids have no idea who they are talking to until it’s too late,” Lee County District Attorney Brandon Hughes said…“Sex trafficking is a huge issue that is getting bigger, bigger, and bigger almost by the day”…

Doesn’t Hughes sound like he’s wanking and about to jizz on himself? “It’s getting bigger…BIGGER…BIGGER…oooh yeah!”

If Men Were Angels

“Pastors” are nearly as bad as cops:

“Sexual immorality” was the reason cited when longtime Pastor Ken Engelking resigned in January from Morning Star Community Church in Salem [Oregon]. Four women had come forward…with allegations against Engelking, two other former church staff members and a member of an affiliated church…the women chronicled accusations of an abusive, adulterous relationship involving Engelking, and sexual assault and rape by three other men over more than 20 years, including as recently as 2010…the women said they were silenced by Nelson and other church leaders, pressured to not report what happened to them or do anything that could tarnish Morning Star’s image…the…church board [included a cop and a politician]…

Censor Chic

Though this isn’t awful, every article Wired prints about sex work contains an inexcusable amount of misinformation:

While some sex-work directory sites do still exist online, the 2014 federal takedown of popular web hub RedBook [sic] hastened a shift that was already in the offing: sex workers taking their marketing into their own hands via social media..But…all of it is strictly against platforms’ rules regarding sexual content, which are loosely based on United States prostitution law. And…workers’ accounts are often shut down without warning or explanation, even when their content never ventures into explicit territory. So they’re feeling more than a little betrayed by the platforms they feel they helped create…

“Some sites still exist”? MyRedBook (not “Redbook”) spoken of without mentioning Rentboy, Backpage or TRB? Platform rules based on “prostitution law”? WTF, Wired? Could you, like, talk to some sex workers before making the moronic assertion that Instagram is “the only place to connect” with good clients?

Guest Columnist: Andrea Werhun

Another peek at Andrea and her book, Modern Whore:

Former escort Andrea Werhun, 28, says she was determined to destigmatise sex work, and show that it is a job like any other. The Canadian writer recounts sleeping with obese, unattractive and foul-smelling clients, taking part in a threesome and being raped on the job…She even says she actively enjoyed having sex with an 80-year-old man. “It’s a reasonable option for a certain kind of person, especially if you have strong boundaries…If you’re just desperate for the money, it could eat you alive.” Werhun, whose book contains a practical “how-to” guide for would-be escorts, says she thought it was “important to show the full picture” and recount her worst encounters as well as the best…

I think it’s hilarious how much amateurs fixate on our clients’ attractiveness, then have the nerve to talk about “objectification” and similar nonsense.

Fallen Idol (#792)

More allegations of sexual abuse in the porn industry:

Porn actors Leigh Raven and Riley Nixon have released a more than hour-long YouTube video detailing two different incidents of alleged abuse on adult sets. They say both events took place during shoots with the male performer Rico Strong, and for a director known as Just Dave. Their accusations include misleading booking practices, excessive face-slapping and choking, and boundary violations. In Raven’s case, the shoot in question took place earlier in the week of March 6. Raven says she has filed a police report and undergone a medical evaluation…Nixon’s allegation concerns a shoot that happened in early January; she came forward with her account only in response to Raven’s claims, which were initially aired in a cryptic tweet on [March 8^th]…

Lack of Evidence (#805)

Two months. That’s all it took for San Francisco to figure out a way to harass sex workers that gets around its “policy”:

San Francisco District Attorney [and former police chief] George Gascón is asking new Mayor Mark Farrell to let him install a Human Trafficking Unit in his office, a proposal that gained the support of a key women’s group in the city…“While a 2017 study…found that 58 percent of all defendants in federal human trafficking cases operated as part of an organized criminal group, San Francisco has not identified, investigated or prosecuted any criminal organizations involved in human trafficking,” said Gascón’s proposal. A trafficking unit would help the D.A.’s office “more effectively identify and prosecute…traffickers, and disrupt criminal organizations that drive trafficking”…

For those who still don’t get it, I present these translations from the Porcish: “sex trafficking” = “sex work”; “criminal organizations” = “sex workers who know each other in any capacity”; “women’s group” = “authoritarians with vaginas”.

Not So Easy

A stripper lays some inconvenient truths on New Orleans:

Since 2015’s Halloween strip club raids, the count of such clubs in the Vieux Carre in New Orleans has gone from 23 to 14…Adverse zoning, contact and distance laws, discriminatory legislation by age and gender, undercover surveillance and overt police raiding are part of a feedback loop that entrenches itself in the public imagination, spurred on by the concept of “trafficking”…used as a euphemism for “prostitution”…[which] was extrapolated into any gesture or conversation “lewd” enough to be construed as an “ask”. No actual sex acts were documented, no “victims of trafficking” or underage workers were found. The ATC charged the clubs for women touching their own bodies…[the state has hired] adultbusinesslaw.com …backed by Christian Right activist organizations, this firm’s sole purpose is to eradicate adult businesses…The “secondary negative effects” method has been shown, over and over, to be rife with un-empirical data and unethical ways of collecting it, yet it continues to re-emerge…Bergthold’s cases, when they reach federal court, are routinely thrown out for violating the First (and often the Fifth and Fourteenth) amendment. Meanwhile, his targets are buckling under the time and money involved in defending against his bottomlessly funded attacks…

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In the News (#786)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, agency denial, asset seizure, Between the Lines, bogus studies, brothels, California, censorship, China, Cooties, cops, dehumanization, drugs, escort services, fantasy, FBI, Harm Magnification, hotels, hysteria, If It Were Legal, If Men Were Angels, illegal aliens, Indiana, Indonesia, internet, language, lawheads, Legal Is as Legal Does, Louisiana, McNeill's Law, North Dakota, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, prohibitionist myths, So Close and Yet So Far, Swedish model, Texas, The Mote and the Beam, The Widening Gyre, Under Every Bed, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Washington DC, When Ambulance-Chasers Run the Hospitals on October 28, 2017| 2 Comments »

SESTA…is an invitation to drive an awful lot of important speech from the Internet. – Cathy Gellis

If It Were Legal

The only reason this was necessary was because of idiotic laws against sex businesses:

…Helena Berkyova, 29, pretended customers were paying for gourmet food including king crab soup and soufflé when she charged them for [escort] services. She set up sham catering firm Fine Dining Catering Services to conceal the illegal operation…Berkyova pleaded guilty to conspiracy to manage or assist in the management of brothels, keeping a brothel for prostitution, and money laundering…Berkyova [was s sex worker]…before moving up to management…She admitted managing the brothels between January 2013 and October 2015, raking in around £350,000 from paying customers…

Only a twit who’s never owned or run a business would think £350,000 (about $460,000) over a three-year period constitutes “raking it in”.

So Close and Yet So Far

When anyone not a sex worker uses the term “decriminalization”, read carefully:

…it is easy [for very stupid people who know nothing about economics and black markets] to assume that decriminalizing prostitution will embolden sex traffickers and increase victimization…Research I conducted for my book…shows that decriminalization of sex work is an evidenced-based approach to combating sex trafficking…Decriminalizing sex work does not make prostitution legal; it just empowers victims to come forward…I’ve gone to “the track” in the District, where women are sold for sex on the street…

“Decriminalizing sex work does not make prostitution legal” is total bullshit; of course it does, it just doesn’t make it legalized (i.e., subjected to a repressive regulatory regime or bound in so many special laws it might as well still be illegal). Note also the agency-negating phrase, “women are sold for sex”, which no sex worker advocate would use. I smell a supporter of the Swedish model, which is often dishonestly represented as decriminalization by its proponents due to the false claim that it “decriminalizes” sex workers (which it actually doesn’t).

Under Every Bed (#350)

I just can’t help laughing every time “authorities” pretend that North Dakota is a “sex trafficking hub”:

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp [vomited out a lot of stupid anti-sex propaganda]…at [a] panel hosted by the University of North Dakota Law School…Thomasine Heitkamp, a social work professor at UND and Sen. Heitkamp’s sister, recently completed a study on domestic, dating and sexual violence in the Bakken oil fields. She said the amount of concerns heard about sex trafficking during the study was stunning…Sen. Heitkamp said legislators need to take on Backpage.com, and other sites [she fantasizes as being] known for sex trafficking and called the Communications Decency Act a “barrier”…

A politician calls a law intended to protect people from government tyranny a “barrier”. Yes, it is, and we need many more such barriers. Also, what the fuck does “the amount of concerns heard about sex trafficking” actually mean?

If Men Were Angels

I wonder what fraction of his rhetoric is directed toward “perverts”?

…72-year-old Garry Evans, pastor of Baptist Temple in Rushville [Indiana], is accused of molesting several girls in his congregation…a three-year-old girl reported…that Evans lured her into his office with the promise of candy, then pulled his pants down and made her touch his genitals. He then told her not to tell anyone what happened. After the investigation into Evans’ behavior began…another mother brought her five- and seven-year-old daughters to police. Both girls told investigators that Evans had forced his hands down their pants when they were alone with him in his office…

Harm Magnification (#612)

Naturally, because it’s politicians’ job to cause harm, not reduce it:

The Lawrence County Board of Commissioners Tuesday morning opted to discontinue its contract with Indiana Recovery Alliance to operate a needle exchange program…the program is free to the county…but…[the county] prosecutor [vomited out evil crap about how] she could not support a program that facilitates…the illegal use of drugs…[two politicians] remained silent…[one of them, Rodney] Fish [suggested drug users]…”pray and…turn from their wicked ways”…[the other evil fuckhead, Dustin] Gabhart [vomited out]…“I don’t like the get-out-of-jail card for paraphernalia. To me, those…make us a sanctuary…for addicts”…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#649)

I always feel dirty when prohibitionists salivate over their masturbatory fantasies in public:

A [rogue’s gallery] of state and local lawmakers in San Diego…[fantasized publicly about] young military men and…sex trafficking in California…[they fantasized that] eight thousand to 11,000 victims are trafficked in San Diego County every year, an $810 million business, according to a [bogus] 2016 study…[politician Juan] Vargas [masturbated openly to the fantasy that] gangs have moved from selling drugs to selling people…[while politician Xavier] Becerra [drooled while saying]…prosecutors must struggle to over[throw] internet privacy laws that make extremely difficult to prosecute [consenting adults for private sexual behavior]…[he also sexually fantasized in public about] girls who are 12 or 13 years old. Maggy Krell…a…prosecutor…[cackled about] going after…hotels and motels [to enrich the state using the excuse of “sex trafficking”]…

Legal Is as Legal Does (#695)

Pearl-clutching is both funnier and sadder when a young man does it:

If not for its debaucherous reputation, you might not blink an eye passing the Fuji Building. From the outside, it looks no different to the skyscrapers that surround it…But inside tells a different story: Eighteen floors of “one woman brothels”…Signs on the doors read “welcome”, or “wait” in various languages… Strange anime cartoons accompany the messages…“The Fuji Building may be full of prostitutes, but so long as each individual flat can be shown to be a separate unit from all the rest — that it has its own water connection, electricity meter and no one else can access it — it is above board”…the scourge of human trafficking [is] “bubbling beneath the surface of the Hong Kong sex scene”…who’s really in charge?…Terrifying stuff.

Buildings are terrifying! Or is it young women? Sex? Anime cartoons?

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (#714)

Indonesia is trying to criminalize all sex outside of marriage:

…Indonesia…is in the midst of a two-year crack down on sexuality and gender rights; last week, police arrested 58 people in a raid on a “gay sauna” in Jakarta, some of whom now face 10 years in prison. Human rights defenders protecting the community have been threatened, attacked, slandered and threatened with death. Sex worker rights defenders say their night-time profession multiplies the threats they receive as activists…Sex work regulations in Yogyakarta are vague. “Flattery,” “seduction with words, gestures, signs” or other indications that one plans to “carry out indecent acts” are all criminal. The regulations say sex work will “reduce a person’s honor” and conflict with Indonesian values…Workers who speak up for one another during the day are often the ones targeted by police at night…

Cooties (#766)

MPs investigating the sex trade…launched [an inquiry] into organised crime gangs using temporary addresses to sexually exploit women…Police issued warnings to holiday let owners…that their properties were at risk of being used as pop-up brothels. The cross-party group will [attempt to shore up a narrative so cops can harass and persecute]…vulnerable women. [Politician] Gavin Shuker…said…“It is vital that we uncover how these criminals operate – and how we stop them”…

I know it’s hard to tell through the layers of “sex slave” fantasy and women’s agency negation, but what they’re actually talking about are rentals used by touring escorts and those who don’t want to risk “pimping” charges by splitting the cost of a long-term rental with friends.

The Mote and the Beam (#771)

The government’s latest sleazy trick: attacking with civil suits rather than criminal charges, because the burden of proof is reversed:

Harris County has filed a lawsuit against [a] Motel 6 [location, claiming]…the motel is a nuisance and has failed to abate criminal activity…The lawsuit said, “Officers have made numerous arrests for prostitution at this location as well as arrests for possession of illegal drugs, weapons, and violent crime.” The lawsuit [demands]…Motel 6 maintain surveillance video, install and maintain electronic gates, prohibit cash only customers and hourly rates for stay…

The Widening Gyre (#778)

Lenore Skenazy compares “sex trafficking” moral panic to an older form of bigotry-spawned hysteria:

…Facebook posts about fiends snatching innocent children are eerily reminiscent of an older, more pernicious scare: a corrosive lie called the “blood libel,” in which Jews during medieval times were said to be killing Christian children and using their blood to make matzah…medieval scholar Emily Rose…describes the most famous blood libel of all: the 1475 abduction and murder of a young Italian boy, Simon of Trent. A Jew was accused of killing him for his blood. It was not the first such story, but this one spread like wildfire thanks to a brand new social medium: print. Posters and poems disseminated the allegations…Across the continent, people started claiming that a Christian child had been murdered by a Jew in their town, too. “Most of these kids didn’t even exist,” Rose says, “and if they did exist, they weren’t killed.” But that didn’t stop the stories from catching on. And the people repeating them were no longer just plain peasants in a two-bit town…Today’s panicked moms probably don’t see themselves playing a role that goes back centuries. But the only thing new is the medium they’re using to spread fear.

The Mote and the Beam (#780)

Just in case you think it’s only sex workers who will be harmed by SESTA:

…”ICE has recently re-defined the crime of human trafficking to include assistance, like housing and employment, that adults provide to juveniles who come to the United States without their parents. In many cases, the adults being investigated and charged are close relatives of the minors who are supposedly being trafficked“…SESTA is drafted with language that…[allows] the government, both federal and state…to come after the platforms hosting any and all speech related to the assistance of immigrants, if any and all assistance can be considered trafficking. The scope of what they could target is enormous: tweets warning about plain-clothed ICE agents at courthouses, search engine results for articles indicating whether evacuation centers will be checking immigration status, online ads for DACA enrollment assistance, or even discussion about sanctuary cities…If SESTA passes, platforms will either have to presumptively censor all such online speech, or risk prosecution by any government or state entity…

Between the Lines (#784)

“Operation Cross Country” is well-known for reinforcing the “sex trafficking” narrative by omitting figures for adult sex workers arrested, charging male sex workers as “pimps”, and listing arrested 16- and 17-year-old sex workers as “rescued children”. But their most vile trick is abducting sex workers’ children, then claiming they were “rescued” or, even worse, “recovered”: “An 18-month-old child was recovered in Baton Rouge and the child’s mother was arrested amid an FBI-led sex trafficking sweep that recovered 84 children and netted 120 trafficking suspects nationwide“…The word “recovered” refers to someone getting back something that rightfully belongs to them; for cops to use it about someone’s child is a blatant statement that the State views all children as its property.

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In the News (#759)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, An Angel of Mercy, Australia, brothels, censorship, Check Your Premises, cops, dehumanization, drugs, ethics, First They Came for the Hookers, internet, Kansas, License To Rape, male prostitutes, Massachusetts, New Zealand, Opting Out, Pennsylvania, rape, robots, Russia, scams, Sexual Predators, streetwalkers, Subtle Pimping, tabula rasa, Texas, The Pygmalion Fallacy, Under Every Bed, underage, United Kingdom, With Friends Like These on July 26, 2017| 4 Comments »

I suggest we listen to the…people we are trying to protect. – Kate Lister

License to Rape

Prohibition turns the body of every citizen into a “crime scene”, which can be violated by “authorities” at will:

…drug law enforcement is…often accompanied by…sexual shakedowns, in which women…are given the choice between performing sexual acts or facing what could be decades in prison…women…[are] almost three times as likely as men…to be subject to humiliating strip-searches…body cavity searches and monitored bowel movements…roadside cavity search[es] by [cops] who claimed to have smelled marijuana…eventually prompted the Texas Legislature to pass a bill banning cavity searches during traffic stops absent a warrant…Can [pigs] actually get a warrant to search someone’s vagina? The answer is yes. One night in 1986 Massachusetts police officers showed up at Shirley Rodriques’s house, forced open her door and, finding her sleeping in bed with her husband, told her that they had a warrant to search her vagina for drugs. When she refused their order to reach inside herself and take out the “stuff,” police took her to a hospital where…a physician forcefully searched her vagina while a nurse held her down on the table. No drugs were found. But when Ms. Rodriques filed a lawsuit…courts found no wrongdoing…It is still possible to get such a warrant today…

Check Your Premises

So having sex with strangers because of animal-brain lust is wonderful and commendable, but having the same kind of sex with the same kind of people for rational, human-brain reasons is a “grey area” that needs to be “monitored” by authoritarian busybodies:

Manchester has seen a huge uptick in the number of men…selling their bodies for money…Fergal McCullough…explains that…the lines between sex and sex work have grown fuzzier…“There are a lot of grey areas…I’ve had people say ‘If I fancy him I won’t charge him’. That’s the reality for a young, out, gay sex worker”…Unlike female sex workers…a lot of male sex workers advertise their services online…While the exchange of sexual activities for money or other goods is legal in the U.K., police still need to monitor the situation…

Yes, the writer is also claiming that men advertise sex work online more than women do. Picket-fence gays have become an active threat to sexual freedom.

Subtle Pimping

Another amateur profiting from sex workers while giving us nothing:

The [unprincipled] director Jane Campion has revealed that her research for the new series of Top of the Lake involved sneaking into Sydney brothels in disguise in order to hear the real stories of sex workers in the city…this series will move from wild backdrop of New Zealand to Sydney, delving into the world of [decriminalized sex work]. “Sexual tourism in Sydney…has always really annoyed me because [I’m a busybody who thinks my opinion is more important than those]…of people who…have [actually done sex work. Like most prudes, I enjoy pretending that]…the legalisation of brothels is not a simple issue at all [and my sexual fantasies involve] the ownership of someone else’s body…”

With Friends Like These…

Why can’t wannabe allies actually be bothered to talk to sex workers before publishing ignorant pro-regulation drivel that assumes we’re childlike morons in need of licensed handlers?

…the issue of legalizing and regulating the sex trade remains conspicuously off limits for our legislators. Allowing responsibly-operated brothels…has it been legalized in New Zealand, Germany…Eastern Australia…and…Nevada…this policy would help to protect currently-vulnerable sex workers from abuse and disease…there is no popular nationwide movement to stop the ongoing abuse of sex workers by unlicensed, unregulated pimps…

Sexual Predators

That this creepy entrapment & surveillance game isn’t seen for what it is shows how much American society has degenerated:

Detectives from…Monroe County [Pennsylvania]…conducted a web-based prostitution sting [under cover of the myth of]…human trafficking…the detectives posted decoy ads on backpage.com…Each call was initially fielded by Detective Kim Lippincott, who would engage the man in conversation while Detective Brian Webbe used the number to find his information…so they can address the [victims] by name, mention their address and bring up other relationships…The men that fell into the trap were not arrested…the goal was to [spread propaganda that dehumanizes sex workers and casts them as pathetic victims who deserve to be cheated of a fair income]…

Under Every Bed

No doubt caused by the presence of corn and I-35:

A task force that works to [manufacture] crimes against children is [inventing] an increase in the number of sex trafficking cases in Kansas…Richard Powell of the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s office says…”perpetrators are…utilizing a lot of social media to recruit victims.” Powell says there are more than 8000 registered sex offenders living in Kansas, and about 15 percent are in the greater Wichita…area…

An Angel of Mercy (#320)

No cops. No cages. No shaming or brainwashing:

A charity that supports sex workers in Nottingham has secured funding for a new van that will deliver food and hot drinks to them…The Jericho Road Project…was set up 17 years ago and supports approximately 25 women a month…[project manager Julia Terry said] “The aim is to show them love and if they would like help in exiting (the work) then we will support them, but even if they don’t want to exit then we still offer support”…The charity will also support women if they have been attacked, and pass on the details to website Ugly Mugs…

The only sour note in the story is the list of reasons women do sex work which somehow fails to include “earning money”.

First They Came for the Hookers…(#623)

It doesn’t matter what a sex worker does after leaving sex work; to the media, they’ll always be a whore:

A former Russian government official—and business partner of Donald Trump’s—is gaining new notoriety, as the federal investigation into alleged election meddling widens…this Kazakh-born real estate mogul, Tevfik Arif, is doing his best to clean up his past, trying to purge the web of references to his arrest in an underage prostitution bust. He was later acquitted in the matter…

Opting Out (#700)

Naturally, Cassandra McNeill was saying this years ago:

…the UK government…formally announc[ed] that age verification for all online pornographic content will be mandatory from April 2018…it’s expected that you will need to submit your credit card details to a site before being allowed to access adult content (credit cards can’t be issued to under-18s). The appointed regulator will almost certainly be the British Board of Film Classification who will have the authority to levy fines of up to £250,000 or shut down sites that do not comply…This act will potentially censor any UK site that carries adult content, which is broadly defined by the BBFC as “that it was produced solely or principally for the purposes of sexual arousal”…anyone in the adult industry who markets their business with a website, can all be termed pornographic and forced to buy expensive software to screen their users or risk being shut down or fined…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#719)

One wonders if this loon thinks it’s a danger to society to force her vaguely-phallic vibrator against her genitalia without asking for its consent:

What does a rape-able robot say about our attitudes to consent, sex, violence and humanism? Do sex robots…eroticise and normalise male sexual aggression? Or does allowing men to “act out” these “most private sexual dreams” on inanimate objects actually make real women safer? The idea that allowing men to “rape” robots could reduce rates of sexual violence is fundamentally flawed. Sex robot settings that eroticise a woman’s lack of consent, coupled with male aggression, risk normalising rape. It sends a message to the user that it is sexually fulfilling to violate a woman’s “No”…

For the nth time: a woman-shaped toaster is still a toaster, not a woman. It has no power to consent, and there are no “ethical dilemmas” raised by fucking it, painting it green, sticking it in a closet, dismembering it or modifying it into a woman-shaped drink dispenser. Only childlike primitives believe that the shape of an object imbues it with sympathetic-magical powers over humans. And finally: anyone who un-ironically uses the phrase “send a message” in a screed urging limitation of others’ individual freedoms is an authoritarian who “makes the world more dangerous for women, not less”.

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In the News (#749)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Mound of Filth, Against Their Will, agency denial, brothels, Business As Usual, censorship, Choke Point, Comfort Zone, cops, Do As I Say, fascism, Hooker Humor, hysteria, illegal aliens, Lying Down With Dogs, Madonna/whore, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Papua New Guinea, politicians, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rescue industry, sporting events, stripping, Stupor Bowl, Tanzania, The Widening Gyre, Under Every Bed, Wisconsin on June 20, 2017| 4 Comments »

“Cashless society” is a euphemism for the “ask-your-banks-for-permission-to-pay society”. – Brett Scott

Hooker Humor

As I’ve often said, most jokes about sex workers told by amateurs aren’t at all funny:

I’ve come to the conclusion that comedians, along with the general public, don’t expect sex workers to be present…Why should comics be concerned with using us as a punchline; they wouldn’t think for a single minute that there was a one of “them” in the audience. No one is wearing fishnet tights and a leopardskin coat with twenties bursting out of her bra…sex workers…are two steps below human beings, one step below women and one step above rats. If you need confirmation of how mainstream this view has become, have a look at JK Rowling’s ostensibly feminist tweets about how it’s filthily misogynistic to call Theresa May a whore because surely there can be no worse insult…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

It’s really funny when a pig buys into myths about what pigs are allowed to do in entrapment scams:

…police chief…Michael R. Zeug…of Walnut Grove [Minnesota]…was charged…with attempting to hire a minor for sex…a regional drug task force and a human trafficking task force…[set up a scam in which] Zeug sought to buy sex from someone he believed was a 17-year-old girl, but [was] actually…an agent with the federal Department of Homeland Security [getting off by talking dirty to men]…Amid sexually explicit communication, they asked each other whether they were cops; both said no…Zeug…wanted her to flash her breasts to assure him she was not in law enforcement…

Policing for Profit

Cops pretend they need asset seizure to “go after drug cartels”:

Police in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs seized $150 million over the past five years…The average estimated value of a seizure was $4,553, while the median value was $1,049. About three-quarters of all seizures were cash…When these police seizure locations are mapped, it shows that…low-income neighborhoods like the South Side and West Side were more frequently the targets…

Against Their Will (#338)

People moving around a country without government permission is now called “human trafficking”:

With Papua New Guinea currently in the campaign period, there has been a lot of movement of people, cash and goods in most parts of the country…the movement of people in exploitation or trafficking [may happen]. Khalil Omarshah of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), says it is unfortunate that they have not received any reports of human trafficking because they [want] it [to be] an issue…

Choke Point

It’s nice to see the light bulb go on in someone’s head:

The most important thing about bitcoin, the characteristic the gives the lie to the oft-repeated claim that it’s “a solution in search of a problem,” is…its censorship-resistance…Centralization…creates single points of failure that are vulnerable to political or social pressure…As the world goes digital and physical cash transactions continue to decline…there will likely be a lot more attempts to turn trusted third parties into choke points…in a world where all payments are subject to veto by virtue-signaling middlemen, today’s politically correct social norms could become tomorrow’s dangerous control state…

Comfort Zone (#422)

Because the US cares so very much about “trafficking victims”:

…in February, as part of the Trump administration’s promised crackdown on immigration, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)…gave the government sweeping new authority to detain and deport undocumented immigrants, even those in the middle of applying for protective visas…92,585…survivors of human trafficking, domestic violence, and [other] crimes with pending applications face imminent deportation…many undocumented immigrants are withdrawing their applications for protective visas or deciding not to apply at all…For the first fiscal quarter of 2017, from October to December of 2016, the number of received U visa applications decreased by 269 from the same time period in 2015…The agency also approved only 3,021 U visas compared to 9,996 for the same periods…

A Mound of Filth (#617)

Trump wants to enable “Cuckoo Clock” McCain to vomit her poison all over the entire world:

Cindy McCain is expected to be offered a role in President Trump’s State Department…and may hold the title of “U.S. ambassador-at-large for human rights”…McCain is known for working extensively on human rights issues and is part of the McCain Institute Human Trafficking Advisory Council…

Actually, she’s known for working against human rights. But I guess that distinction is too much for most “journalists” to understand.

Lying Down With Dogs (#623)

Another US-style “prostitution crackdown” in a country the US should be proud to resemble:

…the Tanzanian government arrested 500 suspected sex workers alongside an estimated 300 alleged clients in a police sweep that took place in March 2017…[last year] sex worker communities experienced major arrests and harassment. 1,168 sex workers…were imprisoned…The alarming situation started in 2016 after the government [adopted an aggressively-prohibitionist]…HIV response…[including a] ban…[on] the importation and use of [sexual lubricants]…

Under Every Bed (#666)

Though Seattle is the center of “sex trafficking” hysteria in the Pacific Northwest, Portland make its own bizarre, spastic attempts to get some of the attention:

Students…should have been taught about sex trafficking from a much younger age…The Nest curriculum teaches students about common grooming methods predators use…sexualized media is inescapable…while Portland’s police force is skilled in recognizing and addressing sex crimes, rural areas have needed the most basic training in recent years…[a fetishist said] “if people in [a] community enjoy sex, then, yes, you have sex trafficking going on.” Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum…explained that state officials were also partnering with truck drivers and truck stops to catch sex trafficking in process on the I-5 corridor…

The most bizarre part is the female FBI agent, Jessica Biehn, who tries to give lip service to sex worker rights while simultaneously referring to strip clubs as “centers of commercial sexual exploitation.” Biehn pompously declared that going to strip clubs “is not acceptable” [to her and other prudes, presumably], and “warned student panelists not to give business to strip clubs later in life, even for bachelorette parties“. The mind boggles.

The Clueless Leading the Hysterical (#687)

Cops just can’t let go of the truly stupid wanking fantasy that drug dealers want to throw away valuable merchandise by giving it to penniless brats:

…Police outside of Houston confiscated nearly $1 million worth of methamphetamine…all 600 pounds of which came in the form of brightly-colored lollipops…According to HCSO Lt. Ruben Diaz, whoever was making the pops was likely trying to target children…many of them were molded into a variety of kid-friendly colors and shapes, including butterflies, flowers, Yoda’s head, and the Batman logo…”Even if they were not sold directly to a child, what if these lollipops were dropped anywhere in the neighborhood?” Diaz [panted while touching himself]…”A child picking them up is going to see them and think it’s regular candy”…

Please, Mr. Diaz, find me even one single instance of a child ever being poisoned by drug-infused candy carelessly dropped on the ground by a dealer. Go on, I’m sure you can do it since this is such a likely danger.

Stupor Bowl (#713)

It’s disgusting to see so much money wasted on debunked bullshit:

A group of [prohibitionist busybodies]…unveiled plans…to [profit from] sex trafficking [hysteria during] next year’s Super Bowl in Minneapolis…[the scheme includes] billboards spreading [propaganda] to [ramped-up pogroms]…Terry Williams of the Women’s Foundation [said] “We’re excited the Super Bowl is coming here so we can [make a helluva lot of money from this panic]”…Minnesota’s plan — estimated to cost about $1 million — is unique in that it’s bringing together private and public sectors…

The one-word expression for “bringing together private and public sectors”, especially to suppress human rights, is “fascism”.

Business As Usual (#717)

The NYPD’s newest sleazy tactic in its campaign to strangle sex workers’ business, evict them from their homes and deport them if possible:

The NYPD has a new weapon in its battle against sex traffickers — [fanatical] civilian women armed only with [closed minds] and [anti-sex dogma]. Female [rescue group] workers are now going…into city massage parlors suspected of being brothels to talk with the mostly immigrant women who work there and try to [trick them into custody]…The initiative stems from a recent city push to [destroy sex workers’ income and get them evicted from their homes]…rather than throwing them behind bars. But prostitutes are afraid of speaking to authorities after years of arrests. So…[the rescue] group[s]…began going out with NYPD vice teams to help [trick the sex workers]…

The Widening Gyre (#737)

Remember how I predicted 5 years ago that “sex trafficking” hysteria would spin out of control as its end drew near?

…For years, U.S. police have been using tall tales about an American “sex trafficking epidemic” to scare citizens into giving up civil liberties (or at least offering up the rights of sex workers and their clients)…But now the narrative is getting away from them. So sure are Americans (despite all evidence) that sophisticated criminals are waiting to snatch up our girls and women at every opportunity that people are now inventing sex-trafficking rings of their own…and berating police for not taking action. The latest example comes from Glendale, WI, where local police had to fend off rumors that “girls as young as 12 are being snatched up from two local malls and sold into prostitution rings”…

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In the News (#734)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, brothels, California, Canada, condoms, cops, ethics, hysteria, India, Lack of Evidence, Madonna/whore, masturbation, Montana, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, New York, Nothing New, Oregon, Paint By Numbers, politicians, porn, pregnancy, rape, sex toys, Signs, Spain, The Pro-Rape Coalition, To Molest and Rape, Under Every Bed, Whither Canada?, Whore Madonnas on April 28, 2017| 5 Comments »

The time [for decriminalization] is now. In fact, the time was long ago. – Sandeep Prasad

Whore Madonnas

Melissa Petro on working while pregnant:

…Moonlite Bunny Ranch sex worker…Summer Sebastian…recently announced that she’s pregnant and that she plans to keep working…for “as long as [she’s] healthy” and her doctor tells her there are no problems…Predictably, comments on her blog and on provocative articles about her suggest the move is selfish and a bid for attention, and that she ought to “put the needs of the child first”—as if financial security while furthering her education isn’t in the best interest of her and her kid. People criticize Sebastian for exposing herself to risks…but…sex work—with its flexible hours and good pay—is a job that makes sense for an expectant mother…[absurdly] (considering how babies are made) some people just can’t imagine a woman being both a mother and a whore. The idea that female sexuality and serious work, including the serious work of motherhood, are somehow incompatible is sadly outdated…

Lack of Evidence

Americans like to imagine themselves as ahead of India on women’s rights, but this would never happen in the US:

Observing that the mere presence of women and condoms in a place doesn’t necessarily mean that a brothel was being run there, a [Mumbai] court acquitted and set aside the two-year sentence [a lower court had inflicted on] a…woman accused of running a brothel…The court pointed to the fact that the…women found at the scene, were not examined as prosecution witnesses and neither were any customers found. “There is nothing to show that victims were exploited or abused”…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

I could’ve filed this one under “To Molest and Rape”, but take a look at this monster’s “defense”:

…NYPD [pig]…Alberto Randazzo…sought out mothers on websites such as Match.com and Ashley Madison and…”persuaded them to sexually abuse their children and had them send him pictures and videos of the acts”…Three of the women involved have also been arrested on federal charges…Randazzo received a 28-year sentence, plus eight years of supervised release afterward and a sex-offender registration requirement…he had not only requested pornographic images of children—actual children, not teenagers—but also flew to meet mothers of young children to abuse the kids in person. “He showed no qualms about drugging a child so that he could watch the child be molested,” wrote U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Rohde…Randazzo’s shameless defense [was] that he developed an addiction to child pornography following the death of his former police partner…

Under Every Bed

All you really need to know about this article is that it un-ironically includes the phrase “an increase in sex trafficking in northwestern Montana“. What it actually describes is the typical sadistic cops getting their jollies by entrapping horny guys; no “sex slaves” were rescued, no “pimps” were discovered an there was nary a “trafficked child” in sight…which is unsurprising, because Kalispell, Montana has a population of only 22,000.

Paint By Numbers

We’re all familiar with the prohibitionist myth that sex workers are “voiceless”, but these fetishists appear to take that literally:

Advertising students at Portland State University School of Business…In collaboration with the…police…developed a way to help victims of what [fetishists] call modern slavery…their “Red Means Help” campaign launched this month…Signs inside 36 Portland metro area buses tell trafficking victims…to use a red object such as lipstick, toys or sunglasses to signal and [sic] officer or emergency working [sic] that they need help…PSU students plan to place red origami objects around the city at transit stops to spread the word and give victims something red they can use…

Seriously? These people honestly think that if someone were actually being victimized in some way, they’d sit mutely instead of trying to make themselves understood by gestures? And that this paralyzing fear would suddenly be lifted because of a magical sign, and the supposed “victims” will jump up and start waving red paper birds around like a semaphore flag? Who comes up with this infantile rubbish? This is like something a kindergartener would think of, not an actual design to help people fashioned by sane adults.

Whither Canada?

The kind of essay that’s common in the Canadian press, but rare in the US:

The Trudeau government has a moral obligation to address the public health and safety of all…people in Canada, including sex workers…this human rights issue is intentionally being left off the legislative agenda, which is a serious concern…the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health has condemned the criminalization, full or asymmetrical, of sex work as a violation of the right to health by creating barriers to sex worker’s access to health services…In December 2013…The Supreme Court’s Bedford decision marked a huge step in recognizing sex workers’ rights…Almost immediately, the Harper government communicated their intention to…justify the continued aggressive regulation of…sex workers…Like the laws struck down in 2013, this new regulatory regime fails to comply with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms…The Trudeau government has touted itself as one that promotes, respects and fights for Charter rights; yet, their response to sex workers’ Charter rights is dismal…

Nothing New

Remember how I told you that the (very recently-concocted) tale of Victorian ladies being masturbated by doctors because they didn’t know what orgasms were was a huge pile of elephant excrement? Here’s a little more evidence for you:

…Matthews auctioneers in County Meath, Ireland, is offering for sale an “antique carved ivory ladies’ companion”…auctioneer Damien Matthews [said]…“We believe the ivory dates back to the 1840s…in India”…The well-travelled man later fought in the Boxer Rebellion in China from 1899 to 1901, which is where it is thought he had the ivory shaped into something more useful…“This…would have been a very loving gift from a husband to wife. You can see that because the level of detail is incredible, down to the folds of the skin. There’s a heart carved at the base of it, where her finger would have been, and a receptacle in which she could keep a lock of his hair”…

The Pro-Rape Coalition (#545)

Once again, prohibitionists demonstrate their total contempt for the sex workers they pretend to want to “rescue”:

Netflix’s new documentary Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On is…[a diatribe against] the porn industry. Now, at least four sex workers feel the show itself has exploited them — by allegedly featuring them without their consent and, in one case, outing a performer’s real name…Gia Paige…initially agreed to appear and did sign a participant release, but changed her mind after…the [“feminist”] directors kept pushing her boundaries and pressuring her into talking about her family…the show revealed her legal name. During one scene, her Facebook profile is displayed on-screen along with her real first name…Effy Elizabeth, a cam performer, only found out that she was featured…when a friend told her on Twitter. The series used a publicly available Periscope clip of her with fellow cam performer Autumn Kayy. Both women are upset the show…used the footage without their permission and did not warn them that it would appear in the series…

Signs

This is mostly just a hodgepodge of the usual “sex trafficking” nonsense, lies and disinformation: the exaggerated numbers, the agency denial, the pretense that individual thugs are organized into international cartels, the infantilization of African people & fetishization of Asian & Eastern European women, the pearl-clutching, the calls for greater surveillance & more police power, the anti-sex and “end demand” poison, the myth of female asexuality, and so on. But what makes it interesting is the first picture I’ve seen of the one and only case of an actual barcode tattoo, found on the wrist of a Romanian woman in Spain in 2012.

To Molest and Rape

Even though this rapist cop costs taxpayers millions, a newspaper felt compelled to portray him as a hero:

Irwindale [California] paid a $2.75 million settlement…to a young woman who was molested as a teenager by an Irwindale [cop]…for more than a year while she served as a police Explorer Scout…Daniel R. Camerano…pleaded “no contest” in late-2014 to a series of sex crimes for his molestation of the then-14-year-old girl…between May of 2009 and December of 2010. Camerano, who…also [sent]…sexually suggestive texts messages to another 17-year-old female Explorer Scout in 2012, was sentenced to two years and eight months in state prison and ordered to register as a sex offender for life…the sexual abuse…took place during “ride-alongs” with the [pig]…who served as an advisor to the…Explorer program…department officials were aware…that Camerano was sexually abusing the…[girl] but did not stop his access to [her]…

Instead of the mugshot which would’ve been used for someone murdered by a cop, the paper printed a staged portrait with a caption about what a brave hero this rapist was. I am not making this up.

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In the News (#726)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Narrow View, activism, brothels, California, Case Study, cops, Enabling Oppression, ethics, Guinea Pigs, hysteria, Illinois, Iowa, language, Micromanagement, Nebraska, Nice While It Lasted, Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs, porn, prohibitionist myths, racism, Signs, South Africa, surveillance, Texas, Thailand, The Notorious Badge, The Widening Gyre, Under Every Bed, underage, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers on April 2, 2017| Leave a Comment »

We have been so brainwashed by talk of trafficking that we imagine we see it everywhere. – Lenore Skenazy

Enabling Oppression

It’s hard to get more vile and disgusting than white prohibitionists using the names of dead black icons to support campaigns of oppression that disproportionately affect black people. Most of this is a typical Julie Bindel smear screed, referring to sex worker rights advocates as “pimps” and “pro-prostitution pressure groups” (Bindel, you may remember, is the one who says Brooke Magnanti and I, along with Amnesty International and a corpse, are the heads of the imaginary “pimp lobby”). But here’s the money quote, edited for clarity and truth:

…The [prohibitionists fantasize about an imaginary Utopia]…free from prostitution. Many are keen to campaign for the introduction of a law to criminalise the demand. “These men [sex buyers] have a comfortable life,” says one of the women, “after they [complete a mundane business transaction] they go back to their homes and their wives. We want them to be exposed [as people who conduct business transactions]”…”Mandela would understand,” says [one prohibitionist] “I seriously believe that if we had gone to him …he would have [supported police violence against peaceful people having consensual sex]”…

The Notorious Badge

I’d be interested in hearing what actual sex workers think of this show:

Somewhere in the vast terrain between the hooker-as-fairytale-princess fantasy of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and the prim, grim Victorian sociology of Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Woman of the Streets lies Harlots, Hulu’s odd but engrossing new drama about life inside an 18th-century London brothel. Screenwriter Moira Buffini, one of the five British women who produce, write, and direct Harlots, said in unveiling the project that the goal was “everything from the whore’s-eye view.” The result is that the women in Harlots are neither glamorous courtesans nor broken flowers, and their depiction is never erotic…

A Narrow View (#25)

Mark Draughn on the hypocrisy of arresting underage sex workers under guise of “helping” them:

Is it really necessary to send cops with guns to forcibly “help” people? And even if you think it’s necessary to coerce child victims of sex trafficking into accepting social services, can’t you do it without giving them a criminal record?…There are better alternatives. We know this because non-governmental organizations like the Sex Work Outreach Project (SWOP) don’t have arrest powers, and they’ve been doing outreach to sex workers for years…Here in Chicago, the Young Women’s Empowerment Project spent years studying ways to help young women in the sex trade, and they had some useful observations, especially about what they call institutional violence…

Profound Ignorance

This is at least less harmful than the usual ignorance-based sex work “study”, though no less stupid:

To get a feel for what a certain dollar amount can get someone seeking escort services, we averaged 277 images of Las Vegas escorts using face-morphing software and organized them by price point…beauty is not only affected by our personal preferences but is also shaped by our culture…When looking at the women in our composite comparison, the most expensive female escort seems to have more refined features…She also has lighter skin and looks much younger than the woman charging $10 to $99 per hour for her services…

More beautiful escorts are more in demand and can therefore charge more. Gee, who’d have guessed?

Micromanagement

Please, ladies, don’t be so stupid as to give cops evidence they can & will use against you:

Sara Katsanis, a bioethicist at Duke University…was surprised to hear of a program initiated by Dallas [cops] to collect DNA from truck-stop sex workers to solve hypothetical future crimes…Voluntarily give a DNA sample now, the program promised, and if it’s your dead body, at least your family will know. Can sex workers truly consent when it’s police doing the asking?…The program, which was first proposed in 2007, had done a very small survey and found women universally willing to contribute their DNA with no major concerns. “So the ethicist [part of me] said, ‘Oh really, no concerns?,’’ recounted Katsanis. “And who asked? Oh the police”…So she and a colleague, Jennifer Wagner, went down to Dallas, to talk to the sex workers themselves, without [Porky Pig] in the room…

Case Study

Dysphemisms and gawking abound in UK articles about sex work:

A Fulham brothel operator and head of a London sex empire is facing jail after he admitted a series of crimes including making money from prostitution and human trafficking. David Archer…pleaded guilty…to running a string of brothels, trafficking women and controlling their profiles on adult websites…Detective Sergeant John Kirby [drooled]…”Archer exploited vulnerable women to build his lucrative empire in the sex industry over a number of years…once he lured the women, they were instructed to pose for explicit photos, and in some cases forced to engage in sexual activity…Neighbours describe seeing women as young as 18 “dancing naked in the garden” before [one] brothel was shut…

Nice While It Lasted

What could possibly go wrong?

Senior council figures have backed plans to give officials the power to dish out £100 [trial-free] fines for drinking, begging and urinating…[the due-process-free penalties are to be euphemistically labeled] Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs)…the orders would allow police…and council officers to issue instant £100 fines for anyone [they claim committed] one of several anti-social behaviour offences in the areas…deputy council leader…Clyde Loakes [lied]…“This is not an attack on homeless people…this is not infringing human rights”…A third PSPO, aimed at curbing street prostitution, has also been proposed for the Lea Bridge area of Leyton…

Signs

This woman calls bruises and rope burns “signs of trafficking”. I call them “signs of a fun evening”:

…the Southwest Michigan Human Trafficking Task Force recently unveiled two training mannequins that exhibit common physical signs of human trafficking, including bruising, rope burns and possessive tattoos, said Cathy Knauf…She said the tattoos are usually not professionally done and say “Daddy” or are a UPC bar code. “It shows ownership by the trafficker that this is his property,” she said. She said the task force started collecting money for Freethem Ink, which will pay to have a survivor’s tattoo changed into something beautiful or removed…

Lies Piled on Lies

Nebraska is vying with Washington, Arizona and Florida to be the state which produces the stupidest “sex trafficking” nonsense:

Seven score and 14 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a different form of slavery lingers in the United States…human trafficking…ensnares children as young as 13 in the sex industry…Glen Parks [a pig mouthpiece, bloviated while secretly masturbating]…“It’s treating someone like you own them, like they’re an object”…The [pig] who pulls over a suspect transporting three inappropriately dressed and unrelated teenage girls, needs [to lock the girls up]…he said…“We can train motel workers to spot the signs of sex trafficking. These victims get sick more than most, and must be taken to a clinic or a hospital, where if nurses are trained to spot the signs they can [rat them out]”…Connie Lofgreen, a sex addiction [profiteer] in Omaha, [pearl-clutched] that pornography is a “theater” of trafficking…“You don’t know when you look at pornography if that person is participating as a willing participant. You don’t know that they’re not a minor or that they haven’t been trafficked in from another country.” Lofgreen said an entire generation of men has developed an addiction to pornography, and that like all addicts they need increasingly stronger doses, a process that sometimes causes them to drift into child pornography…

Under Every Bed (#669)

We’ve heard all these lies before; this is only notable for the sheer density of bullshit, and the fact that it’s claimed to take place in a state with a smaller population than Greater Seattle:

Amber Lawrence…travels…Iowa [for] Teens Against Human Trafficking…trying to protect young people from being “Taken” down a heartbreaking road in which life expectancy is a stark seven years…an educational exhibit…features art of young women in a cage, an empty pair of silver high heels, and an abandoned teddy bear symbolizing loss of innocence…as a college freshman at 19, she had been the target of an attempted human trafficking incident…

An “attempted human trafficking incident”. You know, like in “The Widening Gyre” below.

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (#714)

Politicians the world over promise the same evil, impossible things, and stupid people just keep believing them:

With mascots dressed as smiling fish and a police rock band, Thai authorities launched a “Happy Zone”…to [sanitize] the image of a city [known] for sex tourism…the…sex…industry…remains economically vital while being officially excoriated…The latest of many crackdowns in Pattaya happened…last month…A handful of bars were raided. Bar owners and working women were fined. Scared to venture out, tourists…stayed in hotels. Street vendors and shops saw sales tumble. The money which flows to all levels in the city – including law enforcement agencies – fell off. The Happy Zone approach is a softer way to try to [pretend] that something is being done…Apichai Krobpetch, chief of Pattaya city police, [said] “We will also stamp out prostitution in the area”…

Guinea Pigs (#723)

More on the “banks looking for whores to rat out to the pigs” evil from last week:

…banks have become adept at mining data to comply with anti-money-laundering regulations. Much of that same data can also be used to detect signs of human trafficking…Some financial patterns that could potentially indicate human trafficking include credit card purchases on some classified-ad sites, several individuals with a common address depositing money into the same account, or multiple accounts transferring money to the same beneficiary…analytics tools can also cross-reference customer phone numbers to see if those same numbers appear on classified-ad pages where illegal services might be sold…

“Multiple accounts transferring money to the same beneficiary”. You know, like when different people pay for purchases from one company.

The Widening Gyre (#723)

Lenore Skenazy’s take on yet another hysterical “sex trafficking” fantasy:

89,000 shares of this piece from ForEveryMom…”Diandra Toyos is a Southern California mom of three kiddos aged 4, 1.5, and 7 weeks. Looking for a fun outing, she and her mom decided to take the kids to their local IKEA recently to do some couch shopping…But Toyos never could have imagined that their lighthearted shopping trip was about to take a sinister turn“…This “My kids were about to be trafficked, I just KNOW it” post is so shockingly similar to last week’s “My kids were about to be trafficked, I just KNOW it” post that it feels…creepy. A lot creepier than being at Ikea where a couple of men glance at my kids…What, two men are going to grab two or three kids, all under age 7, IN PUBLIC, in a camera-filled IKEA, with the MOM and the GRANDMA right there, not to mention a zillion other fans of Swedish furnishings?…You can TELL nothing happened, because the whole thing was described as an “incident”. And Lenore’s #1 Rule of Reporting is: When something is called an “incident,” it’s because nothing happened…

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In the News (#676)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Year Later, agency denial, Australia, California, Canada, cell phones, condoms, Cops and Condoms, drugs, Dysphemisms Galore, Germany, hysteria, Innocence Never Had, Italy, language, Madonna/whore, neofeminism, New Excuse, New Jersey, New Orleans, Pakistan, politicians, Profit from Panic, prohibitionist myths, rescue industry, surveillance, Swedish model, The Widening Gyre, Too Young To Know, Uncommon Sense, Under Every Bed, underage, Vendetta on September 28, 2016| 4 Comments »

Wearing pumps is now considered code for…“Help, I’m a sex traffic victim being made to sell my body for sex.” – Carmen Barika

Profit from Panic

“Buying These Jeans Will Help Stop Human Trafficking.” No, it won’t, but it’ll make these opportunists wealthier:

“It started with myself and my wife…watching the movie Taken“…[said] James Bartle, founder of Outland Denim…”We spent the next few years bringing girls in and training them…We started as a not for profit business and we were able to grow to five girls, but we then realised it was nearly impossible to get beyond that, so we changed our model to a profit for purpose business…Since then we have grown to having 29 local seamstresses over there and two other Cambodian staff”…

Too Young To Know

This judge apparently thinks it’s her job to convince a young sex worker that she’s a victim:

A court in Rome has handed down an unusual penalty to the client of an underage prostitute, ordering him to buy her 30 books on the theme of women’s dignity…including novels by Virginia Woolf, Anne Frank’s diary and the poems of Emily Dickinson…Judge Paola Di Nicola [was apparently annoyed that]…the teenager…used [her earnings] to “buy new clothes and the latest mobile phones”…“the judge favoured a remedy that would [convince] the young girl to [believe] the real ‘damage’ that she had suffered was damage to her dignity as a woman”…

Under Every Bed

I’m not going to try to quote any of this massive garbage fire, an accumulation of most of the currently-popular myths and bogus “statistics” on “sex trafficking”, every one of which has been repeatedly debunked. But given that this website belongs to the National Conference of State Legislatures, i.e. a collusion of money-grubbing, power-hungry politicians from every state in the US, that is hardly surprising; lies are a proven way to shore up prohibitionist police-state regimes.

Dysphemisms Galore

“Threatening the peace.” Seriously.

Lahore…is housing at least 1,906 “safe heavens” [sic] in the three categories of crime, posing a potential threat to the peace…Of them, 1,123 dens deal in drug selling, 318 in prostitution and 465 in gambling…a senior police official…said the consolidated data on the hateful crime surfaced for the first time…a non-stop crackdown under a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy towards these notorious crimes would help bring peace to the city…Similarly, out of total 330 hate spots, the Saddar Division is housing 47 gambling, 78 prostitution and 205 drug selling dens…

Innocence Never Had

Because “children” are merely inanimate objects who can’t move from one place to another without being carried by “pimps”:

…Anjelique…[is a] troubled 12-year-old…[who ran] away from home…Police ended up finding Anjelique but they didn’t bring her back to her mother. Instead they dropped her off at Alameda County Social Services’ assessment center in Hayward…Anjelique made friends with a teenage girl…who took her to a nearby motel…where the family says she first got lured into the sex-trafficking pipeline…even though the county keeps the assessment center’s location a secret, pimps know exactly where it is and could potentially use children inside to recruit others…Anjelique’s grandmother is convinced exploiters are lurking in the shadows. “So you think there are pimps that are waiting outside the assessment center?” we asked her…

This would be hilarious if it weren’t being used as an excuse to destroy lives.

New Excuse

Sometimes the two “wars” blur into one:

A joint investigation into human trafficking in Ocean City [New Jersey] concluded…with three [simple] prostitution arrests…[cops stole] over 270 Baggies of heroin…a small amount of marijuana, $350 in currency, a 2011 Honda Odyssey mini-van, five cell phones and a police-style baton…Each of the suspects was offered victim services…

A Year Later

Ricochet is running a series on the effects of Canada’s new anti-whore laws:

…With Bill C-36 now law, sex workers are struggling…customers are pushing for more incall services at more private locations to avoid police detection. More than 75 per cent of the inquiries I now receive want to meet at my home…I’m considering forsaking my safety in order to pay the bills. In recent months I’ve broken my own rule about never meeting a client in an 18-wheeler truck…The rationale behind the criminalization of clients seems to be that causing clients to feel bad about purchasing sex will deter their desires and end sex work. It doesn’t work that way. It only makes sex workers and clients more creative as we both try to find ways to not get caught…

Uncommon Sense (#557)

Because whores are morons whose lives and businesses must be micromanaged by governments:

German politicians have approved a law making it illegal to have sex with prostitutes without using a condom, among other regulations on the sex trade…Anyone attempting to open a commercial premises for prostitution will undergo checks attempting to crack down on the involvement of gangs, traffickers and criminals…Prostitutes must also register with local authorities, gaining a certificate that must be renewed every two years, and attend an annual health “advice” session…

In other words, the number of whores working illegally will skyrocket as soon as this goes into effect; no licensing regime in the world has higher than a 10% compliance rate.

Vendetta (#607)

Another way to destroy lives, funded by the sociopathic Swanee Hunt:

Cook County’s Tom Dart, the prostitution-obsessed sheriff…has found a new way to threaten people’s privacy, screw over sex workers, and grow the police state. The latest Dart-led initiative involves creating a national database of prostitution customers, using solicitation-arrest data submitted by cops through a phone app. Demand Abolition…reported on Sheriff Dart’s new plot in a late-August post crowing that “1,300 sex buyers—a record—were arrested across 18 states in just one month” of Dart’s National John Suppression Initiative. Now, the sheriff is using data from that sting to start a national database of people arrested for soliciting prostitution. You know, for research purposes…This is thanks to a new app that streamlines the logging of prostitution arrest information….developed at a January “social justice hackathon”, in which a hundred or so techies were presided over by a team of anti-prostitution zealots from across the country…During the last John Suppression Initiative, cops logged info from 80 percent of all arrests into the database…

Cops and Condoms (#654)

WARNING: Lelo Hex condoms are NOT safe!

As I looked through the press-kit Lelo sent me, I was faced with a distressing image. An animated GIF of a stretched-out Hex being repeatedly poked with a pin. Lelo was showcasing a feature of their new condom, which was still latex by the way, that you could poke a hole in it without breaking the it in any noticeable way. Read that again. This is an advertised design feature…While it sucks to have a condom break, the way in which they break acts as, whether intentionally or not, a red flag system. The shattering of the condom means you know that your barrier has failed and that you now need to take steps to address the situation- emergency contraception, STI testing, post-exposure STI prophylaxis…whatever an instance of exposure means to you. The manner in which Hex fails, however, means the sex act can be completed and there be no sign that there was a breach of security…

The Widening Gyre (#670)

This example of “grocery store sex trafficking” lunacy resulted in cop harassment of three people:

This past spring I was cornered in the parking lot of the Whole Foods on Veterans Memorial Boulevard in Metairie by two [cops]. They said they’d received a 911 call from an anonymous caller who — after observing my father and me eating breakfast biscuits at the Chick-fil-A up the street and then watching as I was dropped off in front of the Whole Foods several miles down the road (yeah, he had followed us) — somehow surmised I was a part of a prostitution/sex-trafficking ring…The…stalker…I mean, caller…had also identified my father and some guy parked nearby, whose license plates he had taken time to record, as a part of the suspected ring…Consequently, the three of us spent the next 20 to 30 minutes standing in the parking lot with…five surrounding police cars…waiting to be cleared from any salacious, solicitous, unwholesome “ho-dom,” all the while wondering how three people grocery shopping at Whole Foods could have induced such an “unsolicited,” inconvenient misunderstanding…

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In the News (#669)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, asset seizure, Australia, brothels, Canada, cops, Dysphemisms Galore, Facebook, hysteria, I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now, Iceland, Illinois, Iowa, King of the Hill, male prostitutes, Michigan, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, New York, Oregon, Paint By Numbers, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, PSA, sexting, shame, Shame Shame, South Carolina, Texas, The Public Eye, To Molest and Rape, Uncommon Sense, Under Every Bed on September 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »

How could I be happy in a country that is so…puritanical when it comes to sexuality? – Gabriela Leite

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

The defense of choice for non-violent sex offenders, plus “autism”:

A longtime conservative activist will spend up to two years in prison after he admitted to collecting hundreds of sexually explicit images of children — but defense attorneys blamed his autism and depression. Christian Hine, of Fort Mill, S.C…was arrested…after FBI agents raided his home and seized his electronic devices, where investigators found more than 700 images…[which] had been shared thousands of times for more than a decade. Hine’s attorneys…said his autism disorder had left him unable to communicate well or socialize normally with others. They said that caused him to become addicted to pornography, which then led him to search for images of children instead of adults…

I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now

…that Dallas cops brutalized & caged two old women and stole over half a million dollars from them because they gave “happy ending” massages:

Two North Texas women were arrested…over allegations that they operated a brothel at the Dallas Doll House massage parlor…the North Texas Trafficking Taskforce arrested the women on federal charges…Connie Su Moser, 63…is the owner of the parlor…Kum Shugars, 67, [is] a manager…[cops stole] about $420,000 from Moser’s home, $70,000 in her bank accounts and her 2015 Lexus…

The Public Eye

Another sex worker on a TV reality show:

The formula behind Logo’s Finding Prince Charming certainly seemed stale, until…several LGBTQ news outlets reported that the bachelor at the center of the show’s romantic competition may allegedly have been a sex worker in the past …Unicorn Booty and Next posted pictures of Robert Sepulveda Jr.’s former Rentboy.com profile, along with pictures of his penis…from…Str8UpGayPorn.com. Next described Sepulveda’s former work…as a “sordid past”…[then a few paragraphs later piously declared that] “Sex work — porn or prostitution — is nothing to be ashamed of”…

King of the Hill

Mostly just a lot of prohibitionist posturing, but contains Chicago’s first claim to one of the top “sex trafficking hub” spots: “Chicago ranks third in the country for the highest levels of human trafficking…”

Under Every Bed

Make sure you swallow your drink before reading this:

Sex trafficking is happening in Iowa, and not just in the state’s biggest cities…In any given month, there are nearly 900 sex workers in Iowa…[soi-disant] experts gave the audience…warning signs for people who come into a hospital or other health care facility and may be trafficking victims…

Public Service Announcement (#330)

It’s almost like he wants to get caught:

…While his wife, Huma Abedin, travels the country campaigning for Hillary Clinton…disgraced ex-congressman [Anthony Weiner] has been sexting with a busty brunette out West — and even sent her a…crotch shot with his toddler son in the picture…shortly after 3 a.m. on July 31, 2015…the cringe-inducing image…shows a bulge in his white, Jockey-brand boxer briefs and his son cuddled up to his left, wrapped in a light-green blanket…Moments after forwarding the photo, Weiner freaked out over the possibility he had accidentally posted it publicly — just as he did during the infamous episode that forced him to resign from Congress in 2011…

Paint By Numbers

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

…We are excited to offer you a curated selection of vintage wedding gowns…Proceeds from all sales go to support Adorned in Grace’s mission of fighting sex trafficking through awareness, aftercare, and prevention…“I have never stopped being captured by the beautiful idea of taking a wedding dress and turning it into something that incredibly blesses someone who is vulnerable and hurting. Everyone deserves to be held up like a bride, beautiful and valuable. Sex trafficking takes that away and the ability to restore that with dresses is powerful.” – Kate Wilkins, founding volunteer of AIG…

Uncommon Sense (#345)

Kudos to the IWW for supporting sex workers in Iceland:

There is no sex worker-led organisation or service provider for sex workers in Iceland. Stígamót…is the only organisation that provides services to sex workers. However, they consider all sex workers as victims of violence. Loi…contacted IWW- Iceland (Industrial Workers of the World) asking if they would be interested in…organising sex workers in Iceland…On the 30 of July IWW organised a meeting for sex workers, their supporters and decriminalisation activists…

Shame, Shame

I really admire this lady’s chutzpah:

…Amy Sharp…escaped from [a jail in Sydney]…just after 3pm on [August 26th]…The police statement…was accompanied by [a typical humiliating mugshot which was] shared to Sydney’s 7 News Facebook page. Almost immediately, Sharp commented on the post from her personal profile with a more flattering image of herself and a simple request. “can you use this photo, please and thank you 😇 Yours Truly, Amy Sharp xx”…She was later [re-]arrested…[and] despite Sharp’s polite request, 7 News Sydney [proved itself a handmaiden to the police state by using] her mugshots in a follow-up post…

Oh, and the “crime” for which she was arrested in the first place? An “outstanding warrant”.

Hard Numbers (#624)

Signing a pledge that condemns what you do, as a condition for protecting the health of your community, goes against everything we know about H.I.V. prevention and sex work…Any action or policy that reinforces stigma around sex work not only contributes to bad health outcomes, but perpetuates bad laws and stigmas against “bad sex.” This is consistent with our experiences in Brazil, the experiences of sex workers globally, scientific research and international recommendations. This is why Davida…fought the anti-prostitution pledge alongside the Brazilian National AIDS Program in partnership with dozens of sex worker rights and AIDS organizations in 2005…the country turned down $40 million for H.I.V. prevention…Sex workers need to be protagonists of these programs, not just receivers of them…

Dysphemisms Galore (#633)

There’s something especially nasty about reporters gloating over popular stars’ sex worker siblings:

The sister of pop star Mariah Carey has been arrested on prostitution charges in upstate New York…Alison Carey was arrested [in a sting] at a hotel…she identified herself as the performer’s sister when she was arrested and…an Internet search of the two women appeared to confirmed the claim…[they] have been estranged “for years.” Police described Carey as a transient and said she advertised her services online…

Obviously that wasn’t enough, so the cops insinuated that there were rumors that Carey had some kind of STI.

To Molest and Rape

Amy Lange thinks a cop groping a woman is “shocking”. She’s obviously what I’d call “sheltered”:

Shocking allegations against a member of the Dearborn Police Department. In May it was alleged a [cop] groped a woman during a traffic stop…Justin Smith, 36, was charged with a felony, criminal sexual conduct…The court file is [of course] currently suppressed at the request of the prosecutor…

I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now (#667)

Canada really is trying to be more like the US. But at least in Canada, the protests are a bit louder:

Experts in privacy and civil rights are raising questions about a police news conference that identified 27 men caught in a Cape Breton prostitution sting, saying the move amounted to unnecessary “public shaming”…provincial court Judge Brian Williston [naturally] rejected a legal challenge from one of the accused…[Abby] Deshman [of the CCLU] said that line of reasoning doesn’t recognize the impact of holding a news conference to draw attention to the accused…”Absent some risk to public safety, just putting people’s names out there who haven’t been convicted of any crime yet really has an enormous impact on these individuals’ lives and livelihood”…Deshman said the damage to reputations can’t be repaired if charges are later withdrawn or not guilty verdicts are recorded…

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