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In the News (#815)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged activism, agency denial, Alabama, asset seizure, Australia, brothels, California, Canada, censorship, cops, Elephant in the Parlor, Finding What Isn’t There, hysteria, internet, Ireland, LGBT rights, Madonna/whore, marriage, Opting Out, Policing for Profit, politicians, porn, pregnancy, prisons, prohibitionist myths, propaganda, psychology, rape, RIP Laura Lee, sex work is work, statistics, Storyville, Texas, The Pro-Rape Coalition, The Public Eye, The Spiral of Absurdity, Torture Chamber, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Watershed, Whore Madonnas on February 24, 2018| 1 Comment »

[Laura Lee] put herself on the line in a way few have the guts to do. – Brooke Magnanti

Storyville

An interesting look at brothel archaeology in Australia:

Sex work was one of the major ways poor women could earn a reasonable income in the 19th century. Especially unmarried women with babies. But we don’t hear people say “my great-great-grandmother was a sex worker”…Social stigma belies the importance of prostitution in providing an independent living, and even property ownership, for numerous women in this period…the Little Lon district in Melbourne CBD’s north-east corner…has been extensively excavated by a series of archaeological projects over the last 30 years, and our recent intensive research on the artefacts recovered (held at Museum Victoria and Heritage Victoria) is revealing much more about the brothels and the women who owned them that had disappeared from memory…

Whore Madonnas

While mainstream media mindlessly parrots “sex trafficking” propaganda, the alternative press is listening to sex workers:

…Liz Afton works as a counselor at the Sex Workers Project…which provides legal and social services to people involved in sex work…“Mothers…who are involved in sex work often have it used against them to separate them from their child,” Afton says. Atossa Movahedi, director of legal services and development at the UJC’s domestic violence project, says…“More often than not…the opposing party had knowledge of, or even was involved directly, in the client’s participation in the sex work, and is now using it as a tool to exploit them in the court system.” When dealing with custody disputes, courts [supposedly] first look at a parent’s ability to provide a loving and stable home. Financial status, mental health, drug use and domestic violence all fall under consideration. Though many mothers involved in sex work pass inspection in these areas, they’re left with the fact that the job is usually illegal—and in the eyes of some on the bench, immoral…

The Pro-Rape Coalition

Liz Brown is becoming our most powerful voice against sex hysteria:

Evidence-free freakouts over erotica are a time-honored tradition…history is littered with authoritarians of all stripes convinced that censoring sexual imagery was a necessary social good. And with each iteration, what porn prohibitionists lack in actual facts to support their doomy view they make up for with warnings that this time it’s different — that whatever new medium exists for producing or distributing porn is uniquely dangerous to the youth and degrading to good women. For decades now, this supposed difference has been chalked up to the proliferation of online pornography…there’s no evidence that internet porn has been destroying millennials — some of whom now have two decades of…data to offer…all the available evidence shows…teens today are starting sex later, and more likely than previous generations to use condoms when they do. Teen pregnancy rates are at their lowest levels in decades…In addition, there’s now a huge body of research showing that…it’s “time to discard the hypothesis that pornography contributes to increased sexual assault behavior”…sexually well-adjusted adults “reported more experience with pornography as teenagers” than their maladjusted counterparts…

Finding What Isn’t There

Too bad all prohibitionism isn’t focused on harassing women who don’t exist:

Lake of the Woods boasts 15,000 islands and more than 100,000 kilometres of shoreline — more coast than Lake Superior…the [area]…near the Manitoba border sees its population double in the summer months. When [masturbatory fantasies] of women and girls being forced into the sex trade on Lake of the Woods arose at a 2013 human trafficking conference in Kenora, even local social service workers were shocked…“Dock girls,” as they came to be known…are [fantasized] to be overwhelmingly Indigenous [minors who]…are [fantasized] to be transported…from…northwestern Ontario and Manitoba as part of a human trafficking circuit…only…one social service worker [in the area claims]…they’ve come face-to-face with a “dock girl”…[yet]…Kenora will receive $504,000 over three years to [indoctrinate] frontline hospitality workers…[in the usual anti-whore propaganda]…there is so little hard evidence for the “dock girl” phenomenon that it raises questions about whether the problem exists at all. And if it doesn’t, critics say, wouldn’t the government’s funding…be better spent elsewhere?…

Policing for Profit

Cops are starting to admit that this is about nothing other than profit:

In Alabama…two [politicians] introduced legislation that would require that prosecutors actually convict people of crimes in order to keep their stuff. It would put the burden on the state to prove that the property they want to seize is connected to a crime…It would move the proceeds of forfeiture to the state’s general fund to eliminate the profit incentive for police and prosecutors to try to seize whatever they could get their hands on. And it would close a loophole that would forbid local law enforcement agencies from bypassing restrictions by participating in the federal “equitable sharing” Department of Justice forfeiture program…the head of the Alabama District Attorney’s Association and the Alabama Sheriffs Association teamed up with an op-ed that urges against reforms to asset forfeiture…Brian McVeigh and Dave Sutton warn that requiring successful prosecutions will lead to them filing more charges against people…When you find yourself threatening to find more reasons to put even more citizens in jail in order to protect your revenue stream, it’s maybe time to…think about what you’re doing…

Torture Chamber

Stop faking!

Women imprisoned at California’s Santa Rita Jail say they’re being [caged] in filthy conditions, denied basic hygiene products, pressured to have abortions, subjected to incessant strip searches, and forced to endure many other manners of cruel and inhumane treatment from guards and staff…In a new federal lawsuit, they’re asking a federal judge to intervene on behalf of them and future female prisoners, particularly those who are pregnant…The jailhouse horror stories…provide an invaluable glimpse at the…systemic degradation…such institutions foster…female inmates face the standard abuses inflicted on male prisoners as well as those unique to their sex, from being forced to “free bleed” during their periods if they can’t afford to buy tampons to facing higher levels of sexual assault and coercion from guards and staff…pregnant prisoners [are] denied proper nutrition and prenatal care and, in some places, forced to give birth in shackles. At Santa Rita…one inmate was…left alone in solitary confinement to give birth…”She was banging on her metal door…[the screws] closed the slider-window…so she could not see out, and no one could see in…Only after we could hear the crying of the baby did the deputies finally go over and open her door”…

Opting Out (#401)

This is no surprise to those of us who have actually studied the effects and history of censorship:

Sky UK has been called out for blocking a…website that its algorithms deem as “pornographic”…as part of the Digital Economy Act 2010…Sky UK have blocked gay-teen advice website gayteenresources.org…an important resource for teenagers exploring their sexuality and for those that may be struggling…blocked.org.uk, which lists sites that cannot be accessed, reveals that O2, EE and Three have also automatically filtered the site from their mobile networks…

“Filtered” is a euphemism for “censored”, and this will continue until the media acknowledge that.

The Spiral of Absurdity (#792)

At least universities in Washington state aren’t generally used to spread “sex trafficking” propaganda, unlike those in Arizona and Texas:

The “Artifacts of Human Trafficking” exhibit is designed to [facilitate masturbation] to [the fantasy of] human trafficking in Texas…there are more than 300,000 victims of human trafficking in the state…From Feb. 12 to March 16, the School of Social Work will host the art exhibit, created by Austin artist Amie Stone King…illustrat[ing] themes of isolation, captivity and desperation…Prominent in the center of the exhibit is a “seclusion room.” Attendees are invited to enter the small space and [masturbate in private while fantasizing about pubescent girls in]…a life of captivity…

The Public Eye (#797)

Though Rolling Stone is far too timid to write honestly about escorts, it’s good to see a sex work-positive article in it at all:

At…the 35th Annual Adult Entertainment Expo and Adult Video News Awards…plenty of big names were in attendance – stars who had led more traditional adult-film careers – but they were outnumbered by scores of up-and-coming models who primarily built their own businesses using cam shows, original clip stores and monetized social-media platforms. The mass availability of easily pirated streaming video may have decimated the porn economy, but it seems that women are the ones adapting, finding fresh ways to connect directly with consumers. As these models gain more economic influence, they are also raising the bar for consent conversations throughout the industry…

Tit For Tat

One day, our culture will grow up enough that this won’t be noteworthy:

…Eva Sless…is a sex columnist, a sex educator and a sex worker who…[is] married. Sless’ husband, Justin…is completely supportive of her work, though they’re both aware it’s an unconventional life. “I know we are a rare couple. Our life and marriage is built on a foundation of strong friendship, trust, love, and respect…I don’t know if the life we live is for everyone, but it works for us. I love our world.” Below, they tell us more about Sless’ work, how it affects their marriage and what Justin thinks of his wife’s clients…

Elephant in the Parlor (#806)

This ought to be interesting:

Stormy Daniels, the porn star whom Donald Trump’s attorney acknowledges paying $130,000 just before Election Day, believes she is now free to discuss a…sexual encounter with the man who is now president…At the same time, developments…are fueling questions about whether such a payment could violate federal campaign finance laws. Daniels…believes that Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, invalidated a non-disclosure agreement after two news stories were published [early last week]…one in which Cohen told The New York Times he made the six-figure payment with his personal funds, and another in the Daily Beast, which reported that Cohen was shopping a book proposal that would touch on Daniels’ story, said the manager, Gina Rodriguez. “Everything is off now, and Stormy is going to tell her story,” Rodriguez said…

Watershed (#809)

When stuffy Time publishes an article who only major nod to prohibitionism is to quote dried-up dinosaur Gloria Steinem vomiting up her “body invasion” nonsense, you know things are changing:

Like millions of others, Melony Hill took to social media last fall to say “me too”…But rather than receiving an outpouring of support, Hill said she’s gotten messages saying that she deserved to be sexually assaulted — because she has worked in the sex industry for 20 years…“They’ll say we’re just whores anyway — ‘How can you sexually assault a whore?’ I’ve had that said to me multiple times”…Sex workers are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence on the job, but have few good options to report it…Some…sex…[workers] told Time that they have posted their #MeToo stories anonymously to avoid potential legal repercussions. Others said that they don’t want to speak out publicly because they anticipate they’ll be shamed, or not believed because they aren’t “perfect victims”…there’s also the damaging notion that sex workers can’t be sexually assaulted…“Not all women are being supported in the #MeToo movement,” said Cris Sardina…of…Desiree Alliance…“It’s what type of woman”…

R.I.P. Laura Lee

A very nice tribute from The Herald:

She was, in the words of Scots author Kirstin Innes, “a powerhouse, a formidable, vital, hilarious and angry star”…Others described her as a “fierce warrior” for women. She appeared regularly in the pages of this newspaper fighting the corner of the most marginalised women in society – sex workers. She was Laura Lee – a brilliantly clever Irish woman who found an adoptive home in Scotland and made the choice to work in the sex industry. Last week, she died aged just 39…

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Laura Lee, Sex Work Stigma, and the Limits of #MeToo

Posted in Biography, Guest Columns, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged activism, Ireland, Laura Lee & Sex Work Stigma, rape, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers on February 23, 2018| 8 Comments »

Though Laura Lee is gone, her friends will not let her be forgotten; there were many awful people who hurt her for her work, from Catholic nuns to “feminist” crusaders to pompous politicians. But there is one we have kept silent about for years; no more. Brooke Magnanti obtained permission from Laura’s surviving family to write this; she published it on Medium, and asked me to mirror it here as a signal-boost.

I first met activist Laura Lee at a signing for my book The Sex Myth in 2012. We became friends instantly, united by our belief that no activism is more powerful than being honest to people about sex work. That showing our faces is the only way to speak truth to power. Both of us experienced the ups and downs of going public with our pasts. From Laura Lee’s grilling in Stormont, or how we were spoken about and treated by the press, it’s safe to say that being known as a sex worker invites vicious criticism, to the extent that we both received threats of death and violence. We bitched and bonded over it behind the scenes, but got on with life, because some things were more important than cowering while cowards raged. Laura was always keen to show as full a picture of sex work as possible. She had worked at almost every level of the industry and knew the business inside out. As she liked to say, she’d been everywhere from chicken sheds to five-star hotels. Laura had a knack of telling her story in a way that was relatable, especially to other single mothers and concerned parents. She had a gift.

Unfortunately that producer was not successful in developing a show featuring Laura, so the plans were put on the back burner. But he did have other media connections, and it was his acquaintance with a music journalist in Dublin that convinced Laura to give an in-depth interview to well-known Irish writer Olaf Tyaransen. You already know the kind of man Olaf is: middle aged but refuses to wear ties, brags about going backstage with Bono, tweets “edgy” comments about drugs. But he was the friend of a friend, so we figured he was probably alright. The interview happened in October of 2014. With so much interest in Laura’s activism, I hardly paid attention to what surely would be just one of the many positive and impactful interviews she gave that year. When she messaged me shortly after, I was stunned by what she said. After the interview, Laura told me, Olaf had invited himself back to her room for more chat. And it was there he drugged her, beat her, and sexually assaulted her. Now, for those who didn’t know Laura: she was not only formidable in activism, she was just as formidable in person. A tall, strong woman whose physical presence served her well in domination — the part of sex work that comprised the majority of her appointments. She was no meek submissive, and experienced enough to follow her instincts on who was potentially dangerous. In a business that is never risk-free, she handled herself. He still beat her black and blue.

Laura was not the kind to throw around false accusations. I believed her as soon as she told me. But she even shared pictures of a chat with another friend describing what he had done. She didn’t report it, not right away. Sex workers know that feminist solidarity rarely if ever applies to us. Laura was a strong person but also realistic. What power does a sex worker, even a well-known one, have against a journalist? Who would be believed? Sex workers are the “surplus women” who absorb men’s violence, in the view of the mainstream press. When attacks happen we do not expect to be cared for or supported. At worst we can expect to be disbelieved; at best, to be told that we deserve it. Take for example the case of Morgan Marquis-Boire, a hacker from New Zealand. The violent abuse he perpetrated was covered up not only because of who he was, but because of who his victims were, including sex workers. It is exactly this kind of stigma that Laura spent years fighting. The stigma that is heightened by the Swedish Model and other anti-sex worker propaganda. The stigma that suggests it’s “feminist” for sex workers to operate in the shadows and be victimised. The stigma that says women are only valuable if they are sweet and virginal and blameless. The kind that makes it difficult for sex workers who are attacked to go to the police.

The Hotpress piece by Tyaransen ran in December 2014, and eventually what she told me about the interview left my mind. Laura continued to follow Olaf on Twitter after the assault, which was no surprise if you knew her. She followed a lot of accounts she disagreed with, from Irish anti-sex work campaigners Ruhama to Abolition Scotland to Human Trafficking News. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer as the saying goes. Life went on. Or seemed to. Then 2017 happened, and so did #MeToo. The movement began with Hollywood and Weinstein but it didn’t end there. Suddenly the floodgates were opening. Powerful men in media who for decades had gotten away with harassment, abuse, and rape were being called out by their victims. Some were even being held to account, losing projects and positions. #MeToo gave Laura hope. Hope that finally she would be able to go to the Gardaí and be believed. Hope that she could tell her story and, if not put her abuser in jail, at least prevent any other woman from going through what she went through. Now, there are all kinds of men who abuse. In the case of people such as Harvey Weinstein, power covers their tracks. But others are more insidious. They lurk in the shadows, picking off the vulnerable, the liminal, the unlikely to be believed. They attack people with complicated pasts such as sex workers. And they present a blameless face to the world. Consider, for example, this tweet from Tyransen in December 2017:

My tweet (now deleted) asked if there was a reason he in particular might be afraid of the ground shifting. I wanted to let him know, if he was self-aware enough to realise it, that what he had done would not stay secret for much longer. Rape is more than an edgy lifestyle choice for sad middle aged journos on a Hunter S Thompson trip. It’s fair to say he either didn’t get the hint or was still confident a man’s insistence would win out over a sex worker’s evidence. This was his response:

Twitter spats count for very little; what matters is holding abusers to account. In November 2017, Laura, supported by Wendy Lyon, gave a statement of evidence to the police at Store Street Station in Dublin. The weight of what had happened troubled her in the years since it happened. In particular the thought that with no one speaking out, he might have been able to do the same thing to someone else. With police and papers suddenly interested in exposing abusers, Laura felt that — regardless of the stress it would cause her, with so much else going on — it was time to speak up. Wendy stayed with her on that day, while Laura gave her statement for over six hours. Laura was a strong person, almost unimaginably so. And this took every bit of strength she had. We waited for something to happen. And waited. And waited. Meanwhile, her attacker went about his life as if nothing happened, because for him, it probably was nothing. We continued to keep tabs on him, noting how dismissive he was of the Presidents Club dinner wait staff who had been abused. A subtweet meant for Laura? Maybe. A shudder-inducing insight into the mind of a predator? Definitely.

And then everything changed, again. I wish I could say this is the part where the guards kick in a door, cuff the guy, and justice prevails but many readers will already know how this story ends. It ends with Laura Lee’s sudden death. It ends with Gardaí closing the case because the main witness is gone. It ends with a man who preyed on someone he thought would never speak out just…getting away with it. Now it is over three years since Olaf Tyaransen sexually assaulted Laura Lee in a hotel room, drugged her, beat her black and blue. For far too long we watched and waited and hoped for something to be done only to be told, now, there will never be justice. But I am alive. And I don’t give a shit about legal threats and bluster and the egos of violent men. Laura would have done the same for any sex worker. In fact she did: staying on social media all night to make sure a friend who was raped on tour was OK. Lambasting journalists for how they reported on the trial of Bala Chinda, who murdered sex worker Jessica McGraa. She was not one to let violence against sex workers by cowardly men be brushed under the rug. Laura Lee tried, in a world that little cared for our lives and safety, to be an advocate. She tried to put her abuser behind bars. She can’t carry that on anymore, and between the indifference of the #MeToo movement to the stories of sex workers and the failure of the police to move forward as soon as they had evidence, perhaps this will go nowhere. Perhaps I am just pissing in the wind. But I don’t think I am, and I don’t think Laura would believe I was either. It matters for people to know her struggle and her pain. It matters for people to know who the predators are, the ones who bide their time so they can attack women they perceive as vulnerable and sneer about it all later. Olaf Tyaransen drugged and raped Laura Lee. He beat her. And he went on with his life as if nothing happened. He did it because of who she was, counting on her never being able to tell her side of the story. She tried to fight the stigma and use the system to her advantage, but now she is gone, and he wins. Just the way they always did and always do.

Beware this man Olaf Tyaransen, abuser, vile slime in journalist’s clothing. And never let him do this to anyone ever again.

Laura left behind a teenage daughter on her own; please consider donating to the ongoing fundraiser to help Cat, which runs until the first week of March.

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In the News (#814)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Arizona, avails laws, BDSM, brothels, California, Canada, Catholicism, censorship, Checklist, China, consensual crime, cops, dirty, Elephant in the Parlor, escort services, Georgia, Haiti, Hollywood, hysteria, law, Legal Is as Legal Does, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, New York, politicians, porn, prisons, propaganda, psychology, Pyrrhic Victory, rape, sex offender registry, Stalkers in Blue, Standard Operating Procedure, surveillance, Swedish model, The End of the Beginning, The Notorious Badge, The Punitive Mindset, The Puritan Recrudescence, To Molest and Rape, transgender, United Kingdom, Utah, Whither Canada? on February 21, 2018| Leave a Comment »

A federal war on porn would be just as winnable as the federal wars on drugs and alcohol—in other words, not winnable at all. – Peter Suderman

The Punitive Mindset

Only in the US could a fucking screw expect sympathy for having to endure the aberrant behavior of human beings she helped keep locked up in cages:

I…don’t watch porn because I’ve seen more men masturbate than I can count. One of my first jobs out of college was working as a [fucking screw] at a county jail in the South. Even after getting an Ivy League degree at the University of Pennsylvania, I had to take the work I could find that was related to my field: criminology. And only one facility called me back…it got so bad that I whenever I saw an inmate masturbating, I would look away or pretend not to see it so I didn’t have to do all the paperwork. Besides, I soon realized that for…men [locked up in cages and deprived of all normal human contact]…the punishment they would get…was no deterrent…Four years ago, I left the jail to go to grad school. But this stays with me: I was a female [screw]…who had to figure out how to do my job while inmates masturbated to my presence, my voice, even my scent…And there is nothing at all that will help me forget it…

Waah, waah, waah. People who make their living off of human misery deserve everything they get. I’m glad she’ll never forget it; maybe she’ll think twice before taking another job keeping human beings in conditions that wouldn’t even be humane for chickens.

Elephant in the Parlor

I can’t even begin to guess how much taxpayer money ended up in my bank account:

A Utah lawmaker who voted for tougher penalties for prostitution has resigned amid allegations that he used taxpayer dough to pay for hotel rooms to hook up with an online escort…Brie Taylor [said]…Jon Stanard paid her $250 for sex twice at the Fairfield Inn in Salt Lake City…Stanard…was reimbursed for two hotel stays while he was attending legislative meetings at the state capital…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

“Sex addiction” is still being used to excuse bad behavior:

Mesa police have arrested a 50-year-old man accused of exposing himself on at least three occasions, dating back to February of 2017. Erik Gerard Becker…allegedly exposed himself and [masturbated]…at least three times…to a 12-year-old girl in one of the instances…Becker is the Chief Financial Officer for Catholic Charities in Arizona…[and] has a history of public sexual indecency and indecent exposure charges…all the way back to 2012…Becker told police he had a lifetime problem with sex addiction and advised he was still in therapy…

Standard Operating Procedure

One day, amateurs will realize that “visitors to a country do business with locals” is neither “misconduct” nor even news:

Oxfam, one of Britain’s largest charities, acknowledged…that staff members committed “sexual misconduct” in Haiti in 2011, after a news report revealed that senior officials there had hired prostitutes, including for sex parties. Oxfam fired four people and allowed three others to resign after an investigation, which also found that drivers were sometimes ordered to pick up prostitutes and that orgies were held at houses near Port-au-Prince that were used by the organization’s staff…

The Notorious Badge (#513)

50 shades of clusterfuck:

…Fifty Shades Freed is about as arousing as staring at a mildewed patch of wallpaper. This is the third film to be adapted from EL James’ trilogy of zillion-selling “mommy porn” S&M bonkbusters, and its protagonists are two attractive young lovers who can’t keep their hands off each other, so it should be a turn-on, if nothing else. And yet Fifty Shades Freed is so unarousing that it could be used as therapy in a sex addiction clinic…

The Puritan Recrudescence

On the absurdity of currently-fashionable calls to ban porn:

Imagine…what it would take to successfully ban pornography in the United States…you would need to stop the production of porn by business enterprises…Next, you would need to find a way to stop a slew of high profile, incredibly lucrative websites from posting, hosting, or otherwise distributing explicit material. After you cracked down on the pros, you would need to go after amateurs by finding some way to stop tens of millions of iPhone-wielding Americans from making home movies…and distributing them anonymously online…you would also need to enforce criminal penalties against former professionals who continued to produce porn for the black market. And you’d need to penalize thrill-seeking amateurs as well, which would mean going after, and perhaps locking up, a wide array of sympathetic and otherwise law-abiding individuals from all walks of life whose only crime was to record and distribute consensual sexual activity. You’d also need to punish illicit viewers, whose numbers could easily reach into the tens of millions…Many of the most popular domestic hubs for porn would probably move to protected locations overseas…

The End of the Beginning (#703)

Another step toward eliminating arbitrary state oppression of “sex offenders”:

California must consider earlier parole for potentially thousands of sex offenders, maybe even those convicted of pimping children…Judge Allen Sumner…ordered prison officials to rewrite part of the regulations for Proposition 57. The 2016 ballot measure allows consideration of earlier parole for most state prison inmates, but Gov. Jerry Brown promised voters all sex offenders would be excluded. That goes too far, Sumner said…”If the voters had intended to exclude all registered sex offenders from early parole consideration…they presumably would have said so”…He said the scope of exclusions should be narrowed to only those now serving time for a violent sex offense…those who already served their time for a sex crime…and now are imprisoned for a different crime should be eligible for early release…Janice Bellucci…argued the measure requires earlier parole consideration for any sex crime not on the state’s narrow list of 23 violent felonies, which includes murder, kidnapping and forcible rape…

Reminder: “pimping children” usually means something like “a teen sex worker talking to her slightly younger friend.”

Stalkers in Blue

When cops want to make life miserable for someone, it’s easy to do so without even assaulting them:

Ashley Diamond…sued the Georgia Department of Corrections in 2015 after suffering repeated sexual assaults in prison…After [filing the suit, she]…was routinely targeted by police officers in Rome, the Georgia town to which she would be confined as a condition of her parole…[she was] subject[ed]…to frequent random stops—as many as four times in a single day…Rhys Harper…an activist and filmmaker…[was] interviewing Diamond during the time of the…harassment…Nearly every time the two met to record a segment for his documentary, Diamond would get pulled over. He says he “lost count” of how many times it happened….she was stopped 19 times in a single year…At the same time…a local Ku Klux Klan chapter…launched a full-fledged campaign targeting Diamond…When [she] didn’t come home to a torrent of white one-sheets in her yard, she would find feces smeared on her door or a noose hung in the entryway…Diamond requested her parole be moved to Atlanta…But her parole officer…wouldn’t allow the transfer…[even though its a common practice]…

Lest you think of this as two separate things, remember that in some rural areas the membership rolls of the police department and KKK are virtually identical.

Pyrrhic Victory (#805)

Expect this to spread to the US within just a few years:

Police in China have started wearing sunglasses outfitted with facial recognition technology to spot suspected criminals. The sunglasses, which were designed to spot people in large crowds, are connected to a handheld device that scans an internal database…seven suspects — wanted for crimes ranging from hit-and-runs to sex trafficking — have already been arrested using the new technology. Police have also caught 26 people with fake IDs…all…at the train stain in Zhengzhou…

To Molest and Rape (#806)

It’s good to see this not only getting attention, but being called what is is:

Vaguely written statutes in many states…permit [cops] to escape sexual assault charges by claiming that the victims consented…The New York State Assembly last week passed legislation to close that odious loophole — and the State Senate, which is considering the same bill, needs to swiftly follow suit. States across the country that [are] letting [cops] get away with rape need to revisit their statutes as well…

Legal Is as Legal Does (#811)

It’s good to see that somebody gets it:

While prostitution is a legal grey area in Hong Kong and has long been a distinctive part of the city’s nightlife, the laws…[make] them more vulnerable to abuse, sexual violence and robbery…“Since the current law prohibits them from hiring a bodyguard or someone like a helper or cleaner, they must face any dangerous situations alone,” said Cherry Chui of Action for Reach Out (AFRO), the first non-profit organisation established locally in support of sex workers’ rights…The restrictions effectively leave sex workers forced to work alone in one-woman brothels more powerless and vulnerable, especially those who are migrants and do not possess a Hong Kong identity card…

Checklist (#812)

I’m not sure what, if anything, to make of this:

…the Junior League of Salt Lake City…is working hard to [harass sex workers and migrants using the excuse of]…human trafficking…They approached the airport about buying ad space to show travelers how to [spy on others looking for bogus] signs that someone may be being trafficked like refusing to make eye contact [or] looking disheveled…the airport told them…advertising space is reserved exclusively for people looking to sell a product. They don’t allow [propaganda] campaigns…[because] airport…policy is to avoid controversy and err on the side of not offending anybody…the airport has decided it will run its own [propaganda] campaign…

Whither Canada? (#813)

Good news for the defendants, but the actual challenge to the law is just starting:

Human trafficking charges were dropped [last] Wednesday against the owners of a London [Ontario] escort agency whose case is testing the constitutionality of Canada’s prostitution laws. Hamad Anwar and Tiffany Harvey were charged in November 2015 with more than two dozen charges each after their business, Fantasy World Escorts, was shut down by…police…[state] lawyers agreed to withdraw most of those charges, leaving only the ones that deal with procuring, advertising and materially benefiting from someone else’s sexual services…Those three offences are relatively new, brought in under Canada’s 2014 prostitution law, Bill C-36, which criminalize the buying of sex…Led by Toronto lawyer James Lockyer, the defence has put forward a motion to argue the constitutionality of those charges, saying it violates sex workers’ right to the security of person…

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In Memory of Laura Lee

Posted in Guest Columns, Obituary, Perception, tagged activism, escort review sites, harm reduction, Ireland, RIP Laura Lee, United Kingdom on February 20, 2018| 8 Comments »

Last week, a long-time client of Laura’s asked if I’d publish this tribute to her today, the day of her funeral. And how could I not? This text was approved by her daughter Cat prior to publication.

Today is the funeral of Laura Lee, “Ant” (Antoinette) to her friends, but I can’t be there celebrating her full but short life and grieving at her unexpected death. Yes, I am one of those, a client, who has another life which made it impossible for me to attend. I have no one to share my grief with, other than other sex workers, clients, allies and academics who knew Laura; they have been an immense help. It has been a hard few days for me and I am sure I am not alone. I have known Laura for twelve years, and online even longer than that. She was a moderator on the forum call Punternet…yes, that so-called “patriarchal” review site so beloved by the antis had real life sex workers as moderators. The first time I met Laura was in Edinburgh, and after our appointment she asked me back to accompany her on a midnight Edinburgh ghost walk tour. I did, and that was the start of a long relationship. Little did I know she was fascinated in ghosts, and only days before she left us she was staying in a haunted coach house.

During the next few years I would meet Laura wherever our paths crossed, often in Edinburgh or London, and once a coincidental meeting in Carlisle where we both happened to be working at the same time. One year I took the plunge and invited her to come to Glastonbury music festival with me; I already had a ticket, but her ticket was a late booking on the Glastonbury ticket resale, and the only tickets available included coach transfer. So, I drove there on Wednesday and set up camp; she arrived by coach the next day. I met her on Thursday afternoon and we spent the rest of the day looking around and eventually making our way back to the small tent, soaking wet from the rain which had started. We didn’t mind; we were together for the weekend. There were no showers, and the loos at Glastonbury are diabolical stinking holes in a tank; wet wipes and cider become the currency of the festival. The privacy in a small tent sited within a foot of other tents is virtually non-existent; three middle aged men nearby were discussing the moans of ecstasy they had heard during the night. We would lie together listening to the requests for Ketamine and the inflation of balloons throughout the night.

She loved the Green Fields area and the Healing Fields, the Hippy area Laura called it, where there are various massages available, Yoga and Tarot card readings. Having a wicked sense of humour, she went up to one young police officer and asked him about the laws on opening a massage tent and would it be alright if she supplied extra services. The poor man flushed and stammered with embarrassment, eventually saying he would have to ask a superior. Laura was supportive of all harm reduction initiatives and spent time talking with the helpers at a drug help tent. Here they would advise people on safe drug use and they would spend the night and early hours touring the stone circle area handing out water and helping anyone in distress. She was impressed by the care they gave. The Green Fields area and especially the Peace Garden were a quiet safe space where one could sit and contemplate; it’s where we lay in the sun and I told her I loved her. I felt so embarrassed after saying this, but no she said it was sweet and a lovely thing to have said.

Laura’s determination to come with me to Glastonbury was revealed next year, after she broke her ankle and damaged her knee in a fall in the bath tub a few weeks before the festival. Her whole leg was placed in plaster all the way up to her crotch. I was sure she would not come, but she did; luckily, we had upgraded to glamping and were sleeping in a bed, with showers and flush loos. I was over the moon when she told me she hadn’t even contemplated not coming. The only downside of the location of our yurt was the hill up to the campsite; pushing Laura up the wet grass in the wheel chair was punishing and very challenging work at the end of a long night. But it was an amazing festival, and people were always ready whenever we needed help in the mud, or faced a steep hill. We had hospitality tickets that year, so we celebrity spotted in the area between the Pyramid and Other stage; Laura was in her element being photographed with Paolo Nutini.

We managed five Glastonburys, two T in the parks, TRNSMT in Glasgow and even did the small Pilton party together last year. From there Laura has a selfie of herself with Michael Eavis. The great highlights of Glastonbury for her were Dolly Parton and Adele; she also valued her meeting with the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell (a vocal supporter of sex workers rights who knew of Laura) at the Left Field stage. Taking an out-sex worker with a public profile and those unmistakable long black curls to such a public event has its risks; she had appeared on many chat shows and on TV shows such as Sex on Wheels which featured disabled people’s sexual needs and had been aired several times. Generally, the reaction to her was positive, with women coming up to be photographed with her. One time after Glastonbury at Bristol airport she was hugged and thanked for all she was doing. During that last festival she was spotted by another sex worker and ended up giving advice and help. Of course there were downsides too, such as the Irish doctor at our glamping site who recognised Laura and started making loud audible snide comments. Last year we spotted a woman who just kept glaring angrily at Laura without saying anything. Thankfully the glamping area had grown large, so we didn’t have to see either of them again. Laura would outwardly laugh these slights off, but I knew it hurt her and put a damper on the late evenings sitting around the brazier in Love Fields.

The Greenfields area of Glastonbury had a debating and lecture area, and this is where she met Ruby Wax giving a talk on mental health, which was a personal issue for Laura, though when I was with her I very rarely saw it. She was so pleased to have the opportunity to speak with Ruby and get her autograph. She worked hard promoting sex worker rights, even while we were enjoying ourselves at festivals; there were always emails or phone calls for help or for an interview, and she tried to fit these in when she could. She took every opportunity to promote sex worker rights, to the extent of questioning those working on the Glasgow Sexual Health stand at the TRNSMT festival about their attitudes toward sex workers.

Outside of her work Laura tried to fit in speaking engagements, TV debates and protest marches where ever she could, along with actively working with different campaign groups and building relationships with the Belfast Reclaim the Night, feminist organisations and Repeal the 8th. This often cost her money for hotels and travel, and importantly her time when she could have been working. Campaigning is not cheap, with the costs increasing, and her earnings reduced, her stress levels increased with bills needing payment. This spiral was having on effect on her health and made me very aware that allies must step up and help by donating money unconditionally to activists. Not just money for a specific court case or cause, but money for the travel, accommodation and the loss of income from not being able to work on those days.

I loved Laura and I believe she had affections for me, often sharing with me aspects of her life, and sometimes having petty arguments like married couples. I loved her forthrightness and the way she picked me up on my occasional tactlessness. I greatly miss her; her death has left a hole in my heart and life. I bitterly regret not attending the Beyond the Gaze event in Manchester where Laura received a standing ovation for her speech.

May Laura continue to haunt the lives of those who fight against total decriminalisation of sex work.

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Links #398

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Connecticut, cops, Kentucky, language, Ohio, pregnancy, psychology, teachers, Tennessee, United Kingdom, Utah, video on February 18, 2018| 4 Comments »

The school crossing patrol at this location has been asked to stop ‘high-fiving’ and to concentrate on his core duty of ensuring highway safety. – council spokesman

Many Filmation cartoons of the ’60s and early ’70s featured songs “performed” by an animated band of characters from the show; of course, these were actually written and performed by a behind-the-scenes house band, and occasionally they scored an actual hit which got substantial radio play. The most famous example was “Sugar Sugar” from The Archie Show, but this one from the Groovie Goolies show (a favorite of mine at the time) hit #9 on the Billboard charts in February of 1971. The links above it were provided by Elizabeth N. Brown, Amy Alkon, Tim Cushing, Clarissa, Radley Balko, and Richard Ahlquist, in that order.

From the Archives

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In the News (#813)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged advertising, agency denial, BDSM, brothels, Canada, cell phones, censorship, cops, Cops and Robbers, Decentralization, dirty, Down Under, escort services, ethics, First They Came for the Hookers, hysteria, Minnesota, Most Uptight Nerd Ever, Mythbusters, neo-Victorianism, neofeminism, Never Call the Cops, New Jersey, New Zealand, Nigeria, O Canada!, prohibitionist myths, propaganda, robots, scams, Schadenfreude, Signs, streetwalkers, stripping, Swedish model, teachers, Texas, That Old Black Magic, United Kingdom, Washington (state), Whither Canada?, witchcraft on February 17, 2018| 6 Comments »

Why shouldn’t a man want sex? Why shouldn’t a man want intimacy?…Why do we view that as being abusive or predatory? – Antonia Murphy

Mythbusters

Six years ago I mocked UK cops for demanding censorship of nude art based on Greek mythology, but now the galleries are doing it themselves:

Manchester Art Gallery has…remov[ed] John William Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs…from its walls. Postcards of the painting will be removed from sale in the shop. The painting was…replaced with a notice explaining that a temporary space had been left “to prompt conversations about how we display and interpret artworks”. Members of the public have stuck Post-it notes around the notice giving their reaction…Clare Gannaway, the gallery’s curator of contemporary art, [gave her opinion even though the painting is Pre-Rapealite and not contemporary]…The removal itself is [censorship presented as] an artistic act and will feature in a solo show by the artist Sonia Boyce which opens in March…Gannaway [pretended] the removal was not about censorship [despite bloviating a lot of nonsense about “objectification” and the evil “male gaze”]…

Yes, this means that modern people are officially more prudish than Victorians.

First They Came for the Hookers… (#349)

For those who still pretend government is different from organized crime:

A Harris County judge has ordered the closing of a Houston strip club after [cops raided it] more than 30 [times, alleging] crimes including prostitution…over the past four years. Judge Fredericka Phillips granted a request from the city to have Fantasy Plaza, a club [which does not pay the required bribes to Houston police], closed…

That’s not just a snarky interposition of my own, by the way; click on the title link. Houston actually has a program that allows strip clubs to openly pay off cops not to be raided, and Fantasy Plaza is one of the clubs suing the city in federal court to shut the scheme down. But yeah, I’m sure those 30 raids were for serious “crimes”.

Down Under (#410)

New Zealand is moving toward the day when disclaimers like this will no longer be necessary:

Antonia Murphy is…the madam of Whangarei’s The Bach, an enterprise she’s taking pains to describe as an ethical brothel. “If you start by saying it’s a brothel, in my experience people immediately start relating it to violence and gangs and drugs,” Murphy says…This means treating her workers with respect – providing them with condoms, briefing them on their legal rights, paying them at least $150 an hour – and there’s free childcare on site. “New Zealand seems way ahead of the curve in terms of decriminalisation and yet [because of stigma] much of the sex industry is still bogged down in sort of shady working practices…It’s still not socially accepted and there is still a lot of judgment”…

Whither Canada? (#439)

This challenge is only necessary because the Liberals lied about repealing the law:

Canada’s prostitution laws are being put to the legal test in a London, Ont. courtroom where two people are charged with advertising sexual services, profiting from the sex trade and producing a person to offer sexual services. The first defence expert witness called in the case, academic Chris Atchison, testified that the new law, often referred to as Bill C-36, makes it less safe for people in the sex trade to do their jobs…Hamad Anwar and Tiffany Harvey…face more than two dozen [prohibition]-related charges each…[after] a bust made by London police at an escort service in November 2015…

Schadenfreude (#561)

I wonder how much profit they made on survival sex workers’ backs with this scam?

Dozens of [survival sex workers were kick out of a shelter the day after the Super Bowl]…a long-term residential facility…called Breaking Free…typically require[s women to submit to indoctrination]…to stay there but for the 10 days leading to the Super Bowl, Breaking Free [staged a publicity stunt in which they provided] emergency shelter. The NFL Super Bowl Host Committee, the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota, Catholic Benedictine Sisters and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet, among other organizations, footed the bill to help Breaking Free buy beds, food and emergency provisions…”What a heartbreak to tell the women they can’t spend the night here” said Terry Forliti, Breaking Free’s executive director…”My fear is they fall back into the life, when we have tried so hard to offer an exit strategy”…

“Exit strategy” my high-priced arse. Breaking Free is well known as a money-hungry profiteer group more concerned with milking the unfortunate than helping them; three years ago its own employees reported it to its funding agencies for “misuse of funds, property, and services and…staff misconduct”…

That Old Black Magic (#714)

The descent of “sex trafficking” hysteria into self-parody continues unabated:

The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) said it has engaged some local witchdoctors in Benin, Edo as ambassadors in fighting human trafficking in [Nigeria]…The Director General of NAPTIP, Ms Julie Okah-Donli…said investigations revealed that some local witch doctors were involved or used in the [migration] of persons to Europe. “When we gathered these witchdoctors recently to [indoctrinate] them [with anti-migration propaganda European countries are paying us to disseminate], they were shocked”…

O, Canada! (#733)

Canadian prohibitionists are trying desperately to whip up “sex trafficking” hysteria there to US levels:

If you ask most Canadians, they’d say…this isn’t the kind of place where men and women entrap teenagers, then move them from city to city, buying and selling them as modern-day sex slaves…But Canada is exactly that kind of place….[prohibitionists fantasize] there are thousands of them…The average age at which exploitation begins is 13; the average age of rescue, if a girl is rescued at all, is 17…[prohibitionist] Shae Invidiata…[fantasizes] “One girl in Canada can make a pimp $300,000 a year”…[hysteria has] gotten to the point where, last February, the Edmonton Police Service changed the name of its Vice unit…to the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Unit [so they could cash in]…The youngest victim they’ve rescued so far was 13…

It’s rare that a propaganda piece is so idiotic that it contradicts itself within a couple of paragraphs; how can the average and youngest “victim” both be 13?

First They Came for the Hookers… (#752)

Sorry, but I have no sympathy for someone who leaves a job inflicting violence consensually for one where she can inflict it non-consensually:

A New Jersey sheriff’s officer has lost her job because she previously appeared in bondage films as a dominatrix…Kristen Hyman…was [supposedly] terminated for lying about her prior work on her application, [but]…she would not have made it into the academy had she been honest about her past. The sheriff’s office characterized Hyman’s activities, which took place roughly from 2010 through 2012, as conduct unbecoming for a public employee…

Quite Possibly the Most Uptight Nerd Ever (#756)

This might be the first of these apps to actually consult sex workers:

A new app…is dubbing itself the Airbnb of sex work…“Gfendr”…developed in Montreal, has attracted 700 users since its launch [three] weeks ago…[it] allows sex workers to list their services and rate clients. In turn, clients can search for sex workers based on their preferences and chat with their chosen service provider about location and price ahead of time. Sex workers can flag difficult or dangerous clients, helping others avoid unsafe situations in the future. Vancouver sex-worker advocacy group PACE said the founders of the app reached out to them and other groups across the country ahead of the launch and asked for feedback…Co-developer Melissa Desrochers says she and her partner have built the app without funding. Once there are more users, sex workers will be able to pay to promote their services in search results…[but since] current laws…say buying sex and helping advertise are illegal…the police might use the app to gather information on sex workers and clients…Gfendr only requires a phone number or email to register, and Desrocher assures that this and all other identifying information is encrypted by an outside company, so even she doesn’t have access to it…

Decentralization (#764)

Good grief, another titcoin?

Leah Callon-Butler wants to revolutionise the sex and adult industries using cryptocurrency. Alongside her four co-founders she’s helping develop a new cryptocurrency called Intimate which will operate as a digital payment option for adult or sexual products, services or offerings…

Signs (#766)

Yet another reason never to call the fucking cops:

When Jodi Gaylord answers…911 calls at the emergency dispatch center in Vancouver [Washington], details can raise red flags. She asks herself, “Could this be a sex trafficking situation?”…Gaylord was just one dispatcher in four groups who…were [indoctrin]ated on the subject by [prohibitionists]…

IOW, that call you make to rat out your neighbor could end with a SWAT team smashing down your door and murdering your dog because some dumbass with no critical thinking skills imagines you “raised a red flag”.

Signs (#771)

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

A bipartisan group of Minnesota lawmakers announced Monday, Jan. 29 they would introduce legislation during the coming 2018 session designed to help prevent sex trafficking in Minnesota through education…“There are people who are trained to manipulate you, to coerce you, to persuade you they’re your boyfriend…This is the curriculum we hope to have schools teach and will warn girls against”…

Cops and Robbers (#794)

These were first used in Seattle, but monkey-cop see, monkey-cop do. Especially when both gangs of monkeys are on the same billionaire sociopath’s payroll:

Technology has opened a new door for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, and Sheriff Tom Dart says it’s not clear yet what they’ll do with it. It’s software that can respond by text to people who are looking on-line to pay for sex…In a roughly 30-day period that just wrapped up, 2,500 people engaged with the bots. Around 65 percent of them stayed with the text exchange until they agreed on a price. Then, the would-be sex buyers got a…sort of a “scared straight” message meant to deter any future endeavors…

And judging by the amount of work I and my friends have had in Seattle since summer, no, they don’t deter business. But I’m sure you’d already guessed that; cops don’t like to crow about surveillance tricks (such as Stingrays) that actually work.

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Links #397

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged animals, California, cops, Europe, genitalia, illegal aliens, Illinois, imaginative fiction, Never Call the Cops, Oklahoma, politicians, prisons, psychology, Tennessee, United Kingdom, video, Washington (state) on February 11, 2018| 1 Comment »

I don’t think there’s any kind of case law that says you can sue a penis. – Judith Lonnquist

Those among you who have never seen Heavy Metal may not really dig how completely cool this sequence was in 1981, but if it inspires you to go see the film (one of the last feature-length hand-drawn animated movies), I’ve done my job. Naturally, Elon Musk’s shooting-a-car-into-space publicity stunt inspired me to tweet this video on Tuesday; the links above it were provided by Patrick Nonwhite, Scott Greenfield, Mark Draughn, Jillian Keenan, Walter Olson, Nun Ya, and Radley Balko, in that order.

From the Archives

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In the News (#812)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged activism, agency denial, Amsterdam, bogus studies, Buttons Bags & Banknotes, California, censorship, Checklist, cops, end demand, evidence, Gorged With Meaning, halfway whores, hotels, hysteria, Japan, Lack of Evidence, language, Minnesota, Missouri, Negative Secondary Effects, neofeminism, Netherlands, New Orleans, New York, Not So Easy, Original Sin, Pennsylvania, politicians, pragmatism, prohibitionist myths, red-light districts, RIP Laura Lee, See No Evil, sex rays, sex work is work, Sex Workers vs Trafficking, Something Rotten In Sweden, sporting events, statistics, stripping, Stupor Bowl, surveillance, The Course of a Disease, The Proper Study, transgender, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Why I Wait, yellow journalism on February 10, 2018| 3 Comments »

Bills don’t evaporate when clubs shut down. – Reese Piper

R.I.P. Laura Lee

In the eight years I’ve been writing obituaries for people important to the demimonde, I’ve never before had to write one for a personal friend. It is with a heavy heart that I announce the untimely passing of Laura Lee, a titan of sex work activism, who left us without warning Wednesday morning. Matisse and I were informed Wednesday night, but asked not to say anything until Laura’s daughter was ready to make a public announcement, which she did late Thursday: “My mum unfortunately passed away on Wednesday 7th February 2018. She asked me to let you all know that she was so grateful for everyone’s support. I ask you to continue all of your amazing campaign work in her honour. I’m so proud of all my mum accomplished in her tragically short life. My family have asked for complete privacy at this difficult time. Much love & power to you all!” In respect for the wishes of my late friend and her family, this is all I can say for now, but I’m starting to collect information to write a proper harlotography for her soon. Rest well, sweet lady, and Aphrodite bless thee.

Sex Workers Against Trafficking

GAATW is the largest “anti-trafficking” organization which recognizes that sex workers are the best guardians against real (as opposed to prohibitionist-imagined) coercion:

Sex worker rights organisations are creatively responding to violence, exploitation and other abuses within the sex industry, including instances of human trafficking, according to a new report published by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, Sex Workers Organising for Change: Self-representation, community mobilisation and working conditions. The report is based on research conducted with sex worker organisations in…Canada, Mexico, Spain, South Africa, India, Thailand and New Zealand. It highlights cases where sex workers, or sex worker organisations, learnt of situations where a woman was experiencing violence, working under unacceptable conditions, or was brought to the industry through force or deception…sex workers resolved the issue…by providing advice and referral to other organisations, negotiating with the brothel owner/madam, chasing the pimp out of their area, or gathering money to help the woman return home. Despite this important work, sex worker rights organisations are largely unrecognised and even vilified by the anti-trafficking community…

Gorged With Meaning

Both sugar babies and sugar sites are heavily invested in pretending sugar dating isn’t sex work:

Brook Urick approves every piece published on Let’s Talk Sugar, a lifestyle site aimed at sugar babies…[which] is the media arm of SeekingArrangement.com…It may sound strange that sugar dating is attempting to reshape itself into a lifestyle brand. But if you’re familiar with this scene, and familiar with Seeking Arrangement’s legal treatise, you’re well aware of the motives at play. Prostitution is illegal in most of America. Dates that come bundled with a suggested donation? Not quite…Anything that portrays the sugar community as a niche cultural curiosity with an entire lexicon of inscrutable customs, taboos, and salutations, helps the company’s case that sugar dating is fundamentally detached from sex work. Seeking Arrangement’s refusal to genuinely engage with the rest of the adult industry has earned mixed reactions from other, self-acknowledged sex workers. Bobbi Besos, a prostitute who works at the Bunny Ranch in Las Vegas, recently penned a blog post on the brothel’s website—”Sugar Dating: Let’s Stop Sugar-Coating Prostitution“—arguing that the sugar scene’s quasi-legal standing meant that Seeking Arrangement can recuse itself from anything dangerous, coercive, or otherwise destructive that happens over the course of the transactional encounters they help facilitate…

Original Sin

Casual sex causes “sex trafficking”!

During a speech to pastors in Kansas City in December, Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley linked the [supposed] problem of sex trafficking to the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Hawley, the top Republican prospect to challenge Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill in November…[fantasized] “We have a human trafficking crisis…because people are willing to purchase women…like commodities…The sexual revolution has led to exploitation of women on a scale that we would never have imagined, never have imagined…the false gospel of ‘anything goes’ ends in this road of slavery”…

Missourians have a choice of one lying prohibitionist control freak or another. Lovely.

Buttons, Bags & Banknotes

UK feminists win another battle against the employment of women:

…Formula One’s “grid girls”…will find themselves unemployed as of next season. They are the latest battleground in what has ultimately been a long-fought [prohibitionist] war, which has, at various times, seen arguments about the Sun’s Page 3, Kim Kardashian’s nude selfies, dancers in music videos [etc]…These women are sexually objectified, the argument goes…[and] they send the wrong message to young girls and women…For an argument that is ostensibly about work…any analysis of labour itself is conspicuously missing…Working conditions…would seem a better place to start than sweeping moral judgments on the type of work itself…

Why I Wait

Seeming paradoxes arise when ignoramuses equate marriage rates and childbirth rates with rates of sex-having:

Deaths now outpace births, marriage is plummeting, and young people aren’t having sex. The media are calling it sekkusu shinai shokogun, or “celibacy syndrome”—an alarming trend that has the Japanese government funnelling tax dollars into speed dating and matchmaking services over fears of an impending economic collapse. But in a neon-lit pocket of Tokyo’s Shibuya district, BDSM equipment, mirrored ceilings, vibrating beds, and condom vending machines paint a different reality. Welcome to Love Hotel Hill, where Japan’s sex industry is flourishing…It’s estimated that more than half of sex in Japan occurs in love hotels…There are more than 30,000…in the country, and hundreds in Tokyo alone. With increasing life expectancies, the rising age of marriage, and high population density, multigenerational households are ubiquitous. When married couples live in close quarters with elderly parents and children, love hotels offer a practical alternative to thin-walled Japanese homes where privacy is scarce…Discretion is a love hotel’s most important commodity—they often feature secret entrances, covered garages, and disposable license plate covers. Patrons can make cash-only transactions with clerks stationed behind opaque screens to guarantee anonymity. Others have sophisticated automated systems…

“Sex trafficking” hysteria is being used as an excuse to make it increasingly difficult for US hotels to offer their patrons similar anonymity.

Amsterdam (#530)

What are they going to do to tourists who won’t turn? Arrest them?

Guided tours in Amsterdam’s red light district must ensure tourists turn their backs to windows and not photograph prostitutes. These new measures…aim to lessen the number of tourists visiting the oldest parts of the city…The new rules also ban tours with drugs or alcohol and tighten up the “conditions for bike and Segway tours”…Guided tours will also have to end before 11 p.m. and tourists will not be allowed to stand in bridges or in front of store entrances during working hours…Tour companies that do not respect the new rules…will be heavily fined…

Lack of Evidence (#546)

Remember how New York City claimed doubling the size of its vice squad would magically “help” sex workers? Here’s what the extra vice pigs are doing:

…Raquel is a 23-year-old trans woman from the Bronx, who [was arrested by plainclothes cops for walking down the street]…it wasn’t until she arrived at the 25th Precinct…that she learned she was being charged with prostitution, along with four other trans women arrested that night. A police report [lies] that she agreed to perform oral sex…These arrests occurred against the backdrop of an NYPD [propaganda campaign claiming they would] arrest fewer people on prostitution charges and focus vice resources on arresting men who buy and traffic sex…The announcement won praise from [prohibitionists]…Sonia Ossorio, president of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women, called [harassing sex workers and cheating them of income] a “big step toward combating this form of modern-day slavery”…

Something Rotten in Sweden (#710)

California now has its own annual anti-whore pogrom:

More than 500 [people] were arrested…56 [of them were sex workers “authorities” claimed]…were rescued during a statewide [pogrom labeled with the Orwellian moniker]…Operation Reclaim and Rebuild…[only] 11 [of the sex workers were underage]…Among the 510 [men] arrested, 30 [were labeled] suspected traffickers and 178 [were labeled] “johns”…

Checklist (#753)

Just in case you didn’t think you were spied on enough in airports:

If you pass through the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, you may see new signs asking people to be on the lookout for sex trafficking. Delta Airlines and the airport have [collaborated] with the Super Bowl and [prohibitionist profiteers] Polaris to [raise hysteria about] the [non-]issue…Delta has also [indoctrinated] thousands of its employees [in racial profiling techniques] to [harass passengers]…

The Course of a Disease (#796)

American politicians increasingly use Swedish-scented rhetoric in futile attempts to disguise the stench of tyranny:

Legislation just introduced in the [Pennsylvania] state House would tackle a key [PR issue] identified by [prohibitionists] seeking to improve the way [they are seen by the public]…[sex workers are] arrested while the customers [are less so. Prohibitionists lie, claiming that]…a little more than half of victims of human trafficking are being used for sex work [when actually it’s less than 10%], according to the [prohibitionist] group Equality Now [which is led by disgraced prosecutor Lauren Hersh, who resigned in disgrace after she was caught trying to railroad two innocent black men for rape]…

Not So Easy

Prohibitionists are learning the hard way that the wind is shifting:

With more than 200 strip club workers and advocates filling a makeshift meeting room inside the Rosenwald Center’s gym Feb. 6, the New Orleans City Planning Commission (CPC) rejected parts of a plan from the New Orleans City Council to limit the number of strip clubs on Bourbon Street. The CPC instead followed recommendations from its staff that call for a “soft cap” of 14 clubs, rather than a harder cap limiting clubs to one per block face, as the City Council had proposed…The CPC’s recommendations now head [back] to the City Council…The CPC…said in its report…that it “has not found a direct causality between the number of [Adult Live Performance Venues, or ALPVs] in the [Vieux Carre Entertainment District] and crime”…

That last line is a reference to the thoroughly-disproven dogma of “negative secondary effects“, which claims that sex rays emanating from sexual businesses damage the brains of bystanders, forcing them to commit crimes.

But while the staid Times-Picayune promotes this ludicrous fantasy and worse:

…[Politicians] have been relying on a Times-Picayune investigative series to stoke fears that strip clubs are hotbeds for trafficking…the piece [is]…riddled with more holes than a New Orleans paved road…its authors consistently equate exotic dancing and prostitution with “trafficking”…moreover, the Times-Picayune denies actually having uncovered a pervasive trafficking problem, explaining in the first part of the series that “there has been no evidence that clubs knowingly employed dancers who were victims of human trafficking”…the paper’s gripe with the clubs appears entirely based on the [fantastic] premise that “[s]ome pimps are known to require women under their control to dance in clubs”…

…competing news media are coming out on the sex workers’ side, and the Advocate even gave column space to stripper Reese Piper:

Stripping allows people to not just survive, but thrive, with flexible hours, high earning potential, and a low bar of entry. When I graduated college, I had more than $80,000 in debt. Dancing eased that burden…I am also autistic — a disability that makes it difficult to hold down a traditional job…it’s our right to work without fear just like everyone else…

Stupor Bowl (#811)

The real reason the government keeps pushing the thoroughly-debunked “Super Bowl sex trafficking” myth:

Guests at this year’s Super Bowl game in Minneapolis can expect cops, checkpoints, and security theater everywhere, in no small part thanks to the myth that the Super Bowl is a mass sex-trafficking event…”sex trafficking” gives federal and local authorities an excuse for posting police anywhere and everywhere people are gathering—and for enlisting citizens as spies, too…We’re transforming Minneapolis into a police state to…crack down on an issue that almost everyone admits is imaginary…Even crony charity groups that spread all sorts of sex-trafficking misinformation found this myth too easily debunkable to keep repeating. Pretty much the only folks who haven’t gotten the memo that Super Bowl sex-trafficking panic is bunk are the law-enforcement agents who benefit from promoting it…

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In the News (#811)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, BDSM, brothels, Canada, censorship, Checklist, China, Cooties, cops, Divided We Fall, drivers, Florida, Follow Your Bliss, France, hysteria, Indiana, It Looks Good On Paper, law, Legal Is as Legal Does, male prostitutes, McNeill's Law, Minnesota, Morality Lessons, porn, prisons, Profound Mental Disabilities, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, rescue industry, robots, scams, serial killers, sex toys, Shame Shame, sporting events, streetwalkers, Stupor Bowl, surveillance, Texas, The Pygmalion Fallacy, The Widening Gyre, To Molest and Rape, underage, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Virginia, Washington (state) on February 7, 2018| 3 Comments »

I believe my goldfish is having an affair with my oven mitt.
– Lenore Skenazy, mocking “sex trafficking” hysteria

Follow Your Bliss

The naive believe the government propaganda that “child predators” are creepy dudes who hang out at playgrounds; in reality, they are largely people in positions of authority over their preferred targets:

A[n]…administrator on Bradford Safeguarding Children Board has been jailed for five years for a series of sex offences involving young boys. Heathcliffe Bowen…was convicted of six offences which happened between 2013 and 2015. Judge Jonathan Durham Hall…said Bowen…was a “predatory paedophile”…[who] had a “deep and entrenched interest” in underage boys and said he had “never shown any shame or remorse”…

Profound Mental Disabilities (#562)

Naturally, my skepticism about this case was wholly warranted:

A legal fight has reached the end of the line between a Florida dominatrix and a former client who claimed she drained his bank account and credit cards of more than $500,000 and took over ownership of his townhouse. Orange County, Fla., Judge Keith White recently ruled in favor of Goddess Jude, who was sued by client Alex Abrams, granting her motion to dismiss and paving the way for her to recoup legal costs of defending herself. Abrams…alleged that Goddess Jude should have been found liable for civil theft, unjust enrichment and conversion, as well of abuse, neglect and exploitation of elderly persons because he was above 60 years old when he first called on for her services…he…opened new joint financial accounts…and made her an authorized user on his credit card accounts…[then] transferred a…townhouse worth $100,000 to her. After an apparent change of heart and claims of dementia, Abrams sought to recoup all the material assets he had given her…In November, a judge made a ruling…dismissing Abrams claims against Goddess Jude entirely — after Abrams and his attorney, who later withdrew from the case, failed to attend several depositions…A court hearing…over recovery of attorney’s fees and court-imposed sanctions has been set for March…

To Molest and Rape

Typical cop engaging in typical and representative cop behavior:

The Bexar County [San Antonio, Texas] Sheriff’s Office…arrested a county deputy on an aggravated sexual assault of a child charge…[jailer] Clayton Saunders was placed on administrative leave…and a no-contact order was issued. Further investigation led his formal arrest on [January 27^th]…

Divided We Fall (#672)

Why does Gay, Inc never speak up for sex worker rights until it’s too late?

At a town hall meeting last summer, members of Toronto’s gay community, worried that a serial killer was operating in their midst, warned that the city’s sex workers might be particularly at risk. That fear proved prescient…Dean Lisowick, a common face in the Gay Village and long-time sex worker, is believed to be the last known victim of alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur…[who] is also facing four other charges of first-degree murder for the deaths of Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Majeed Kayhan and Soroush Mahmudi…

Checklist (#702)

Ladies, please stop using Uber. They are training drivers to spy on us and rat us out to the pigs:

Uber wants its drivers to [spy on passengers and]…to alert [cops] if they [suspect a passenger is a sex worker]…over the past few years, Uber has enlisted its drivers in local and regional efforts to [persecute sex workers]…But the new initiative…targets all 750,000 active U.S. drivers and eventually will expand to other countries…Among Uber’s partners in the U.S. initiative are The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children…[Asstoon Kutcher’s vanity project] Thorn, and The McCain Institute…whose efforts to [hound sex workers to death] are led by [anti-human rights crusader “Cuckoo Clock”] McCain…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#718)

If this is a “brothel”, then a room with a foosball table in it is a “stadium”:

France’s first ever sex doll brothel has been opened in Paris and it has three silicone sex dolls ready for…rent…France changed its laws in 2016 to make paying for sex illegal, but the laws didn’t say anything about paying for sex with a silicone doll…The official XDolls site advertises that it has three different dolls on offer – Lily, Sofia, and Kim – complete with pictures of each. The whole operation is shrouded in secrecy. In fact, the official website doesn’t even offer an address for the brothel – other than to say it’s “somewhere in the 14^th arrondissement” of Paris. To find the location, would-be customers have to pay for a session with a doll, which comes at a cost of €89 for an hour, €149 for two hours, and €19 for the optional virtual reality addition…

Morality Lessons (#730)

Moral panic + censorship = profit:

…a new bill being proposed in Virginia…would [try to] lock all pornographic sites from your phones and computers, and the only way to [legally] unlock them is to pay the state $20…[politicians] who proposed the bill [pretend] that by making pornography less accessible on the internet it will reduce the amount of human trafficking…

“The huckster behind this legislation [is an]…anti-porn crusader named Chris Sevier who tried to marry his computer in protest of same-sex marriage, was released early from an Iraq tour for mental-health issues, sued Apple over the dissolution of his marriage, and has been charged with harassing a teen girl as well as country singer John Rich.”

It Looks Good On Paper (#736)

What these “safe harbor” laws actually do is empower the cops to indefinitely detain underage sex workers in “safe locations”, i.e. euphemized jails:

[Underage sex workers whom “authorities” deign to label] child sex trafficking victims would no longer be criminally charged for prostitution offenses under a proposed bill introduced this session in the [Washington] state House of Representatives…[cops] would be required to bring minors to one of…two “receiving centers,” or another safe location — instead of booking youth into detention for prostitution offenses…the proposed bill stops short of decriminalizing prostitution for minors, maintaining [cops’] ability to arrest youth [who don’t submit to rape or otherwise displease the pigs]…“But we’re not expecting that (the youth) would be put in handcuffs,” [lied] Val Richey, a senior deputy prosecutor in King County, who [relies on voter ignorance to advance his schemes]…

Stupor Bowl (#765)

Prohibitionists are trying to subvert our debunking of the gypsy whores myth by pretending the reason there’s no surge is that the “demand” for “victims” is always sky-high:

As the Twin Cities prepares to host Super Bowl LII, planning has long been underway to address any accompanying uptick in prostitution or sex trafficking. While people elsewhere have made claims that the Super Bowl is the biggest time for sex trafficking, a University of Minnesota report noted “the Super Bowl does not appear to have the largest impact.” Different types of events — such as trade shows, holiday weekends and other sporting events — also generate an increase…with the public’s attention on the Super Bowl, those who work to help trafficked people in Minnesota are seizing the opportunity to get the word out about an issue that endures year-round…

Legal Is as Legal Does (#786)

Under a “legalization” regime, sex workers are still persecuted using idiotic and arbitrary nonsense like “illegally subdividing a building”:

Police have arrested nearly 100 suspected sex workers…in one of Hong Kong’s biggest anti-vice crackdowns, raiding a building where flats had been illegally subdivided into more than 100 cubicles converted into brothel rooms…[they arrested] two women from Ukraine, one from Kazakhstan, 13 from Thailand and 59 female visitors from the mainland…at least two [criminal]…syndicates had arranged for the 99 suspects to work and provide sex services in the “one-woman” brothels…

Cooties (#787)

It looks like at least some UK reporters are realizing that so-called “pop-up brothels” are just ordinary, mundane escort touring incalls rather than the tools of “sex trafficking” from cop wanking fantasies:

Sex workers…are behind…”pop-up brothels”…[they] tour the country and work out of short-term rental accommodation…For sex workers, there’s no manager taking a cut of their earnings like there is in a conventional brothel. For clients, there’s no walking through the doors of a known brothel. When [a sex worker] decides where she’s going, she either gets in touch with…friends she’s worked with in the past, or she gets in touch with other sex workers via private internet forums, looking for people who might be up for joining her on a trip…the pair then hire an apartment together for a long weekend…Then, they’ll use social media to find new clients in the area…Once they’ve got clients, they set up a rota (or work as a “duo” offering threesomes)…

Shame, Shame (#798)

A culture more worried about the sexual applications of this than about the government’s ability to fabricate evidence with it is a culture overdue for collapse:

The grosser parts of the internet have a new trick: Using machine learning and AI to swap celebrities’ faces onto porn performers’. The result? Fake celebrity porn seamless enough to be mistaken for the real thing…And now that someone has made an app—drastically lowering the technical threshold would-be creators have to clear— it’s presumably about to become much more prevalent. For reasons that are eye-poppingly obvious, these videos…are terrible…It’s a new frontier for nonconsensual pornography and fake news alike…And…If you live in the United States and someone does this with your face, the law can’t really help you. To many [privileged] people on the internet [who have nothing more important to worry about], especially women, this looks a whole lot like the end times. “I share your sense of doom,” [said pro-censorship activist] Mary Anne Franks…

The Widening Gyre (#801)

I love Lenore Skenazy’s snarky treatment of these absurd stories:

…A worried South Bend [Indiana] mother thought two men might be trying to abduct her daughter at a local store. [Who cares? End of story.] Police investigated it as a suspicious persons report. [Because it wasn’t an attempted crime.] Haley Craig says…“Was just at the T.J.Maxx in Mishawaka and there were men in there who attempted to steal Eva. I believe there were multiple men inside the store who were in on it together. [And I believe my goldfish is having an affair with my oven mitt.]…Police can’t confirm the mom’s fears of an attempted abduction, but they say it’s still a worrisome situation. [No it’s not.] What Craig said she experienced inside of T.J. Maxx definitely sounds scary. A strange man comes up to her and starts bombarding her with questions. [“Definitely scary” indeed. Never have I been spoken to by a strange person, EVER.]…“[He was] trying to divert my attention away from my daughter”…Craig said. [Because the easiest way to snatch a child is in public, indoors, steps from its mom, who, distracted by questions about the price of Progresso Lentil Soup, doesn’t notice her child is being dragged screaming down the aisle, past the customers and cashiers, into a parking lot filled with people, and off to sex traffic land]…

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In the News (#810)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged BDSM, Cambodia, Canada, censorship, cops, Droit du Seigneur, ethics, fascism, hysteria, Juxtaposition, law, Louisiana, New York, Opting Out, Panopticon, politicians, porn, pregnancy, prisons, prohibitionist myths, propaganda, Pyrrhic Victory, rape, sex rays, sporting events, Stalkers in Blue, streetwalkers, Stupor Bowl, surveillance, Swedish model, Tennessee, To Molest and Rape, Torture Chamber, Under Duress, United Kingdom, Whither Canada?, Wise Investment on February 3, 2018| 3 Comments »

Nothing about jackbooted cops storming into your room can be pleasant. – Tyler Dawson

Under Duress

I find it mind-boggling that most people are surprised to find out that cops are habitual liars:

A…jury…convicted [an NYPD] detective of lying under oath in a trial that raised troubling questions about the prevalence of false statements by police officers in routine cases…Kevin Desormeau…concocted a story about witnessing a man deal drugs to two women on a street corner on a summer evening in 2014…Desormeau [testilied that he] intercepted the man after the transactions and arrested him…But videotape from security cameras showed that the man had been playing pool inside a nearby Caribbean restaurant at the time he was said to have been selling drugs outside…Desormeau and his partner…Sasha Neve, still face charges related to false statements in Manhattan in a separate case…Neve…was found guilty [in the current case] of official misconduct…But the judge…immediately struck down her conviction, [pretending] there was insufficient evidence…As both…left the courtroom, other [pigs] from their old [sty], the Queens gang squad, patted their backs in support…one…was overheard [oinking that] the case as a “witch hunt”…

Torture Chamber

Stop faking!

An inmate in the Ascension Parish Prison has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Sheriff Jeff Wiley and his office over the teenager’s rape while in custody early last year. Jacob Westbrook…[reports that] sheriff’s deputies [refused] to obey a judicial order to keep him in protective custody, and instead exposed him to “the very substantial risk of serious harm” from his alleged attackers…Westbrook had “sexual batteries” and “rapes” committed against him on two consecutive days in January 2017 by two 17-year-olds. Westbrook was also 17 years old at the time. “During each violent attack, plaintiff screamed for help and from the pain. No deputies came to his aid…jail personnel failed to follow supervision of detainee policies and procedures and there was no video monitoring of this area of the jail,” the lawsuit alleges…

Whither Canada?

To their credit, the Young Liberals have been pushing for repeal of Canada’s version of the Swedish model since the law first passed:

…the Young Liberals of Canada…[are] pushing the rest of their federal party to discuss decriminalization of prostitution at the party’s convention in April…Since they were elected, the Liberals have claimed they’re reviewing Conservative-era legislation that reworked Canada’s sex work laws following the Supreme Court’s Bedford decision in 2013…[but] little has happened since…the present law…is poor public policy, is disrespectful to the top court’s judgment and – completely separate of either of these very good reasons to object to it – insulting to those who work in the sex industry and can make their own choices about what they do with their bodies and how they make money…

Juxtaposition (#422)

Before you decry this as symptomatic of totalitarianism, click the title link to see who else has arrested people for dancing near public monuments:

Five Britons are among a group of 10 foreigners arrested in Cambodia for “singing and dancing pornographically”, after a raid on a party in Siem Reap near the tourist destination of Angkor Wat. They face up to a year in prison and could spend six months in detention before the case goes to court…one of the group…said they did not understand why they were being held, adding that they saw one of the arrested men vomiting in shock…

Wise Investment (#428)

Those who cannot remember the past, etc:

Advocates for sex workers are demanding Laval [Quebec] reverse its decision to push all massage parlours, strip clubs, and other erotic businesses to a small, industrial stretch of the city. The new rules…further stigmatize and endanger the women involved in the sex industry, according to Sandra Wesley, the executive director of Stella, a Montreal-based support group for sex workers…[which] is demanding the city withdraw its new rules, or at least postpone their enforcement, so the women affected can have time to challenge them. But according to the city, the rules are here to stay…that doesn’t mean sex workers will change jobs; it just forces them out of public view and into situations where they have to work from home or in unsafe areas…

Pyrrhic Victory (#609)

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

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has officially gained agency-wide access to a nationwide license plate recognition database, according to a contract finalized earlier this month. The system gives the agency access to billions of license plate records and new powers of real-time location tracking…the data [comes] from Vigilant Solutions, the leading network for license plate recognition data…Vigilant…has amassed a database of more than 2 billion license plate photos by ingesting data from partners like vehicle repossession agencies and other private groups. Vigilant also partners with local law enforcement agencies…collecting even more data from camera-equipped police cars. The result is a massive vehicle-tracking network generating as many as 100 million sightings per month, each tagged with a date, time, and GPS coordinates of the sighting…

Droit du Seigneur (#614)

Given that Spitzer was a heavy prohibitionist while in office, outing him is justified:

A Manhattan judge has lifted the gag order placed on the former escort who [says]…Eliot Spitzer threatened to kill her, meaning she can now dish on the fallen pol’s sexual fetishes — which allegedly include being paraded around on a leash like a dog. Judge Gilbert Hong issued an order…saying Svetlana Travis Zakharova is no longer subject to another judge’s February 2017 direction she couldn’t talk about her relationship with Spitzer while she was being prosecuted for extorting $400,000 from him…Hong also ruled that the NYPD has 30 days to return the former escort’s cell phone and iPad, which were seized when she was arrested in the extortion case…She’s since released recordings in which a man she alleges is the infamous pol threatens to kill her. “You fucking bitch! You piece of shit. And then you fucking destroyed my life!” the man in the records can be heard saying. “You know what’s going to happen to you? You’re going to be fucking dead.” [Zakharova’s lawyer] says that as soon as Zakharova returns from Russia — where she’s gathering more recordings — she’s coming for Spitzer…

To Molest and Rape

A “correctional officer” in a “correctional institution”. Makes you wonder what “authorities” perceive as “correct”:

In the early months of 2017, a correctional officer at a jail near the Tennessee-Alabama border routinely cornered a female inmate in the jail library, raping and eventually impregnating her before the assaults were discovered…Caleb Shane Hopkins…[has confessed to repeatedly raping] Jessica Fowler…Once other jail officials learned Fowler was pregnant, she was transferred to the Tennessee Prison for Women before giving birth, prematurely, in December. She remains imprisoned, unable to have any prolonged access to her child…[who] is currently with [her] parents…[she] is suing Hopkins for $1 million and Moore County for $300,000. However, there are no federal limits for damages in a case like this, so a judge could award a higher amount…

I hope she bankrupts both the rapist pig and the county.

Opting Out (#759)

Naturally, Cassandra McNeill was warning about this years ago:

MindGeek, the biggest internet pornography company in the world…[pretends] it will not snoop on the sexual preferences of 25 million people in the UK under new age verification laws. However, MindGeek also [admits it] plans to collect a trove of information on users, including their names, addresses, date of birth, as well as their online activities on other websites. From April, as part of the Digital Economy Act, anyone wishing to view pornography online will have to prove they are over 18 years old…Among the companies developing solutions is MindGeek, which…also runs some of the most viewed pornography sites in the world, including PornHub…its age verification system, AgeID…will require users to sign up with an email address and password, then use a third party mechanism to prove they’re over 18. User will then use AgeID to access pornographic sites around the web; AgeID will log which sites are visited…

Stupor Bowl (#769)

It’s a good sign that headlines like this are now fairly common:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement joined in the pre-Super Bowl hype…[about] a…human trafficking spike that experts…agree doesn’t exist…The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, a coalition of NGOs, wrote in 2014 that public figures often use this sort of hype to justify their own interests, whether it’s anti-immigration sentiment or support and funding for [police violence against sex workers]…

Stalkers in Blue

Oh, honey, I hope you don’t really believe this doesn’t happen in Florida:

An NYPD [cop] offered to let a Brooklyn woman slide on a pot possession bust if she lifted her shirt and showed him her breasts…Jasmine Campbell…was arrested for possession of marijuana and resisting arrest — but…not before…Javier Munoz mistreated her…Campbell, 25, spent the night in jail before she was released without bail and the ordeal caused her to miss a college midterm in her senior year. She said she was not able to take a makeup exam, and got a lower grade in the class…Campbell said her friend insisted to cops that the weed was his, but they cuffed and processed her, anyway…Campbell said she has since been pulled over by other officers who have been sexually inappropriate. “It’s a constant thing going on in New York with the cops that they’re just using their badges to, I guess, sexually harass women…That’s why I’m so glad to be going to law school in Florida. I don’t even want to live here anymore”…

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