The Honest Courtesan

Any suggestion that we allow or encourage illegal content…defies…reason, from both a moral and business standpoint.  –  Feras Antoon

Advice for Clients (#738)

Another good little article on interacting with sex workers on Twitter:

…If you’re new to Twitter, you may feel a bit overwhelmed when deciding whether to follow, like, comment, or retweet.  You might worry about saying the wrong thing, or accidentally making a bad impression.  I recently reached out to ask sex workers on Twitter for their best etiquette advice.  The result: some real gems on how to interact with your favourite providers in a ways that will help you enjoy the platform without jeopardizing your future booking success…As with everything in the sex industry, workers each have their own preferences.  But the advice that’s generously offered here is a great place to start…Mistresse Matisse has the perfect metaphor to describe the social media experience.  “Twitter is a cocktail party, not a one-on-one date”…

Not To Be Taken Internally (#886)

How many times must I say, “Do NOT let non-doctors inject filth into your body“?

A man…had been inserting various objects into his urethra for some time as an aid for erectile dysfunction.  During one such occasion, he and his partner had decided to use a straw attached to a can of weatherproofing spray, when the partner “inadvertently pressed the button deploying the foam.” The foam then shot through his entire urethra, even filling up his bladder.  The man waited three weeks before seeking medical attention at an emergency room, during which time he increasingly had difficulty urinating and urinating blood when he did…

Predictable Consequences (#1134)

Prohibitionism is an inherently violent belief system, but this kinda shitty hit piece in Vanity Fair pretends otherwise.  Rather than simply admit the obvious  –  that increasingly-emboldened members of the growing anti-sex cult burned down the property of the owner of a website their leaders had selected as the next target of their attentions after the wanton destruction of Backpage  –  the author prefers instead to repeat prohibitionist fantasies, wallow in dysphemisms and deny the agency of every single person in an entire industry while sharing weird, evidence-free conspiracy theories about possible perpetrators while pretending that there was no evidence pointing toward the obvious culprits  –  you know, those who had for weeks been literally calling for the place to be burned down.

Policing for Profit (#1158)

Cops seem to be moving toward discarding even the pretense that this is about anything other than pillage:

Because the continued federal prohibition of marijuana makes banks and payment processors leery of serving state-licensed cannabis suppliers, many of those businesses rely heavily on cash, which exposes them to a heightened risk of robbery…includ[ing by gangs of] cops who use federal civil forfeiture laws to steal money earned by state-legal marijuana businesses.  Five times since last May, [cops have held up]…armored cars operated by Empyreal Logistics, a Pennsylvania-based company that serves marijuana businesses and financial institutions that work with them.  The cops made off with…a total of $1.2 million…Empyreal, which is represented by the Institute for Justice, argues that…it is “entitled to protection from highway robberies, regardless of whether they are conducted by criminals or by the Sheriff and federal law-enforcement agencies acting under color of law”…

You Were Warned (#1175)

Much more of this, please:

OnlyFans…has hired its first federal lobbyists as poli[ticians] continue t[heir deranged crusade]…to [censor the internet and empower ambulance-chasers to destroy]…tech companies…OnlyFans is the latest player in the adult content ecosystem to turn to K Street as [politicians try to eviscerate] Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act…Last year the Free Speech Coalition…enlisted a bipartisan pair of lobbyists at Clarity Consulting, becoming the first group to register to lobby on behalf of the porn industry in Washington…

Torture Chamber (#1186)

They’ll use any excuse to protect their own:

Bronx prosecutors have dropped all charges against a Rikers Island doctor’s assistant…[who repeatedly] rap[ed caged] women…Sidney Wilson…skated on a 43-count indictment filed in 2017…Bronx District Attorney Darcell Clark…touted the case in a press release and in testimony as part of her crackdown on sexual abuse in the troubled jail…But in…quietly dropped all charges against Wilson and is now blaming the discovery reform law requiring prosecutors to disclose a wide range of evidence earlier in the trial process [despite the case being filed over two years before the law came into effect]…

Never forget that a prosecutor is just another kind of cop; they are not interested in prosecuting their own.

I Spy (#1205)

Nothing infuriates violent, self-important busybodies more than private affairs that are none of their business:

…a new propaganda campaign…is…the latest salvo in the UK’s decades-long war against encryption…[it] include[s] “a striking stunt — placing an adult and child (both actors) in a glass box, with the adult looking ‘knowingly’ at the child as the glass fades to black”…as…David Thiel observed, an opaque box with people inside is what’s otherwise known as “a house.”  On one level, the opaque room represents encrypted messaging.  The audience’s inability to see what happens inside is meant to provoke sympathy for the child, who, it’s leeringly implied, is about to be victimized by the adult…But…on a different level, the opaque room isn’t a metaphor at all.  It is just what it seems to be: an opaque room — that is, a house.  A home.  The audience isn’t meant to sympathize with the people inside the home, people just like them, who can shield themselves from prying eyes.  Rather, they’re meant to sympathize with the would-be watcher: the UK government.  On this level, it’s the frustrated voyeurs who are the victims.  Their desire to watch what happens inside has been stymied by that demonic technology known as “walls.”  Wouldn’t it be better if someone could see in?…By portraying the transparent room as desirable and the opaque room as a sinister deviation from the norm, the government is peddling the idea that it is suspect for people to have our own private spaces in the physical world…

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