Worse Than I Thought | The Honest Courtesan

Posts Tagged ‘Worse Than I Thought’

In the News (#659)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged abortion, Above the Law, adolescence, agency denial, An Example to the West, Backpage, bad customers, bogus studies, Broken Record, Catholicism, censorship, China, condoms, Crying for Nanny, dating, dirty, Dirty Laundry, evidence, Full of Themselves, Gingerbread House, hysteria, Ireland, Lack of Evidence, Madonna/whore, Moloch, politicians, prisons, prohibitionist myths, rape, rescue industry, Seizing Power, sex offender registry, sporting events, stripping, Texas, Thailand, The Mote and the Beam, The Prudish Giant, underage, Washington (state), welcome to our world, Worse Than I Thought, yellow journalism on July 30, 2016| 9 Comments »

Adults with critical thinking abilities realize they aren’t entitled to treat other people like characters in a dream sequence. – Anonymous

Deadbeats

I can’t emphasize this enough: Don’t try to get freebies from sex workers. Seriously.

If you’re trying to date or hook up with someone you know from their work in escorting or porn, without paying them, your chances of success are close to zero…It may come as a shock to hear this. You may feel like sexual attraction is only part of the connection you have with this worker, and that paying would deny the authenticity of that. Or maybe you think that you are a really good (looking) person and only creepy or unattractive people pay. Maybe both you and the sex worker are queer and/or have similar politics. You know sex workers and are down with decriminalization. There are many reasons you may feel you are exceptional. You are operating under a basic misunderstanding of who we are and what we are doing…

Moloch

Don’t say I didn’t tell you before:

My piece in today’s New York Post will probably surprise folks who think the sex offender registry is filled with middle-aged men arrested for luring kids into white vans with the promise of puppies…But in fact, the most common age that people are charged with a sex offense is 14…because people tend to have sex with people around their own age…And much under-age sex is illegal…Of course, recognizing that young people experiment would require politicians and law enforcement to also recognize that people can do dumb things, even sexual things, and not be irredeemable monsters. Right now, that’s not a big political talking point. So instead, over one fourth of the people we label “sex offenders” get that name when they themselves are juveniles. Considering the registry has over 800,000 people on it, we’re talking about more than 200,000 people who get put on the list while they are in middle school or high school…

Above the Law

Judge orders jury to find an “authority” not guilty of rape. What a surprise!

…Judge Keenan Johnson directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty of coercion after ruling that the prosecution had not established that complainant had been intimidated. He stressed that he was making no determination on the truthfulness of either the accused, Andrew Gilmartin…or the complainant Martha Rooney…[who] alleged that the defendant [demanded] oral sex in return for her not being prosecuted for fraud…Gilmartin…was charged with intimidating Ms Rooney with a view to compelling her to do an act which she had a lawful right to abstain from doing…

Broken Record

The “big events” that supposedly attract “sex trafficking” grow ever sillier:

As revelers gather for the Tri-City Water Follies this week…A church-based nonprofit is teaming with Tri-City hoteliers to train staff to recognize and report human trafficking rings that bring minors to town…during special events. The Stop Under Age Domestic Sex Trafficking Project or SUDS is a five-year effort by Mirror Ministries… “Boat race weekend is our largest weekend. Every hotel is packed,” said Tricia MacFarlan, executive director…

Gingerbread House

Remember, “safe house” is a euphemism for “prison”. These girls are not allowed to “transition” out until their keepers declare they are:

Freedom Place…[confines] minor girls who had been [arrested for doing sex work]…With Texas reporting the second highest sex trafficking rate in the United States and Houston considered one of its largest hubs…According to [prohibitionist propaganda] nearly all prostitution is involuntary and, legally in Texas, is considered to be the result of coercion for minors…

Calling a prison “Freedom Place” is about as Orwellian a touch as one could imagine.

Dirty Laundry

People need to be frequently reminded of what Ruhama actually is:

The Magdalene Laundries might have closed, but sex workers are not safe from Irish Sisters at all. The nuns simply regrouped, renamed themselves and are still harming prostitutes…Ruhama does not offer any actual help to sex workers who need help. Rescue organisations and anti-prostitution NGO’s rarely do,they mostly make money by “raising awareness”, abusing prostitutes, receiving money from governments and providing “education” to health professionals and policy makers. But it seems they haven’t killed any babies. Yet. So, you know, that’s something…

The Prudish Giant (#414)

Note that this was accomplished via the usual whorearchical line-drawing:

…Patreon has been hard at work on behalf of its adult content creators, trying to win back what they lost. And on July 12, Patreon sent an email to users announcing a PayPal about-face: “We were able to convince PayPal, or more specifically their subsidiary Braintree, that Adult Content creators on Patreon are not a serious risk. Our content policy, and the nature of subscription payments, means that Adult Content creators on Patreon are less risky than most creators making adult content.” Patreon’s adult creators, both PayPal and Patreon believe, will generate few chargebacks or fraud allegations, making the financial hazards to the payment processor negligible…

Worse Than I Thought (#433)

I’m honestly surprised this has taken so long to catch on. Note how closely it resembles “sex trafficking” propaganda tactics:

A Texas GOP lawmaker has teamed up with an anti-choice organization to raise awareness about the supposed prevalence of forced or coerced abortion, which critics say is “wildly divorced from reality”…Molly White…[wants cops to intervene]…when [someone claims] a pregnant person is being forced to terminate a pregnancy…Allan Parker, the president of The Justice Foundation, a “Christian faith-based organization” that represents clients in lawsuits related to conservative political causes…alleges that the majority of those who have abortions may be forced or coerced…“I would would say coerced or forced abortion range from 25 percent to 60 percent”…This statistic is found in a 2004 study about abortion and traumatic stress that was co-authored by David Reardon, Vincent Rue, and Priscilla Coleman, all of whom are among the handful of doctors and scientists whose research is often promoted by anti-choice activists…Other research suggests far fewer pregnant people are coerced into having an abortion. Less than 2 percent of women surveyed in 1987 and 2004 reported that a partner or parent wanting them to abort was the most important reason they sought the abortion, according to a report by the Guttmacher Institute…

Lack of Evidence (#439)

In which China aspires to be more like the US:

…Condoms have come to play a central role in police activity around sex work. …[cops] stop sex workers on the street, open their bags, and search for condoms; they burst into rooms to look for condoms in wastebaskets, beds, and quilts; and they even remove the trousers of clients in order to find condoms. Police raid rooms rented by sex workers, as well as bars and massage parlors…Unsurprisingly, the danger of detention for carrying condoms discourages sex workers from using them…

Full of Themselves (#533)

I wonder if any of them recognize how pathetic their denials sound to us?

…KT Coates, president of the International Pole Sports Federation…wants to see pole sport included in the Olympics, although she admits that is probably a long way off. It isn’t yet recognised by SportAccord, the umbrella body for sports federations, but Coates says that is “only around the corner”…There are rules aimed at moving pole sport away from its strip-club shadows – costumes can’t be too skimpy, and there are no sexualised moves (no gyrating, hair flicking or grinding). “If someone got on stage and did that, the whole crowd would be in shock,” says Coates. “We’re not embarrassed of our history, it’s just that [pole sport] is a polar opposite.” Are there competitors here who work in strip clubs? “No. I don’t know a single one. These are athletes. You are not going to get someone who does exotic dance doing the world sports championships – it just does not overlap. We have the same apparatus, but it’s not the same thing”…

Crying for Nanny (#570)

Pro-censorship morons are still trying to destroy the entire internet:

In the last year, Backpage won two significant victories in battles stemming from adult ads on its online classifieds service. Now, the losing parties both hope the Supreme Court will review the decisions. In one case, lawyers for a group of [soi-disant] teen sex-trafficking victims recently took the first step toward asking the Supreme Court to revive a lawsuit accusing Backpage of facilitating crime through the design of its online classifieds site…A second battle involving Backpage that could reach the Supreme Court involves Sheriff Thomas Dart of Cook County, Illinois. Last November, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order prohibiting him from attempting to influence credit card companies to stop working with Backpage…

The Mote and the Beam (#613)

The answer to the titular question: “Because it doesn’t actually exist as such”.

…a cancer…is metastasizing across the country: Violent pimps and sex traffickers use online services like Backpage to exploit and profit off of unwilling victims. To avoid detection, those creating the listings often use code words or phrases. “New to town,” for example, is typically code for listing a teenager. According to a recent U.S. Senate subcommittee report, Backpage enables this sort of behavior rather than preventing it. While Backpage’s terms of of use and guidelines claim that they do not allow for bartering of sex or sexual services, let alone those of children, the committee charges that Backpage does little to prevent it…the subcommittee has subpoenaed the head of the website, Carl Ferrer. Ferrer has refused to submit to the subpoena, arguing that Backpage is protected under the First Amendment…

This is plenty enough to give you the tone of this exercise in virulent anti-whore yellow journalism.

An Example To the West (#626)

In the News (#644)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, All-Purpose Excuse, California, comics, Connecticut, cops, Droit du Seigneur, Florida, Grow the Hell Up!, hotels, Idaho, internet, Kentucky, law, Legitimate Outrage, Oklahoma, One Born Every Minute, politicians, pregnancy, prohibitionist myths, rape, rescue industry, Reviews, teachers, To Molest and Rape, Traffic Circle, Turning Point, underage, universal criminality, Universally Criminal updates, Vendetta, Worse Than I Thought on June 8, 2016| 1 Comment »

The first seats at the table ought to be reserved for those from the sex work community– and everyone else should listen. – Benjamin L. Corey

Droit du Seigneur

Not quite a rapist cop, but bad enough:

An Oklahoma sheriff requested a sexual relationship with one of his female employees in exchange for hiring her husband…Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agents arrested Carter County Sheriff Milton Anthony at his office [on June 1st]…The female employee’s husband was hired shortly after the sexual contact started, and sexual contact between the sheriff and the employee continued for several months…When the woman tried to end the contact, Anthony allegedly insinuated he would alter her work hours and even fire her and her husband if she did not continue with their agreement. The woman began saving the sheriff’s texts and recorded a conversation between her and the sheriff in April…

One Born Every Minute

I strongly suspect that these rapists are the same ones discussed in the original of this title:

…a Jane Doe plaintiff sued Internet Brands, parent company of popular networking site Model Mayhem, alleging that the site’s operators had violated California state law by failing to notify Model Mayhem users of the very real risk that they could be targeted by…a pair of…sex offenders that the plaintiff claims Internet Brands had known about for years before they — under the pretense of being a “talent scout” — lured her to Florida, where she was allegedly drugged and raped in Feb. 2011…the pair had been at this scheme for around five years, using Model Mayhem as a hunting ground for victims; not only sexually violating…[them] but then allegedly distributing video of the acts…the plaintiff points to a 2010 lawsuit filed by Internet Brands against the original owners for allegedly failing to disclose the potential for civil suits arising from the activities of these particular rapists…“Posting or emailing such a warning could be deemed an act of publishing information, but [the Communications Decency Act] bars only liability that treats a website as a publisher or speaker of content provided by somebody else,” reads the ruling. “A post or email warning that Internet Brands generated would involve only content that Internet Brands itself produced”…This ruling…determines that the lawsuit against the company can move forward…

Universal Criminality

That whole “freedom of speech” thing was nice while it lasted:

Lancaster [Pennsylvania] police arrested 13 people after a recent crackdown on prostitution…12 men solicited an undercover Lancaster police officer posing as a prostitute during the sting…Charde Clawges…was charged with obstructing administration of the law because she approached the undercover officer and began yelling that she knew the woman was a police officer. Police said Clawges and the undercover officer had prior contact…

Worse Than I Thought

“Sex trafficking” laws keep getting broader and scarier:

…advocates against…sex trafficking of minors, are celebrating the passage of [a draconian new Connecticut law]…Public Act No. 16-71 will require [hotels] to keep records of their guests’ receipts and transactions for a minimum of six months after the guest has vacated. [Indoctrination] programs will be recommended for staff at hotels and motels to learn to identify the signs of human trafficking and report the suspected crimes…The [law] now [requires] a mandatory $2,000 fine for convicted buyers of sex and an automatic $2,000 fine for those who [hire] a sex worker in a motor vehicle…accused buyers…cannot…claim…that they did not know the age of the sex worker to avoid harsher penalties that come with trafficking minors…

Legitimate Outrage

Being an ignoramus is no impediment to a career in politics:

Another Republican lawmaker suggested women and girls are unlikely to become pregnant from rape or incest. Idaho State Rep. Pete Nielson…expressed his doubts that post-rape pregnancies were medically possible…“It is a logical conclusion that any woman who got pregnant after such a despicable and gruesome act must have, in fact, enjoyed it even on a small scale, which eventually led to the obvious consequences…the brain and our emotions affect our bodies. So, when a woman gets raped, if she experiences that as a trauma, she doesn’t get pregnant. And you can say what you want, but when she does get pregnant after such a crime, that undoubtedly means that she liked it at some point, regardless of how strange or unbelievable that sounds. Medicine and biology don’t lie. They just don’t.”

Grow the Hell Up! (#139)

The bullshit is so deep in this, you’ll need waders to get through it:

…Up until her 18th birthday, that would have made Lexi a sex slave and the hotel sting her emancipation. A social worker would have been summoned and the man who booked the room arrested for human trafficking. But Lexi’s 20 now—too old to rescue unless she asks. Instead, she’s cited for prostitution…Women and children involved in prostitution are now seen as victims instead of criminals…A vice squad goes after prostitutes. A human trafficking unit looks for slaves and their captors…San Jose specifically has received annual grants ranging from $50,000 to $500,000 to pay for police overtime pay, cameras, binoculars, night vision monoculars, cellphones and phone number-reset software, body wire and other equipment for undercover ops…When a sting nets an adult instead of a minor, he adds, sometimes they just let them go…Still…commercial sex breaks laws police have sworn to uphold, so they can’t let them walk every time…

Traffic Circle (#429)

Theologian Benjamin Corey is quickly distinguishing himself as one of Christianity’s most outspoken sex worker allies:

…the stories of those in the sex work community are individual, varied, nuanced and complex, and do not line up with some prefabricated narrative where one size fits all…far too many in the anti-trafficking movement are not in dialogue with the sex work community…I hear voices expressing feelings of being silenced, discounted, stigmatized, ignored, and even parented by strangers who think they know what’s best for them– without even knowing them or their individual stories…What is happening today in the anti-trafficking/anti-sex industry movement would be offensive in any other context. It’s a form of moral colonialism: “Oh, hey– I’m here, I have moral objections to how you’re living, and I know exactly how your life needs to change without even listening to your story.” The only reason why it’s tolerated in this context is because of the stigmatization associated with the sex industry– one that is often perpetuated by the very people who claim they want to help…

Dr. Corey’s work also appeared in this blog earlier this year when he debunked the “gypsy whores” myth.

All-Purpose Excuse

When men get caught in some kind of sexual misbehavior, the usual excuse is “sex addiction”. I really hope “sex trafficking” doesn’t start providing an equivalent excuse for women:

The 15-year-old girl had only been a student at South Fort Myers High School…for two weeks when she went looking for her new crush in the boys’ bathroom. She’d spent the prior two years in and out of treatment facilities…learning to cope with the horrors of the sex slave industry into which she had been trafficked at age 13. So when…her crush…asked her for sex…[she] agreed. But…someone started filming, and over the next hour as many as 25 male students were shown on school surveillance footage passing through the bathroom…Multiple boys had sex with the girl…Sixteen students were disciplined…Though the sex was described as consensual…the girl was not legally old enough to give consent. And because of her troubled background, the teen’s mother and advocates have said this behavior, called promiscuous by many outraged community members, is actually quite common among sex-trafficking survivors…

Vendetta (#588)

It isn’t just morally-warped billionaires’ money going to vomit anti-whore propaganda all over the landscape, but yours as well:

Not content to spread false sex-work statistics in the media and legislature, Indiana activists and officials have now put up billboard advertisements to promote their anti-fact, anti-prostitution message. One billboard—emblazoned at the top with “‘She looked 18.’ She’s not”—claims that 13-years-old is “the average age kids are first used in the sex trade.” Any way you slice it, that’s simply not true: whether we are talking about the average age of entry into prostitution in general or the average age of minors engaging in prostitution, there’s no good evidence to back this assertion and a whole lot to suggest that it’s wrong. Even Polaris Project, arguably the most influential anti-trafficking organization in the United States, says that “this stat is not actually supported by any data“…The misleading ads are made all the more egregious because they’re paid for with taxpayer money. The billboards were a project of the Indiana Protection for Abused and Trafficked Humans Task Force, a group that lists itself on Facebook as a “nonprofit” but is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and headed up by U.S. Attorney Josh Minkler and Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller. In addition to billboards, the group’s “Not Buying It” campaign also features ads on city buses and elsewhere…

Book Reviews (#630)

Another good interview with Chester Brown about his new book:

…Brown was last in the public eye in 2011 with Paying for It…a book that generated extreme reactions with its frank and dispassionate treatment of a [controversial] subject…and its advocacy for the rights of sex workers. “I hadn’t been intending to do any kind of followup (to Paying For It)…I thought I would do a very different book”…Mary Wept Over The Feet of Jesus…is, as planned, a very different book. Yet it’s a followup too, or at the very least a complementary companion piece. Going back two thousand years and more in search of the roots of what Brown calls our culture’s “whore phobia,” the new book reinterprets a range of parables and stories from the Old and New Testaments, emerging with a thesis…that “Jesus was arguing that prostitution is a good thing, something that benefits society”…What specifically spurred Brown into writing Mary Wept was an interpretation he read of the enigmatic Parable of the Talents, in which seemingly the least responsible of three slaves entrusted with a master’s fortune – he literally spends his whole stake on prostitutes – gets rewarded…

To Molest and Rape

It’s rare to see a new outlet actually use the word “rape” in reference to a rapist cop: “An Owenton [Kentucky cop] was arrested [on June 2nd] and charged with first-degree rape…Rufus Shearer…is being held at the Carroll County Detention Center…”

Turning Point

Kari Lerum, a UW professor I’ve worked with as an activist, discusses the wrongheadedness of opposition to decriminalization:

…with Amnesty International’s recent unflinching policy recommendation to decriminalize all adult consensual sex work…it is becoming increasingly difficult for naysayers to ignore the well-documented ways that sex workers are harmed by criminalization. Amnesty’s position is based on many years of empirical research by leading health and human rights researchers, as well as calls by sex workers and advocates…for some individuals, no amount of evidence or logic will change their opinion that sex work is intrinsically wrong. For them, decriminalizing any form of sex work – including adult consensual encounters – would send the unacceptable message that sex work is a legitimate form of income generation…I ask students to honestly reflect on how their life experiences might shape the way they approach the issue of exchanging sexual services for pay. At the end of the course I ask students to revisit their feelings. I have found that when given the opportunity to make space for their feelings and to evaluate the best empirical evidence…most students conclude that adult consensual sex work should be decriminalized…even if they still personally do not “believe” in it…I wish that I could also give this assignment to all policymakers and anti-sex trade activists…

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In the News (#643)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged activism, An Example to the West, bogus studies, Bottleneck, Broken Record, brothels, Canada, cops, Dirty Amateurs, disease, Doubling Down, Germany, Held Together With Lies, Israel, law, lawyers, License To Rape, Montana, prohibitionist myths, rape, Safe Targets, Served Cold, South Africa, sporting events, surveillance, Thailand, The Course of a Disease, To Molest and Rape, universal criminality, Utah, violence vs. sex workers, Washington DC, Worse Than I Thought, yellow journalism on June 4, 2016| Leave a Comment »

We are workers, not victims. – Lily Hermarratanarapong

Safe Targets

Most conversations around legal advocacy for sex workers tend to focus on a handful of big ticket items, like the fight for decriminalization or protecting sex workers from rapist cops…But there are a lot of smaller, and much more mundane, ways that sex workers can benefit from legal representation, whether they’re strippers going through custody battles, former escorts seeking a divorce, or cam girls looking to incorporate. At long last, there’s an organization dedicated to helping sex workers find culturally competent legal representation–and thanks to the internet, it’s poised to have a pretty serious impact. Red Light Legal was founded by Kristina Dolgin, a long time sex worker who enrolled in law school in the hopes of finding a way to help out her community. Since the organization’s inception, the internet’s been integral to its operations: as a way of raising funds, spreading awareness about sex work law issues, and, most essentially, connecting with clients…

License to Rape

Prohibition turns every individual’s body into a “crime scene”:

A Canadian businesswoman…was sexually assaulted by three U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers during a motorcycle trip on May 14. The three male officers were ostensibly searching her orifices for contraband, which they did not find…The 51-year-old woman…planned to ride with a female friend from Radium Hot Springs, British Columbia, to Elmo, Montana. At the…border crossing, she was questioned by a CBP officer who wondered why she was visiting Elmo, which he described as “Indian country”…three [rapists] searched her motorcycle and her wallet, in which they found a perfectly legal interim motorcycle license that they deemed suspicious. To resolve their suspicions, they said, she would have to remove her clothing and submit to probing of her anus and vagina…

Dirty Amateurs

Amateurs are a menace to public health; they should be licensed and heavily regulated:

…a…report…in the Lancet…found that today’s teens are growing up in a world where preventable and treatable health issues, such as HIV/AIDS and unplanned pregnancy, abound…For women between the ages of 10 and 24, unsafe sex is the fastest-growing risk factor for illness and death worldwide…the report’s researchers observed changes in this group’s health over 23 years. At first, STIs didn’t even rank as a risk factor for death, but…reached number one by the end of the research period…

Bottleneck

Now just imagine if this was the law, and always available:

…the home addresses of several German sex workers have allegedly been leaked in a customized Google Map…the map…was promoted by [prohibitionist] groups…[and] remained live for several days. “Publishing their addresses to anyone opens them up to forced outing and violence,” said Fabienne Freymadl of the Professional Association of Erotic and Sexual Services…“They might lose custody of children, lose contact with family and lose any other jobs they hold.” The map displayed roughly 2,000 German addresses purportedly linked to the sex trade, which is legal in the country but nevertheless carries stigma. Sex work activists say some of the information on the map was publicly available—like the addresses of legal brothels—but that independent sex workers’ home addresses were included as well…When sex work activists got wind of the map, they quickly mobilized to get it taken down…Those behind the map [pretend] that [no] personal addresses were published…

Held Together With Lies (#447)

Up by 27% from the last nonsense “estimate” less than two years ago:

The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates that 45.8 million people are subject to some form of modern slavery in the world today. The Index presents a ranking of 167 countries based on the proportion of the population that is estimated to be in modern slavery…

The number is derived in part by combining completely different phenomena such as prison laborers and sex workers.

Doubling Down

PBS once again demonstrated its prohibitionist bias by presenting an anti-whore propaganda show disguised as a “debate”:

Americans are split on whether prostitution should be legal, according to a new survey from The Marist Poll and PBS TV-series Point Taken. Forty-nine percent of respondents in the new national poll said prostitution between two consenting adults should be legal, while 44 percent responded that it should be illegal. Younger respondents were more in favor of legalization, with 58 percent of those under 45 supportive, compared to just 40 percent of those 45 and older. Men were more in favor of prostitution legalization than women, at 54 percent versus 44 percent. And Democrats and political independents were much more likely than Republicans to say it should be legal: 52 and 58 percent, versus 35 percent…around 40 percent of those who said prostitution should be illegal also said criminal charges were not appropriate. And overall, some 63 and 60 percent said selling and buying sex should not yield criminal penalties…The two guests most opposed to decriminalization were a Kings College philosophy professor and a self-described “investor, author, and finance expert,” who cast [a black sex worker and former foster child who started out while underage] as a privileged activist…They came ready with ample…false statistics about the average age of entry into prostitution, the prevalence of sex trafficking in countries where prostitution is legal, and the compassion and prudence of the Nordic Model…”Legalization allows traffickers to hide victims in plain sight, which creates greater trafficking,” insisted the finance expert, against all evidence…

Worse Than I Thought (#532)

Politicians say not enough people’s lives are being destroyed for consensual sex:

…Under the JVTA, the presence of a single sexually-oriented ad posted by someone under 18 could trigger sex-trafficking charges for anyone involved with running the platform. Rep. Ann Wagner…said…she hopes the Department of Justice (DOJ) will make more use of the advertising clause in the upcoming year…Wagner is just one of 37 legislators calling on the feds to be more [profligate] about using the 2015 federal sex-trafficking law…they stressed…greater focus on catching and prosecuting people who pay for sex…Lawmakers speak of this move as a way to bring justice to bear on “child sex traffickers.” In reality, it allows for the escalation from misdemeanor solicitation charges to federal or felony human trafficking charges for anyone who offers—knowingly or unknowingly—to pay someone even one day under 18 for sex…And the government need not prove that a sex solicitor “knew the person [selling sex] had not attained the age of 18 years”…There also need not be an actual victim under this approach—an undercover officer posing online as a teenager will do just fine…

Served Cold (#537)

This fascist group, with its CIA connections, is the most terrifying of all the rescue industry groups, and almost certainly the most dangerous to human rights on a global scale:

“This is a war. This is a battle”…Mark Stott called the people of Utah County figuratively to arms May 25 at the “Time to Rescue” benefit concert. Stott is the co-founder of Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), a [fascist paramilitary] organization dedicated to rescuing women and children from sex trafficking around the world. Headed by former Homeland Security Special Agent Tim Ballard, the 2-year-old charity [claims to have] rescued almost 600 victims and assisted in the arrest of almost 200 traffickers worldwide…Angela Brady Krois, organizer of the Time to Rescue event, wants to preserve…the innocent dreams of the women and children that are sold and used throughout the world…O.U.R…is in the trenches, infiltrating the sex-trafficking rings worldwide to literally pluck the children from criminals’ grasp…

Note that isn’t metaphorical; these lunatics literally conduct paramilitary operations in sovereign foreign countries that the CIA pressures to play along with them.

The Course of a Disease (#574)

Sometimes the changes are incremental:

In a landmark ruling, a Tel Aviv court declared…that prostitutes working from home or paying rent for a brothel could be acting legally…Judge Itai Hermelin determined the conditions under which operating a brothel is not an offense as part of a trial brought by the state against an establishment in east Tel Aviv. Hermelin imposed restrictions on the operations of the Tel Aviv brothel. However, these were subject to the state committing to avoid prosecuting sex workers who use their own apartments or locations that are rented by several women together for the purpose of prostitution, or at a location rented by one woman who then invites other women to share it…This is believed to be the first time a judge in Israel has underscored the freedom of women to engage in prostitution, as well as specifying their rights…He [wrote] “pushing these women onto the street violates their dignity in an unacceptable manner…interpreting the law in a way that criminalizes prostitution taking place in a building is unconstitutional and must be rejected”…the judge noted that the main criticism voiced by the sex workers speaking in court was directed not at their place of employment – which they described as discreet, safe and clean – but at the police. “The attitude of the police was…degrading and harmful, sometimes bordering on violent abuse…There were repeated descriptions of women being chased out of buildings naked during police raids, with abusive language”…

An Example To the West (#626)

Thai sex workers just love contradicting prohibitionist who claim they’re “victims”:

…Empower [is] a sex-workers’ rights organisation with an estimated 50,000 members. Since the group’s founding in 1985, it has fought to improve the working conditions of women in the sex trade in Thailand…(Empower is short for “Education Means Protection Of Women Engaged in Recreation”)…less than 10 percent of sex workers in Thailand are “trafficked”—duped, tricked, or forced into their circumstances…A 2012 research report compiled by Empower details a host of abuses related to treating these women as trafficking victims, including widespread police entrapment, wrongful detention, extortion, invasive medical examinations, and unjust deportation…Empower has pushed the Thai human-rights community to reconsider its reliance on raids, rehab, and criminal prosecution as the go-to approaches to combat trafficking, fundamentally questioning whether the sex industry ought to be deemed illicit. The organisation has become one of the leading voices in Southeast Asia and throughout the world…

Broken Record (#638)

Canadian prohibitionists are desperate to cash in before the panic implodes:

The Formula One Grand Prix weekend in Montreal…brings thousands of tourists to the city, with many on the prowl for sex…[prohibitionists] in Quebec launched a campaign…called “Buying Sex is Not a Sport”…Lise Theriault, Quebec’s minister…for the status of women [vomited out the usual prohibitionist garbage]…Montreal as a Canadian “hot spot” for child sex tourism due to its proximity to the U.S. border…The average age of entry into the sex trade…is about 14 or 15…

To Molest and Rape

The people prohibitionists want in control of sex workers:

…A 2008 study in Cape Town showed that nearly half of street-based sex workers surveyed “have been threatened with violence by police”. 12% have been raped by police, and 28% have been asked for sex in exchange for release from custody…

Turning Point (#641)

On May 31^st, Dan Savages’s guests included Emily Bazelon of the New York Times and my friend Mistress Matisse, talking about decriminalization. If you’d like to listen (and why wouldn’t you?) download it here.

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In the News (#638)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged A Procrustean Bed, agency denial, Bangladesh, Bogeymen, bogus studies, Bottleneck, Broken Record, Canada, Checklist, cops, Do As I Say, drugs, Dutch Threat, Dysphemisms Galore, end demand, End Demand (updates), FBI, Florida, Georgia, hysteria, India, Ireland, language, law, Missouri, Netherlands, New York, pizza!, prohibitionist myths, So Close and Yet So Far, sporting events, stripping, Texas, Under Every Bed, Washington (state), What Were You All Waiting For?, Worse Than I Thought, yellow journalism on May 18, 2016| 3 Comments »

You can only really help people if you respect them. – Emily Bazelon

Broken Record

Canadian prohibitionists are desperate to cash in before the panic implodes:

…Ernie Allen…[helped to write] a new [wanking fantasy] study…The study refers to increased prostitution, some of it involving minors, during the annual Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal…“During (the Grand Prix) weekend, many adolescent girls run away from youth centres…because their traffickers need them to cater to tourist demand,” the study [fantasizes]…many of the girls are threatened, beaten up and enslaved…Atlanta and Las Vegas are also highlighted in the report. “These are hub cities, magnet cities where people go for sporting events, for conventions, for trade shows…These are people who travel to a location for another purpose and while there encounter a situation where there’s an opportunity to have sex with a child and they do it…The purchaser doesn’t have to go to a city street. He can shop online for a child for sex from the safety of his home or hotel room”…

I’m disappointed that Ernie didn’t compare these “slave children” to pizza.

Bogeymen

Because women are passive dolls without volition who never make any decision without male coercion:

A New Port Richey [Florida] man is accused of being at the center of a human trafficking ring and targeting some of the most vulnerable women…Clent Ruffin…was already in jail on major drug charges…Melanie Snow, a spokesperson for the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office [claimed] Ruffin would target women in strip clubs…and convince them to come back to his house…then get them hooked on drugs, like heroin, and force them to do sexual favors for his customers…

Obviously, women never decide to take drugs on our own; there’s always some Svengali with magical pimp mind-control powers “getting then hooked”.

Worse Than I Thought

Missouri wants to define escort ads as “sex trafficking”:

The Missouri legislature has passed…a…bill [which] would add advertising sex with trafficking victims to the state’s definition of the crime of trafficking. Trafficking is a felony punishable by 5 to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or 10-years in prison or life, depending on the age of the victim…

Bottleneck

Susan Shepard of Tits and Sass compares the persecution of ridesharing companies to the absurdity of stripper licensing:

…Stripper licensing [in Texas] is, like cab licensing, done on a city or county basis. There isn’t yet any state-level licensing, although…representative Bill Zedler proposed one in 2013 that would have required strippers to take a training course on human trafficking, and in 2015 a Pennsylvania proposal to create a statewide stripper registry stalled out. In both cases, the legislators were fairly transparent that they wanted to use the proposed licenses as disincentives…Like most laws around the industry, what is touted as protecting women and children is actually about controlling women’s movements and policing nonwhites. The licensing process in most jurisdictions only looks for drug- and prostitution-related charges and convictions…a felony—even a homicide charge—isn’t going to disqualify someone from a stripper license, but a mere arrest on one of the specified charges can be enough to prevent the granting of a license even if the applicant was found not guilty…

So Close and Yet So Far

Protip: If you’re writing an article about “feminist” reasons to support decriminalization, do NOT get your definition of it from a prominent prohibitionist who led a successful re-criminalization campaign: “…decriminalization…essentially ‘eliminates all laws’ regulating sex work, according to Professor Donna Hughes at the University of Rhode Island…” This is a common prohibitionist lie intended to frighten & confuse law-and-order types and progressives who think people shouldn’t be allowed to blow their own noses without some sort of government regulation. Decriminalization is the removal of criminal laws intended to control or “regulate” sex work, hence that word “decriminalization”. Hughes’ statement is exactly as true as the statement, “there are no laws regulating food service”; of course there are, but they’re not criminal laws. This is about the highest level of rhetoric of which prohibitionists are capable, yet the naive and ignorant just keep lapping it up.

Dutch Threat

The Dutch seem determined to slowly throttle sex work to death:

…The leader of our Christian Party…wants to make it illegal to pay for the services of a sex worker when you should have been able to know she’s a victim of exploitation. “For example, when she’s working from a cellar somewhere, bruised, with two big Bulgarian guys at the door”…Politicians often paint this picture of the perfect victim…many fall into a semi-pornographic style when describing their fantasies…In the last couple of years, over half of legal working places for prostitutes have been closed. Brothels are shut down, windows are closed, and no new licences to work are given to anyone…Those who still work from a licenced location are harassed by police, their workplaces broken into, their homes smashed up and their belongings taken. They are subject to random semi-arrests, where they’re put into police vans and taken to the station for questioning because they’re suspected of being a victim…Many hotels no longer accept escorts or try to keep them out. Renting an apartment to work from is all but impossible, and working from home means your landlord can kick you out. So voluntary workers are pushed into basements and sheds and caravans. Regular security companies will not work with prostitutes…So if you’re working from a shed somewhere and you want some big guys to keep you safe, you’re forced to work with people who will do it. You know, off the record. Two big Bulgarian guys, perhaps. And there you have it: the girl working from a shed with two big guys at the door…

Dysphemisms Galore

It’s like they’re competing to see who can write the most cop-fellatory article imaginable:

Nothing shocks Sgt. Torrey Kennedy anymore…“We’re going after John’s [sic] and pimps, and calling them what they are — pedophiles and sex offenders,” he says…“Finding sex trafficking in Atlanta is easier than shooting fish in a barrel”…inviting CBS46 on a wild and exclusive ride into the city’s naked underbelly, teeming with predators…Thousands of women in Atlanta are sold for sex every day, including an estimated 200-300 underage girls a month…Kennedy straps on a bullet proof vest, and we head to a shopping center to join his backup; a squad of patrol cars circle a giant dumpster and hatch a plan take out the human trash…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do (#410)

Anyone who is “shocked” by this should probably consider moving to a remote farm without television or internet:

A female garda has allegedly been accused of working as an escort in her spare time…after gardai at a Dublin station allegedly received a tip-off…Gardai are allegedly probing whether the woman in question only started working as a call girl in the last two months. If the claims are true, she will be facing the sack…A garda representative source also confirmed that they are aware of the shocking claims…

A Procrustean Bed (#502)

Molly Crabapple profiles a woman who fought New York’s agency-denying “trafficking courts”:

…Love…had once been a sex worker…but by the time she was arrested on the charge that brought her to the courtroom, she was out of the business and pursuing a degree as a surgical technician. The problem was, the cops still knew her face, and…figured she was…an easy stat-padding arrest. They snatched her, threw her in a cell, then charged her with misdemeanor prostitution…Love…demanded a trial…the prosecutor offered no hard proof any crime had been committed. Instead he had only her prostitution record and an undercover officer’s word…the judge declared her not guilty. Love wasn’t content just to prove her innocence. She…hired an attorney to sue the city for false arrest. The case was settled out of court for $15,000, and, exactly a year after the initial trial, in November 2015, Love had the money in hand…

What Were You All Waiting For?

Though this editorial is a bit too accepting of “end demand” rhetoric, it’s a good counter to the Seattle Times‘ nauseating bootlicking & pompous prohibitionism:

The title of a powerful feature published in The New York Times Magazine on Sunday posed the question: “Should Prostitution Be a Crime?” Reporter Emily Bazelon spoke with dozens of sex workers around the world, including several from Seattle, to draw a nuanced portrait of the underground sex economy…Many of Bazelon’s subjects (much like Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch) want to decriminalize sex work. She describes the health benefits of removing criminal sanctions from in New Zealand and part of Australia, achieved without any discernible increase in the overall sex trade. She lists the harms that well-intentioned crusaders have wrought upon their rescue targets. She details the unholy alliance between the Christian right and…“carceral feminists” to turn the abolition of sold sex into a moral crusade. She describes an influential abolitionist casually dismissing sex workers’ very capacity for consent. And she raises questions about…the extent to which violence and coercion influence people’s choices about whether to do sex work…

End Demand (#576)

KIRO, you have my phone number; next time call it before printing this kind of ludicrous garbage:

…the Washington Technology Industry Association…has teamed up with [fascist organ] Businesses Ending Slavery & Trafficking to try and eliminate sex trafficking in the tech industry…“It’s predominantly white men exploiting women of color” [lied] Michael Schutzler of the WTIA…Schutzler said 75 percent of sex trafficking transactions happen at about 2 p.m., and 62 percent of prostituted people meet clients on company property…

Since “trafficking” is used to mean “sex work” these days, just let the absurdity of this claim sink in; I can assure you that there is no way anything like even 6% of outcalls are to clients’ offices, and not even restaurants do 75% of their business in such a narrow window. Yet idiots lap up this shit like a dog eating its own vomit.

Checklist (#599)

Why do people just accept these ridiculous made-up numbers?

A new app tracks vulnerable girls in India and Bangladesh so nonprofits can help prevent trafficking and child marriage…Girl Power…has already helped save more than 200 girls from being exploited, NDTV reported. Community facilitators and teachers are given tablets or Android phones, which have the app installed, and are tasked with registering young girls in 20 villages…

“Maggie McNeill’s providing a sexual outlet to frustrated husbands has already saved over 2000 marriages, Maggie McNeill reported.” That statement is exactly as credible as the one in the story, and based on exactly the same type of “evidence”.

Under Every Bed (#631)

Spokane guys, please be careful; your local cops are on a fanatical crusade targeting YOU:

…Local law enforcement and federal agents teamed up for what is called, [sic] Operation Cross Country…It is a problem that…unfortunately exists in the Spokane area…FBI leaders said they are currently looking into participating in the operation again in 2016 to help rescue even more victims. Before the operation in 2015, the FBI brought [pigs] over from Seattle from the Child Exploitation Task Force to [indoctrinate pigs] in the Inland Northwest on the [newest popular anti-whore propaganda]…

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In the News (#633)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Music, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Alaska, apes & monkeys, asset seizure, bad customers, Catholicism, Checklist, cops, Do As I Say, drivers, drugs, Dysphemisms Galore, Florida, Frequently Told Lies, Hawaii, hysteria, India, Ireland, language, law, Lower Education, Michigan, Minnesota, Monkey Business, New Hampshire, Oregon, prohibitionist myths, Safe Targets, sex rays, statistics, surveillance, teachers, Think of the Children!, Unclean Situation, Under Every Bed, underage, Washington DC, Where Are the Victims?, Worse Than I Thought on April 27, 2016| 4 Comments »

We approached Ruhama expecting to be dealing with a charitable organisation, but what we received was an institution seemingly characterised by paranoia. – Julianne Flynn

Think of the Children!

Few sources of sex rays are as dangerous as the names of body parts:

A West Michigan substitute teacher…had no clue saying the word “vagina” would cost her her job…Allison Wint…said it to…8th graders [while explaining] historical interpretations of Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings. But to school officials, Wint crossed the line–and violated school policy…[that] teachers are required to get advanced approval when discussing any form of reproductive health…

Life Imitates Artifice

Note that this clumsy wannabe “pimp” basically followed a script he learned from anti-whore propaganda:

Andrew Jordan…pleaded not guilty to six felony counts including human trafficking, domestic violence, assault and committing a racially motivated crime…a 23-year-old Los Angeles woman…testified…that she was forced by Jordan to have sex with other men in Long Beach and Los Angeles, and to solicit sex acts from cars passing by. She told authorities that Jordan monitored her whereabouts and ordered her to send him text messages every time she was picked up and every time she completed an act…He collected the money in between and forced her to stay out until she met a quota…the defendant beat her severely when she broke his rules and called her racially degrading slurs…coerced her into getting a tattoo of his name on her wrist, and controlled all of her personal belongings. She testified that she was scared to run away as he kept tabs on her by constantly driving up and down the street…It was not until she was in custody that she was able to tell an officer that she was being abused, authorities [claimed]…

Note also that last transparent attempt to use this an an argument that criminalization is good for sex workers; obviously the prosecutors are hoping readers don’t know the maxim that “hard cases make bad law“.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

The one good thing about more prostitution stings: more cops getting arrested. “A Boynton Beach cop caught up in an undercover prostitution sting as a john willing to pay $20 for oral sex [was sacked]…Vintyre Finney…had been on paid [vacation] since Oct. 19…” Serves the cheap fucker right. And then there’s this dude:

…Maulia Labarre was arrested by the state Attorney General’s office after an investigation with the Honolulu Police Department and the FBI. Sources say he tried to bribe a known prostitute by offering to help after an arrest, in exchange for sex. He allegedly used his computer to get information on the woman and her case…

Where Are the Victims?

OH MY GOD HE PAID THEM SALARIES!!! WHAT A MONSTER!!!

Sunil Meher, who was arrested from Kolkata airport…for running a sex racket, employed several women by paying them nearly Rs 40,000 ($600) each every month. Police also strongly suspect his links with international sex ring kingpins in Goa and Delhi…Police…said Meher not only dabbled in sex trade, but was indulged in human trafficking. He paid hefty amount to girls, who would travel in flights…At least 12 cases were registered against him here since 2009…

The average monthly income in India is approximately Rs 3000. This fiend was paying his “victims” over 13x what they could’ve made in most other jobs.

Worse Than I Thought

Soon we’ll be hearing about how New Hampshire is a “sex trafficking hub”:

…New Hampshire…has…made it…a…felony “for a person to pay to engage in sexual contact with a person under the age of 18” and require “registration on the sex offender registry” for such individuals…adults having sex with minors is already criminalized in New Hampshire…like it is everywhere in America. Sex trafficking is also a crime already in New Hampshire, as is prostitution between consenting parties. So why the need for the new law? Because duh: under the old rules, an adult who solicits paid sex from a teenager could only be charged as a rapist and a prostitution offender. Under the new law, they can also be charged as a sex trafficker, thereby triggering more check-marks when tallying up annual human trafficking arrests. Got to keep feeding that moral panic somehow, don’t we?…The bill would also add paying to watch a sexually-explicit performance by someone under 18 as a form of human trafficking. This way, if a 17-year-old uses a fake ID to get a job at a strip club, anyone who patronizes that club can also be charged as a sex trafficker…The state has no power to seize the assets of misdemeanor prostitution offenders or statutory rapists, but it has ample leeway to seize the assets of suspected human traffickers.

Monkey Business

Guys have offered to pay me with dogs and horses, but never a monkey:

…A [bush baby] named Gooey…was reported stolen from the Zany Zoo Pet Store in [Eugene, Oregon]…police found the animal in a hotel room with a prostitute…[who] told detectives she received the monkey from Nathan McClain…owner of Zany Zoo…McClain paid the prostitute in deposit money from the store, as well as donation money…that was supposed to go to Girl Scouts…McClain was arrested twice [recently when cops claimed]…he appeared to be on meth…Gooey…is safe at a nearby animal sanctuary.

Unclean Situation

A good article on Ruhama, the Magdalene nuns’ new front; here’s the best part:

…the Good Shepherd Sisters received more than €14.4 million from the Health Service Executive between 2006 and 2011. More recent funding data was difficult to obtain and nowhere in their website are there any links to their levels of funding…Martha McGuire, the Communications and Policy Officer of Ruhama [claims] Ruhama…”is not led or in any way dictated by ‘church teaching’”…Ruhama subsequently attempted to withdraw their statements and said we would no longer be allowed to print them…Email correspondence between McGuire and Sarah Benson, Ruhama’s CEO, were inadvertently forwarded to The University Times Magazine. One particularly telling line between the two says: “I reckon once it goes to print we can criticise such attacks as ‘pimp-thinking’.” This shows Ruhama are so concerned with tightening its control of the thinking around this industry that it blames anyone who dares to question that power. By simply asking the question, “Does Ruhama separate itself from the Church’s sexual teaching?”, Ruhama were willing to tarnish the reputation of another person and publicly declare them an advocate of pimp-related activities…

Checklist

Sex workers: Uber now wants its drivers to spy on us and rat us out to the pigs. I suggest you start using Lyft instead:

…an event [celebrated] a new partnership between Uber and ECPAT-USA to combat sex trafficking…Uber officially signed the voluntary ECPAT “code” that provides guidelines for travel and tourism companies to aid in the fight against sex slavery and sex tourism. Uber is the first company in the “sharing economy” to sign the pledge….and…has already laid out initial steps the company will take to address trafficking including…[updating their] driver resources pages with information on how to identify possible trafficking victims…

Under Every Bed

The only thing interesting about this tired rehash of lurid masturbatory fantasies is the way the number of clients per day has now dropped back down into the realm of the possible:

…Monica Miller…shared her own [lurid fantasy] with the audience—of coming from a broken home, falling into one vulnerable situation after another before she was trafficked on the streets of Minneapolis. Miller…[fantasized] “The johns who bought me, I wasn’t human to them, I was an object to them”…Miller said if she were to perform five sex acts a day—which she [pretended] was a low number—that equated to 1,820 sex acts in a year. “I’m just going to be real here. That’s 1,820 rapes”…She said the idea that when a woman turns 18 years old, working in the sex trade suddenly becomes a choice rather than a forced act is a false notion…Miller said the only way we as a society can progress toward the elimination of sex trafficking is by [masturbating to these fantasies] together…

Dysphemisms Galore

Because “Prince’s only sister set to inherit his estate” isn’t a good enough headline for the Mail:

The woman who stands to receive $800 million from Prince’s death: Purple-haired former crack-addict prostitute sister is set to inherit singer’s estate in absence of will – along with catalog of unreleased music…The vast fortune accumulated by Prince over the course of his music career is likely to go to his only sister if the singer failed to leave behind a will. Tyka Nelson, 55, will be awarded Prince’s estate under Minnesota state law as his closest living relative. She and her brother were close in recent years after a difficult stretch in their relationship when Tyka was struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine and prostituting herself to support her two young sons…Prince has an approximate net worth of $300 million, which does not include the millions his estate is set to make in the coming weeks from the increased sale of merchandise and music or the money the singer received when he signed a deal agreeing to stream all his music on Tidal. His music catalog meanwhile is worth over $500 million according to Prince’s first manager Owen Husney, due in large part to the fact that unlike other artists he owned both his master recordings as well as his own music publishing. Prince also has a large collection of unreleased music, which Husney believes may include an album he made with jazz great Miles Davis…

Frequently Told Lies

One can never have too many resources debunking “sex trafficking” garbage; this one is from the English Collective of Prostitutes, and has citations and footnotes.

Safe Targets (#452)

Here’s Tara Burns again, demonstrating how the only people ever charged with “sex trafficking” in Alaska are sex workers themselves:

…when I made a public records request…every single person to have been charged with sex trafficking was an alleged prostitute who was charged with prostitution of herself in the very same case in which she was charged with sex trafficking…arrested…[sex workers are] ordered to give [money from their] earnings to the Municipality of Anchorage, in violation of the Municipality’s own law against accepting money from a prostitute…Trying to locate evidence of the evil men [cops] claimed were taking all the money from sex workers, I made a request of the Anchorage prosecutor for all charges filed under Anchorage’s municipal codes in 2013 and 2014. There were no charges against anyone for transporting a prostitute, having a place of prostitution, accepting money from a prostitute, etc. The only people who had been charged were 34 sex workers and 22 clients…

Lower Education (#625)

First they came for the students, and I said nothing because I was no longer a student…

Adults may soon find their sex lives regulated to the point where nearly every sexual encounter is defined as rape unless neither party reports the activity. The American Law Institute will vote in May on whether to adopt a model penal code that would make “affirmative consent” the official position of the organization. Affirmative consent — or “yes means yes” — policies have already been adopted by many colleges and universities, and have been passed as law in California and New York…a female former prosecutor…called the draft “really disturbing.” A group of concerned members within ALI even circulated an opposition letter, signed by dozens of members, that detailed the dangers of pushing affirmative consent on the general public (not that it’s a good policy for college students, either)…The policies…require [people] to engage in a question-and-answer session each time they engage in any kind of sexual activity…[and thus] shift the burden of proof onto [the] accused…[who] has to prove a crime didn’t occur rather than an accuser proving a crime did occur, as is the norm in civilized society…From the moment any physical contact is about to be made, one person must begin asking for permission. “May I touch you here?” “May I kiss you?” “May I kiss you here?” and the like would all be required questions under such policies. Activists can try and “make affirmative consent sexy” all they want, but no one has sex this way, and I can guarantee you the activists don’t ask all those questions either, which would make them rapists under these policies…

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In the News (#621)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Aversions, Backpage, BDSM, bogus studies, Challenge, Checklist, Cognitive Impairment, consensual crime, cult of the child, dehumanization, Do As I Say, end demand, escort review sites, Feet of Clay, Florida, Frequently Told Lies, Georgia, hysteria, Ireland, Israel, law, Missouri, neofeminism, oral sex, Peeping Toms, politicians, prohibitionist myths, sex offender registry, shame, South Carolina, The Clueless Leading the Hysterical, The Scarlet Letter, The Widening Gyre, Too Close To Home, Washington (state), Worse Than I Thought, yellow journalism on March 16, 2016| 6 Comments »

When sexual minorities burned, we burned together. – Jillian Keenan

Aversions

It’s not just many pros who dislike oral sex; some amateurs don’t either:

…While 91 percent of women perform oral on their male partners, only 79 percent of men perform oral on their female partners. But…the discrepancy…has a lot to do with the fact that some women just don’t want to receive oral sex…I had orgasms a handful of times while receiving oral sex, but considering how rare it had been over the years…I finally decided to come clean with my partners…

The author lists 11 reasons, of which I’m with her on 2-7 and 11.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

More “questionable” than being a vice cop?

A Seattle [cop] has been placed on paid leave [after]…he…was found, in his off-duty time, to be frequenting the Dancing Bare on Aurora Avenue…which was the target of a vice operation related to alleged prostitution activities…he…was not arrested and has not been accused of a crime. He is under investigation after he was found to be “hanging around” the club and engaging in questionable conduct…

Cognitive Impairment

“Artists” claim that if a woman puts her phone number on a card, a fragment of her being is transferred to the card, and anything done to it happens to her. I am not making this up:

…A 10-foot-high vagina sculpture was installed on a Tel Aviv thoroughfare…Artists Sasha Kurbatov and Vanane Borian crafted the giant vulva from cards that advertise sex work services. A 50-foot trail of the same type of cards leads to the work…Hundreds of brothels operating illegally in Tel Aviv are reportedly responsible for the cards strewn about city sidewalks…“All the fragments of women that are on the floor, people are stepping on them, they see it, and there is no longer any value to it,” [said] Borian…”A woman simply loses all value and becomes an object, not even a complete object”…

But symbolizing the totality of a woman with a grotesque, cartoonish sculpture of a twat isn’t dehumanizing, no sirree.

The Scarlet Letter

A good, thorough article on the use of shaming tactics against sex workers’ clients:

…Tapping into the new power of the internet, along with our very old obsession with transgressive sex…officials hope to wield the fear of public judgment in the name of the public good, arguing that prostitution is linked to far more serious crimes than we ever thought. But by taking punishment out of the hands of law enforcement and placing it in the hands of the public, whose emotions and reactions lie beyond their control, shaming campaigns can also be messy and unpredictable. And the resulting stigma can last indefinitely…

The article pays especial attention to the horrendous “Flush the Johns” debacle.

The Clueless Leading the Hysterical

So very many people completely bereft of the capacity for rational thought:

By buying a plush toy with a heart on it, Tampa mom Nicole O’Kelly unwittingly alerted predators that her little girl “is ready to be traded for sex”…correspondent Melanie Michael told viewers that the toy, a pink stuffed truck recently purchased at a Monster Jam event, “held a sick secret; a disgusting calling card for creeps. The heart on the toy was a symbol for pedophiles”…While presenting no evidence whatsoever that the toy was made to be, or perceived as, some kind of secret signaling device, the reporter interviewed the toy-buying mom, who seemed as distraught as if her child had narrowly escaped a windowless van…Detective Anthony Bassone…said the hearts are used for girls while a separate symbol with triangles targets boys…

The Widening Gyre

“The Facts“. Seriously.

Just imagine…You’re glad to be home. You crawl into bed and wrap yourself in your favorite blanket…Suddenly, a rustling in the next room jolts you awake…A bag is thrown over your head. You’re carried away…No one knows where you are. You have no hope of rescue. You’ve vanished…The average age of a modern day slave is 12 years old…

These moronic tripe is full of “facts” like “traffickers profit $150 billion a year” though “the average price of a slave is less than that of a new cell phone”. Obviously, these “facts” don’t include any math.

Worse Than I Thought

Keep in mind, all this requires is the “testimony” of a lying cop out to score arrests:

People who purchase illicit sex in South Carolina could soon be placed on the sex offender registry and pay stiffer fines…[blah blah “end demand”] the…bill…includes…stiffer consequences…for those soliciting sex from people who are “profoundly mentally disabled”…

This kind of tyranny is contagious; right next door in Georgia:

A bill…would go after the pimps and the people who pay for prostitution…It would…[make] solicitation a felony upon a second conviction…[and] put…twice-convicted customers on the state’s sex offender registry…

Want a good laugh? Look at the masthead of the TV station printing this bootlicking filth.

Checklist

There’s so very much stupidity here, but I guess the main thing is the “signs”:

Victims of human trafficking often can be the children in classrooms who frequently act up, who show abrupt changes in behavior and are picked up from school by a man who isn’t a family member…Rep. Ann Wagner [fantasized] that the victims are “hiding in plain sight”…St. Louis is one of the most active human trafficking locations in the country…schools are increasingly targets for recruitment…Students might wind up at a party with a friend whose boyfriend is a predator, or be enticed with expensive clothes or cellphones…”it could happen overnight,” said [“trafficking” fetishist] Jenee Littrell…It is estimated that at least 100,000 children across the United States are sexually exploited annually…But the real numbers may be significantly higher. The average age of children who fall victim to human trafficking is 12 to 14 years old…

Frequently Told Lies

It’s so good to see debunking spreading to the mainstream press:

…police do…dramatic busts…because of widely believed myths about sex work, which endlessly echo back and forth between policy and pop culture. The politicians and activists who perpetuate these myths believe they’re saving people, but only through careful examination of the facts can governments begin to reduce the violence and marginalization that sex workers suffer. Here are three myths in particular that impact legislation and enforcement (and help keep those harmful stereotypes alive in our heads). Myth 1. The average age of entry into sex work is between 12 and 14…Myth 2….sex trafficking is the most common form of [coerced labor]…Myth 3. “Target the demand” works…

Feet of Clay (#416)

The buffoonish Nick Kristof is up on his anti-Backpage hobby horse again, and as usual he’s not too concerned with the truth:

…we as a society are complicit…by allowing a popular website called Backpage.com to be used to arrange child rape…Backpage…has about 80 percent of the U.S. market for online sex ads in America, mostly for consenting adults but many also for women who are forcibly trafficked or for underage girls…Children in at least 47 states have been sold on Backpage…If there were a major American website openly selling heroin or anthrax, there would be an outcry. Yet we Americans tolerate a site like Backpage.com that is regularly used to peddle children…

It’s interesting that Kristof mentioned anthrax, given his major role in destroying a man’s career over paranoid delusions about it.

Challenge (#615)

A legal bid to overturn the ban on paying for sex in Northern Ireland is being partly funded by an escort website. Sex worker Laura Lee is leading the High Court challenge. She was questioned about her financial support by members of the Home Affairs Committee…Ms Lee…said…”a lot of the sex workers that advertise on [Escort Ireland] put pressure on them to support me and said it was only fair, since they make money from the industry, that they should support my efforts of keeping our industry safe.”

Too Close To Home (#618)

Seattle Times‘ bootlicking editor Thanh Tan is at it again, characterizing my friends and me as heartless liars for countering her nauseating masturbatory fantasies about “sex slave children” with actual facts:

…Though no one knows exactly how much of the local sex trade involves consenting adults or coerced individuals, a 2008 study estimated hundreds of youths are bought and sold every night in the Seattle area. In recent years, police and sheriff’s deputies…have shifted their focus…to targeting the patrons responsible for rising demand. A coalition of sex workers and their allies have taken to social media recently to argue vehemently against this approach. They say criminalization is unfair to them and their clients. They are proud of what they do and reject a host of studies that have tried to estimate the age range and number of people being trafficked. Most concerning is the tendency in some of these online tirades to downplay or ignore the widespread harm suffered within the same industry by far less-privileged people. Disturbingly, there is a lack of compassion for the children getting caught or forced into the trade…

I do like the powerful graphic of a brutal, thuggish-looking cop standing guard over “rescued” sex workers; one can almost see him considering which woman he’s going to rape next. Good work, Seattle Times!

Peeping Toms (#619)

Jillian Keenan schools ignoramus judges:

According to a new federal district court decision, the Constitution “does not prohibit the regulation of BDSM conduct.” In other words, the precedent implied by bans on anti-sodomy and anti-adultery laws—that adults have a constitutional right to freedom of noncommercial intimate conduct—doesn’t protect us…The court rejected the idea that Lawrence v. Texas might protect other sexual minorities…because “there is no basis to conclude that [BDSM]…is deeply rooted in … history.” Excuse me?…BDSM, without question, has a “deeply rooted” history…there are references to BDSM throughout historical literature: Robert Dixon, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher, and William Shakespeare all referred to sadomasochism in their work. A fresco from approximately 490 BC in the aptly-named Etruscan “Tomb of the Whipping” even depicts two men flogging a woman in an erotic context…the court…also argued that…because straights have long despised gay people, they have a special interest in legal protection…All consenting adults have the right to intimate lives that are free from government interference. It’s a shame that the court refused to recognize that—and a shame that the ruling attempts to draw lines around Lawrence v. Texas to divide “protect[ed]”sexual minorities from unprotected ones. Such divisions are, to steal the court’s language, not “deeply rooted” in history…

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In the News (#617)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Mound of Filth, Above the Law, agency denial, Arizona, asset seizure, Australia, Canada, cell phones, cops, halfway whores, hysteria, law, Massachusetts, Monsters, New Excuse, O Canada!, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, pragmatism, propaganda, rape, rescue industry, Rhode Island, sex offender registry, Something Rotten In Sweden, stripping, Texas, The Public Eye, The Rescuers, transgender, Unintentional Hilarity, United Kingdom, video, Washington (state), Worse Than I Thought, yellow journalism on March 2, 2016| 1 Comment »

Such is the extent of the harm caused by anti-prostitution zealots that we must question whether their actions are fundamentally any less harmful than those they are seeking to “save” women from. – Laura Connelly

The Rescuers

…the UK has a rapidly-growing “rescue industry”…that makes its living from identifying and creating victims of “sexual slavery”. It is in its interest to find them. Lots of them. In a sort of sex industry “neighbourhood watch” scheme, some Christian organisations send their congregation out on to the streets to search for sex workers that they can impose victim status upon. Other organisations have infiltrated university campuses. There’s even a “Slave Detective” offering anti-trafficking consultancy. In the face of mounting evidence that they’re doing more harm than good, people recklessly continue on their rescue missions…many do not wish to be saved. If they’re a migrant sex worker, their “rescue” can result in deportation…back to communities where they are shunned or worse still, put to death for bringing shame to their family. Far from helping…the actions of the rescue industry limit the freedom of sex workers. I’ve heard about women having their mobile phones confiscated in trafficking safe houses, to ensure they can’t sell any more sex…

Something Rotten in Sweden

After they succeed in defining all whores as mindless vegetables, who’s next?

…the…Western Massachusetts Human Trafficking Task Force…is striving to embody…a “paradigm shift” in moving away from law enforcement’s traditional view of those who sell their bodies as criminals or prostitutes and viewing them as victims moved by “force, threat, coercion or all of the above…Now we understand correctly and view them as as vulnerable victims”…

O, Canada!

As one reads these fetishist politicians’ words, one can practically hear the fapping:

[Rescue industry] organizations…are urging the Ontario government to adopt a private member’s bill to take immediate action to address what they [fantasize is] a crisis. “Sex trafficking is a growing and significant issue in Ontario,” said Cynthia Bland, founder of Voice Found…“The average age when most girls are trafficked into prostitution is 14, and many don’t even recognize that they’ve been trafficked until it’s too late”…Laurie Scott has a private member’s bill that would give police the power to enforce protection orders against traffickers on behalf of the victims…The bill would also allow victims to seek compensation in court and add convicted traffickers to the province’s sex offender registry…Scott’s bill…[is] called the “Saving The Girl Next Door Act”…Ontario has become a “major hub” for human trafficking…

Above the Law

Some police departments hesitate to protect rapist cops when their victims are underage:

[Typical] Ohio cop…Justin Bentz was found guilty of [rape]…kidnapping and sexual battery. Hours before he raped the girl in June 2015, Bentz had taken a class warning of the dangers of underage sexual assault. But that didn’t stop him from making sexual advances towards the 16-year-old girl after handing her a bottle of 80-proof alcohol, allowing her to get drunk to the point where she could barely stand. However, Bentz insisted the girl had come on to him…She was found by her sister in a closet wearing only a tank top, curled up in the fetal position. Her blood alcohol content was up to .19, more than twice the .08 legal limit. A nurse determined she suffered blunt force trauma to her vaginal area. A DNA test found his semen on her stomach…

The Widening Gyre

No, Snopes, it isn’t “odd” at all; this is the typical pattern of “sex trafficking” rumors. So when are you going to stop pruning leaves and go for the trunk?

On 25 February 2016, multiple high-volume Twitter [advertising] accounts published warnings claiming that the meetup app “Down to Lunch” was a tool for human traffickers…It was an odd claim, since purpose of Down to Lunch was well documented, the app was hugely popular, and there was no information available to substantiate the allegations…on 24 February 2016, a tweet shared a screenshot of an App Store review from a few weeks earlier. The review claimed that Down to Lunch was a covert trafficking app, but the story that it offered (which featured strangers in sunglasses and trench coats, random middle-aged people crashing lunches and talking about photography, and — of course — a creepy van) wasn’t substantiated by any evidence…

Worse Than I Thought

The oppression committed in the name of “fighting sex trafficking” rolls on:

A comprehensive bill that would significantly expand Rhode Island’s human-trafficking law was well received by [authoritarians]…Human trafficking is considered to be the world’s fastest-growing criminal enterprise…the legislation has already been adopted by six states, and four others have enacted partial provisions…The bill…imposes substantial penalties on traffickers and those who pay for sex with someone who is trafficked…and forfeiture of property from people involved in trafficking. That could include places that rent to massage parlors…The bill also would establish a permanent council on human trafficking to work on prevention and public awareness…The committee also heard a bill that would require sex traffickers to register as sex offenders…

And just in case you think that’s nothing to worry about, remember that all prostitution is increasingly defined as “trafficking”, and that the definition of “prostitution” is expanding:

…Under a measure passed unanimously by [Oregon] Senators…the offense of “promoting prostitution” will include…receiving goods, services, or anything of value in exchange for aiding, promoting, or “caus(ing) someone to engage” in prostitution…Lawmakers [pretend] the measure is needed in order to prosecute sex traffickers, who [they fantasize] often receive things other than cash…[even though] no one has any evidence of this happening at all, let alone frequently…Sex-worker advocates…say the measure will harm…homeless young people [who] wind up exchanging sexual favors for shelter, food, and other basic needs…Criminalizing these attempts to survive…will just make survival that much harder. While we haven’t gotten dystopian enough quite yet for cops to target conventional dating under this statute, it seems plenty plausible that it would be used to go after…”sugar baby” relationships…

The Public Eye

My friend Caroline handled this interview like a champ; I just wish they hadn’t sullied her words by surrounding them with prohibitionist lies:

…“There are a lot more of us than you think,” said Caroline McLeod…43 and a single mother of two. And, for the last eight years, she’s been a sex worker. “It is illegal and I’m doing it and it’s all good, for me…So I made a leap of faith and it’s been fabulous”…McLeod got tired of her long workweek at a startup tech job while her daughter spent the day in day care. She said she needed to find a way to provide for her kids and be there as they grew up…However, McLeod doesn’t look for her clients on the street and she doesn’t come from an abusive home like so many of the women who turn to street prostitution…She says she’s never been hurt or had problems with any of her clients, but many women in the sex trade do get roughed up. In fact, law enforcement has shifted its focus to combat prostitution…

Monsters

Just a couple short days after Veronica Banks Cano, a Black trans woman from San Antonio, was found dead in her hotel room, another Black trans woman is dead. Maya Young was pronounced dead after being stabbed multiple times in Philadelphia on February 21st…

Unintentional Hilarity

Remember the imbecile who gave a strange man all her savings, then claimed she had “escaped sex trafficking” because he told her strippers make more money than waitresses? Well, she’s still clucking about her non-experiences as though they meant something:

Brianna Myers…told an audience of more than 80 the story of how she nearly became a victim of human trafficking…“We’re not here to share fear and paranoia,” said Jo Lembo…for Shared Hope International…[sow] Ariana Ridgely…[oinked that] “Small towns can be even more dangerous than a big city”…Myers offered warning signs that might identify a potential trafficker. “A guy who is always available to you is…just preying on your vulnerabilities”…someone who will [offer a girl compliments] buy her new clothes, make her salon appointments, drive nice cars or take her to big cities…is someone to be wary of, Myers said…Strip clubs are like the minor league baseball equivalent to major league prostitution, Ridgely said. And with the plethora of nude dance clubs in Portland, the city is a “hotbed for trafficking”…

So according to Myers, the only safe boyfriend is a loser who never takes you anywhere or spends any money on you. And the baseball simile may quite possibly be among the ten stupidest things ever said about sex work in the entire history of the profession.

A Mound of Filth

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

Cindy McCain told a Senate committee…that the U.S. should be the leader in the global fight against human trafficking. “We need to recognize that we have a global problem and it calls for a global solution,” McCain said…She is…[also seeking] to [impose a “sex trafficking” propaganda regime]…in [Arizona] schools…

New Excuse

Eternal Vigilance (#610)

Perhaps it’s just because I’m a born whore, but I honestly don’t get why this is considered news at all:

Sex-for-rent advertisements continue to appear online in southeast Queensland…The advertisements, some subtle, others more overt , target vulnerable women, students and backpackers…Exchanging sex for rent is not illegal in Australia provided it is consensual and does not involve coercion or violence…Gold Coast centre against sexual violence director Di Macleod said the issue had existed for many years…

They “target vulnerable women”? How, exactly? Do the ads say, “Vulnerable women only need apply”, or are prospective tenants required to pass (fail?) some sort of vulnerability test? And most importantly, when will Western society stop treating adult women as if they were wayward kindergarteners?

Phantasm

WTF, Atlantic? Have you lost your collective mind, or is some wealthy prohibitionist like Swanee Hunt paying y’all to run this kind of garbage?

How do you identify sex-trafficking victims when such cases go largely undetected or unreported?…human trafficking is a lucrative industry that around the globe rakes in $150 billion…victims might be fearful of going to law enforcement and being charged with a crime…Women can be pulled in to commercial sex through gangs or pimps—the former function as delivery services, taking women to houses in the area they control, while the latter focus on hotels and street level prostitution…law enforcement…[works] to identify victims who are afraid to identify themselves.

The portrayal of cops as heroes that sex workers need to be brainwashed into being wary of is enough to make anyone who lives in the real world vomit.

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In the News (#606)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, Africa, An Example to the West, brothels, Cambodia, Checklist, cops, Droit du Seigneur, Dutch Threat, fantasy, India, internet, Kenya, language, Latin America, law, Netherlands, Ohio, politicians, porn, prisons, rape, red-light districts, Russia, Schadenfreude, sex rays, statistics, Surplus Women, Sweden, Swedish model, Tennessee, The Course of a Disease, The Proper Study, The Swedish Pimpocracy, Think of the Children!, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Worse Than I Thought on January 23, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Whilst the Government looks to the law as a means to manage commercial sex, violence and abuse will continue for…sex workers. – Teela Sanders

Think of the Children!

“Woman has two jobs” is not news:

Katya Gorlova…was [filmed without her consent] accepting cash from a customer [to do her job]…During conversation she told the man her [other] job involved teaching signing and dancing to young children at a school…She now faces an enquiry…She said her part-time prostitution work did not in any way hinder her job at the school…

The Swedish Pimpocracy

Sweden, the feminist paradise:

A Swedish doctor fed a woman drug-laced strawberries and then repeatedly raped her in a homemade bunker that he planned to use for more victims…the man, who has not been named…was an intellectual who was socially awkward and secretive…He once showed pals the outside of his underground dungeon, which he spent five years building…The doctor allegedly gave the woman…a box of chocolate-covered strawberries spiked with Rohypnol while at her place in Stockholm. He then drove her to his lair 350 miles away…he…planned to keep the woman locked in the dungeon for years. But he panicked when she was reported missing and drove her to a nearby police station, and was then arrested.

The Proper Study

But what does “porn” mean?

…Pornhub…just released its annual review of country-by-country data on porn searches and consumption. By percentage of traffic, the United States was Pornhub’s biggest 2015 consumer, followed by the U.K., India, Canada, and Germany. The most-searched term on Pornhub last year was lesbian, followed by teen, step mom, cartoon, and milf. Pornhub also looked at which searches have gained the most over 2014. Some of the more safe-for-work words: giantess (up 1,091 percent), real public sex(up 583 percent), romantic sex (up 267 percent), and lesbian seduces straight (up 244 percent). For U.S. users only, hardcore lesbian scissoring saw the most gain (up 918 percent), followed by celebrity sex tape (up 553 percent). Other leaps included extreme gangbang (260 percent), step mom shower (213 percent), and yoga (133 percent)…

Droit du Seigneur

Given that “ring” is a dysphemism for “suppressed business”, how can one have a “prostitution ring” that caters to government officials and is managed by the cops in a country where prostitution is legal?

Colombia’s national police force is facing allegations that it wiretapped a high-profile journalist…investigations into the allegations…are being hindered by death threats and conflicts of interests…The…scandal broke when prominent radio host and former news anchor Vicky Dávila announced that she, her family, and her reporting team had been trailed and wiretapped by the national police. Dávila…was investigating allegations that some 300 police cadets were engaged in a prostitution ring catering to top officials…four other prominent journalists investigating the police have also claimed to be victims of wiretapping and harassment…

Above the Law

These are the people prohibitionists want in charge of sex workers:

[An]…Ohio [cop] has been charged with raping a woman in 2014 and then using the police database to stalk her after she reported the crime….Jeffrey Martin…was arrested last month on charges of rape, stalking and menacing…Martin [also] pretended to be a private investigator so he could stalk his victim onto Ursuline College campus…he had been suspended four times by the Pepper Pike Police Department. Two of the suspensions were related to inappropriate conduct toward women…

Checklist

Note that most of these revolve around either bogus “signs” or masturbatory “awareness raising”:

After first learning about human trafficking, many people want to help in some way but do not know how. Here are just a few ideas for your consideration…Learn the red flags that may indicate human trafficking…so that you can help identify a potential trafficking victim…Incorporate human trafficking information into your professional associations’ conferences, trainings, manuals, and other materials…Join or start a grassroots anti-trafficking coalition…Distribute public awareness materials…Host an awareness event to watch and discuss a recent human trafficking documentary. On a larger scale, host a human trafficking film festival…Set up a Google alert to receive current human trafficking news…Train your staff on how to identify the indicators of human trafficking…Look for signs of human trafficking among your clients…

Dutch Threat

The slow death of Die Wallen:

…The constant claim people make on us is that they are helping us, but really what they’re doing is just dumping more shit on us. They don’t really listen, they just talk with you so they can say they talked with you and listened to you. But…if they really would’ve listened to us, the city government would’ve immediately stopped buying up more windows than the more than 100 workplaces that we’ve already lost. But they don’t…[the] 37 [new] window…[closures mean] work space [for] at least 135 prostitutes…these…on top of the estimated 375 women that [have] already [lost] their workplace, bringing the total to more than 500 women…We can’t work elsewhere, because all over this country they’re closing down legal workplaces for prostitutes. In fact, between 2006 and 2014 in total 40% of all the legal prostitution businesses closed down. Between 2000 and now, 729 prostitution windows alone closed down. That’s more than 1/3 of all the prostitution windows in this country! And than they’re still surprised that illegal prostitution is a growing problem?…

Worse Than I Thought (#322)

In other words, he was a time waster, not a “sex trafficker”:

A Nashville judge has overturned the conviction and 22-year prison sentence for a man whose case was [touted] by prosecutors as the first of its kind in the state…Kohlmeyer testified…that he was lonely and bored during his job as a forklift driver…when he began chatting with a prostitute he found on…Backpage…they talked for more than 90 minutes over two days…[and] Kohlmeyer offered “5000+ for you and someone YOUNG!” The woman went to police, and Nashville Detective Sheba Cantrell took over, posing as the prostitute. She…had conversations with Kohlmeyer about what age of girls he was looking for…”Just over 8 not over 16,” Kohlmeyer replied…Cantrell pushed for a meeting…[and] Kohlmeyer…cut off contact…Kohlmeyer never had the money discussed…Public Defender Chaucey Fuller…later filed a motion for acquittal arguing — among other things — that the law requires an actual person being trafficked, and that fictitious girls offered by an undercover detective did not meet that standard…Kohlmeyer is [currently also] facing [child porn] charges…

An Example to the West (#349)

…thousands of sex workers in [Bengaluru,] India…want to be part of the mainstream society and enjoy all their rights…till a few years ago most of these women had no access to even a ration card…Today things are different. Around 5,700 sex workers in the city have recently been benefited from various social security schemes and entitlements, which include, pension schemes, ration cards, Aadhar cards, Voter ID cards, Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Jan Dhan Yojana scheme, legal services and loans, to name a few. All these have been made possible by the Sahaya Single Window project under the aegis of the Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR), an NGO. It was first implemented in 2013…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#449)

Fantasy film double feature:

…in northwest Ohio…the…film…Chosen was presented as part of an event highlighting Human Trafficking Awareness Month at Van Wert Cinemas. The free event attracted over 75 to see the documentary. A free showing of Star Wars: The Force Awakens followed…

The Course of a Disease (#449)

Swedish model fanatics just won’t stop trying to impose their filth on the UK:

MPs are to launch a major inquiry into how sex workers are treated in UK law…The Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry will examine whether criminal action should still be focused most heavily on those who sell sex, rather than those who buy it…Professor Teela Sanders of the University of Leeds…said shifting criminal action onto those who pay for sex risked driving the activities underground. She said: “We have had two decades of reviewing, legislating, guidelines…and none of them have prioritised the safety of sex workers and the broader issues around human rights to protection. There have been various consultations and parliamentary groups in recent years including attempts to make it a crime to pay for sex in 2009 and the more recent 2014 report Shifting the Burden from the All Party Parliamentary Group – none of these had the safety of sex workers at the fore”…

Schadenfreude (#566)

This is the place sex workers “rescued” by the likes of Somaly Mam are sent:

Police in Phnom Penh arrested at least 274 sex workers…last year before sending them to the notorious Prey Speu social affairs center…The Women’s Network for Unity (WNU), which is run primarily by current and former sex workers, assisted in [their] release…street workers reported being arrested eight to nine times per year, on average. Eighty percent of those surveyed reported being “violated” by police officers, either physically or sexually…district governor Kouch Chamroeun angrily denied that police…abused sex workers…[but also bloviated that] police had every right to arrest street workers…because sex workers held at Prey Speu have not received due process, nor faced prosecution in court, their detention is unlawful…

Surplus Women (#586)

Nakuru [Kenya] sex workers say a serial killer is targeting and mutilating them…they protested on Kenyatta Avenue against the rise in murders. They demanded county police catch the killer. Four sex workers were found dead under mysterious circumstances between September and October last year. Two had their skin peeled off and the others’ eyes were gouged out, the sex workers say…[on January 9^th] another sex worker, 20-year-old Grace Wangari, was killed…

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In the News (#598)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, adolescence, agency denial, BDSM, California, Canada, consensual crime, cops, dirty, Droit du Seigneur, drugs, fantasy, FBI, Georgia, hysteria, Innocence Never Had, law, Little Boxes, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Netherlands, New Excuse, Now They Notice, O Canada!, pathologization of males, prisons, prohibitionist myths, psychology, racism, rape, Social Construction of Eunuchs, Sweden, Texas, The Red Umbrella, Too Young To Know, transgender, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), Welcome to Our Updates, welcome to our world, Worse Than I Thought on December 23, 2015| 8 Comments »

The bottom line is that the criminalization of prostitution is at the root of the risk that sex workers face. – Elizabeth Nolan Brown

The Red Umbrella

Elizabeth Nolan Brown demonstrates her amazing allyship:

Each December 17, sex workers and their allies around the world commemorate the “International Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers”…it’s not just psychos and serial killers who put sex workers in danger—a large share of violence against sex workers comes at the hands of cops…who…target sex workers for assault because they have an easy bargaining chip (do what I say or I’ll throw you in jail) and they know the stigma around prostitution makes people less likely to believe these women. But even cops who are just doing their jobs commit violence against sex workers every day, by arresting and locking them up in jail just for trying to earn a living. Then, when sex workers suspect clients are capable of violence, we wonder why they didn’t go to the police? Please…

Social Construction of Eunuchs

The title’s not usually this literal:

…The drug Lupron tricks the hormone in the brain that tells the pituitary gland to produce testosterone. Dr. Renee Sorrentino is one of a handful of psychiatrists offering Lupron to patients in Massachusetts. She first saw the drug in action while working in Canada and was amazed at how it changed men’s lives by “turning down the sexual volume of the mind,” allowing patients to work through the causes of their behaviors with therapy. Sorrentino says that about 20 percent of her current Lupron patients are there voluntarily, often desperate to curb their troubling sexual thoughts or actions. One of her patients, a 62-year-old man…started taking shots of Lupron after his wife discovered he’d spent the last eight years sleeping with prostitutes. Identifying as a sex addict, he felt the only way to stop his behavior — and save his 45-year marriage — was to medicate his body into submission…

Droit du Seigneur

Does anyone actually believe this excuse would’ve worked for a poor man?

A millionaire businessman has been found not guilty of rape after claiming he accidentally penetrated her when he tripped and fell. Ehsan Abdulaziz…was…accused of forcing himself on the 18-year-old as she slept on a couch at his London flat after a night of drinking. The Saudi property developer said he had already had sex with the young woman’s 24-year-old friend and it was possible his penis may have been poking out of his underwear when he tripped…Abdulaziz said he had accidentally fallen on the teenager and that she tried to seduce him, and that was how his DNA got onto her vagina…He also told the court it was possible he had semen on his hands after having sex with the young woman’s friend…

His penis “accidentally” entered her? Seriously? Has anyone on this jury ever actually had sex? Or were they all Swedish immigrants?

Little Boxes

Adult human beings with Important Titles actually thought this was something that needed to be discussed:

Driving instructors in the Netherlands can legally trade driving lessons for sex, government ministers have confirmed…Some novice drivers have been learning the rules of the road in exchange for sex, in deals which the conservative opposition party ChristenUnie has labeled “illegal prostitution”. The Dutch government has been researching the appropriate legal stance on such transactions and concluded that offering driving lessons in exchange for sex is not illegal. However it would be illegal if the transaction was to be reversed, with a learner driver offering sex for the lessons…

Too Young To Know

This is the same paper which has printed several “lock ’em up” prostitution editorials in recent months:

…Follow the money that Washington state spends intervening with runaway kids and those who skip school, and you might believe this state wants to see them all locked up in jail. The laws that underpin this embarrassment were passed 20 years ago under what’s known as the Becca laws, named for a 13-year-old Tacoma girl who ran away from home repeatedly, became addicted to crack…fell into prostitution…[and] was murdered [due to the criminalization this paper supports]…the laws have become a vehicle to routinely jail youths. The state spends millions to funnel noncriminal adolescent rebellion into juvenile courts…Washington sends more truant and runaway kids to jail than any other state by at least a factor of two…in 2014 this state jailed one-third of the 7,466 young people detained across the nation for so-called “status offenses” — running away from home or skipping school…one out of every six kids admitted to a juvenile detention center aren’t there for crimes, but for violating court orders regarding truancy and running away…

Worse Than I Thought

For the “crime” of seeking an adult partner for consensual sex:

Three…men facing gross misdemeanor charges for soliciting prostitution in a public place in [a Minnesota] County have pleaded guilty…The men [were entrapped using fake]…online advertisements for escort services…one…was sentenced to two years of supervised probation, during which he must submit to random searches of his personally owned cellphones or computers…[and] is also not allowed to use Craigslist, backpages.com [sic] or other internet [advertising] sites…[he] was required to [endure a “john school”]attend and…was fined $750…[another]…was [threatened with]…30 days in [a cage if he refuses to endure “john school”]…he…was fined $1,685. [The third]…was [also threatened with the cage and]…must submit to random searches of his person, residence…vehicles…electronic devices…cellphones and computers, and [must surrender] his passwords to any social networking accounts…[he] was fined $2,085.

Innocence Never Had (#401)

“Rescue bags” are the newest way for the hopelessly ignorant to pretend they’re “doing something” about “child sex trafficking”:

…One hundred rescue bags were put together for child sex trafficking victims in Clayton County. Donations of personal hygiene items, clothes, socks and blankets were collected from agencies all over Clayton…“Everyone has been 150 percent behind us in this,” said Joanne Southerland, coordinator of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children Awareness, Training and Prevention…

Note that Clayton County, Georgia has about 260,000 inhabitants, which means these fetishists fantasize that 8 of every 10,000 female inhabitants are “child sex slaves”. But I guess one can’t expect much mathematical comprehension from people who think it’s possible to give 50% more of something than there is of it.

New Excuse

Beginning to sound familiar yet?

Sacramento has been selected as one of six locations…to form new federal task forces to combat human trafficking…[as] part of the Anti-Trafficking Coordination Team Initiative, an interagency federal law enforcement initiative aimed at streamlining the…[persecution of people using] federal human trafficking [laws]…Anti-Trafficking Coordination Teams bring together federal prosecutors and federal agents from federal investigative agencies to [coordinate schemes for harvesting victims]…The new team will include personnel from the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Department of Labor. Other sites selected to form the new task forces are Cleveland, Minneapolis, Newark, N.J., Portland, Maine, and Portland, Ore.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#503)

Another good way to give lies weight in the minds of the Great Unwashed: embed them in an infographic.

Note that the absurd “25% of all victims” has now inflated a little.

BDSM (#505)

Naturally. It’s obsessing about what other people do in private which is a sign of mental illness:

University of Alabama and University of Central Florida researchers surveyed over 800 kinky people…and found they were mentally and emotionally healthy…The study, “Psychological Functioning and Violence Victimization and Perpetration in BDSM Practitioners from the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom”, also investigated people’s preferences for BDSM activities and fantasies, and explored whether violence is perpetuated against kinky people. It joins a growing body of research that refutes the stereotype that people who are kinky are inherently dangerous to themselves and others, which is at the root of the discrimination and persecution that kinky people experience…says Robert J. Cramer…Co-Principal Investigator…”Contrary to popular perceptions, our study shows kinky persons are largely mentally healthy when it comes to conditions such as depression, anxiety and suicide”…

Welcome To Our World (#512)

Sweden isn’t racist, nope. And neither is the “human trafficking” narrative:

Swedish police have compiled a controversial register, listing information about members of the Roma community found begging on the street. Roma beggars up and down the country have been questioned about their income, whether or not they beg voluntarily or under duress and if they pay others to be guaranteed a certain spot in a town or city…Roma…had also been asked to show…ID…and to give details about their home towns…Police [pretended]…the [surveillance] was necessary in order to fully investigate potential human trafficking…But Hans Caldaras, a spokesperson for the Roma community, said that the study was an excuse to compile statistics based on ethnicity (which is not usually done in Sweden) and to get Roma “out of the country”. A previous similar initiative co-ordinated by police in southern Sweden in 2013 was severely criticized by Sweden’s parliamentary watchdog, and those included in the register were awarded damages…

O, Canada! (#596)

You wouldn’t know this was Canadian if not for the specifics:

…a…provincial task force is required to combat domestic human trafficking…over 90% of the young female victims of human trafficking are Canadian-born…the highest incidence of human trafficking in Canada occurs in Ontario. The typical victim of human trafficking…is the girl next door. She’s the pretty, popular girl who hopes no one ever finds out that deep down inside she doesn’t feel pretty at all…these young women are psychologically manipulated by their “boyfriends”…the victims are confined, beaten, and sexually exploited by traffickers who earn over $280,000 a year from just one victim…women as young as 13 are moved from one community to another. In Ontario, this frequently occurs along Hwy. 401. Their traffickers advertise their services online. It is estimated that on any given day, 500 of the online sex ads involve victims of human trafficking…

I’m surprised Laurie Scott isn’t more wary about sharing the exact details of her masturbatory fantasies with her constituency.

Now They Notice (#596)

If this is what it takes to get Gay, Inc interested in sex worker rights, I’m all for it:

There are countless reasons many transgender people decided to engage in sex work in order to survive. Employment discrimination, family rejection, unsafe educational environments and other forms of discrimination all contribute to high rates of economic insecurity and poverty for transgender people…Being convicted of a crime for engaging in sex work leads to negative lifelong consequences…[such as] their ability to attain employment. And in the many cases where they are placed on sex offender registries, this will affect nearly every aspect of their lives, including where they can live and work…sex workers face constant threats of violence…because of the lack of spaces in which sex workers can more safely engage their clients — and a disproportionate…[number] of those…are transgender women…safe spaces…are constantly being shut down by law enforcement agencies and those involved risk being indicted on punitive criminal charges — as we’ve seen recently by the federal raid on Rentboy.com. This type of approach further pushes sex work deeper underground…

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In the News (#597)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Africa, Backpage, BDSM, Between the Lines, censorship, consensual crime, cops, dating, Drawing Lines, Fallen Idol, fantasy, FBI, Florida, GFE, Good Fantasy-Bad Reality, halfway whores, hysteria, internet, License To Rape, Maine, New York, porn, pragmatism, prisons, prohibitionist myths, rape, Reaction Formation, Saving Them from Themselves, Seizing Power, serial killers, sexting, Shifting the Blame, That Old Black Magic, The Widening Gyre, universal criminality, Universally Criminal updates, video, Washington DC, Worse Than I Thought on December 19, 2015| 15 Comments »

[Under universal criminality] the cop becomes a law unto himself, with the ability to criminalize or wholly dehumanize any individual at will.
– Steve Martinot

License to Rape

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

A [Maine] mechanic who pretended to be an undercover [cop] to [rape] prostitutes…will spend more than eight years in prison…Jason Foster was…also sentenced to seven years of suspended prison time…Foster claimed he was just a paying prostitution customer…[he] must also register for life as a sex offender.

Universal Criminality

The only flaw in this otherwise-excellent essay is that the author buys into the “pimp” myth:

…around 70% of all prisoners in the US are convicted of victimless crimes…the person charged with a crime has harmed no one. Some might say they harm themselves, but each individual would have to be involved in any discussion of whether that were true or not. Regardless, they are thrown in prison…those convicted of victimless crimes are themselves the victims…of the victimless crime law system. The mythology of imprisonment is that all those in prison are violent offenders, “bad guys” who need to be taken off the streets for the safety and security of the average person. If 70% of all prisoners are there for victimless crimes, then this is worse than a myth. It is a malicious lie…

The Widening Gyre

“Sex trafficking terrorists”. Because one moral panic at a time isn’t enough any more.

There are terrorists in the United States who actively seek victims for their sex trafficking businesses. According to Shared Hope International, this enterprise is booming. The market for human beings is profitable…Sex traffickers target children as young as 11 years old. Moreover, younger boys and girls are also subject to these predators…over 100,000 children…are bought, sold, and rented every year…It is, in fact, considered “a form of modern-day slavery…The terrorists in the U.S. are not only those the media discusses daily, but they are also the sex traffickers who are active in their pursuit of victims. These terrorists are pimps and they are not always strangers…

Shifting the Blame (#33)

Long-time readers may recall that I said this almost four years ago:

Disgraced former Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke…stymied the FBI’s investigation into the Gilgo Beach serial-killings for years…Burke…refused to keep the feds in the loop on the unsolved murders of eight women, a man and a toddler on or near the beach…because he learned he was in the FBI’s cross hairs for assaulting Christopher Loeb…a handcuffed suspect who swiped items from his vehicle— including pornography and sex toys…[Burke] then tried to cover up the assault…Suffolk Police Commissioner Tim Sini announced that the FBI would now play a major role in the Gilgo Beach cold case…

That Old Black Magic

No sillier than the anti-sex propaganda favored by Western charlatans:

A “spiritualist” in Ghana named Mallam Ya Wadudu asserts that tattoos can cause “homosexuality and prostitution”…he said, “The snakes, lions, scorpions, frogs and other animal symbols they put on themselves all have spiritual meanings. Those who put the symbols on their bodies have to be delivered from the influence of the spirits in the symbols.” He firmly believes tattooing such symbols onto your body will lead to demonic possession…side effects may include homosexuality, alcoholism, or prostitution…

Drawing Lines

The mental gymnastics on display here would be truly Olympian if they weren’t so wholly clownish:

…Whether or not Sugar dating resembles “prostitution,” this tired argument is outdated and hardly applicable in the modern world. Not only does it neglect the nuance and idiosyncrasies that exist in the world of Sugar dating, but it also assumes that, in the general population, only two types of intimate relationships exist: ones that include money and ones that do not…the phenomenon of the Girlfriend-Experience (GFE) is an example of the growing similarity and fusion between sexual and marriage markets. To an onlooker, a GFE in action appears identical to any other dating scenario, but with the added certainty that…sex will be included somewhere in the evening’s antics. And the woman will be compensated…the [sugar baby]…is more than a sex object – and her Sugar Daddy is more than an ATM. To call Sugar dating prostitution is to reduce the individuals involved to one-dimensional stereotypes, when life is much more complicated and interesting than that…

Do you think we ought to tell “Sara-Kate” that GFE is a prostitution term?

Saving Them From Themselves (#428)

Consensual crime laws enable predators, part umpteen:

Police Detective David Edward Abbott, a member of the Northern Virginia-Washington D.C. Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, committed suicide…before law enforcement could arrest him on suspicion of sexually abusing minors. Abbott…was the detective [who]…sought a warrant to take [a] 17-year-old male…to the hospital, inject him with a drug that would give him an erection, photograph his genitals, and compare the photo with existing pictures of his genitals the police had confiscated from his 15-year-old girlfriend’s phone. The teen was eventually sentenced to one year of probation…Abbott sued the teen’s lawyer for defamation. The lawyer, Jessica Foster, remarked to the media that the warrant to take pornographic pictures of her client–to be used as evidence that he was guilty of creating child pornography–was “crazy”…Abbott said the comments caused him severe emotional distress; he claimed he was threatened and called a pedophile…Abbott…had inappropriate contact with two young boys, ages 11 and 13…

Worse Than I Thought (#536)

And you can bet they’re going to get help from civil liberties groups:

Following a First Amendment victory against meddling Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart…Backpage.com is now taking on the federal government. On December 11, the company filed a civil action against U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, claiming that the…SAVE…Act…is unconstitutionally vague, overbroad, and infringes on First Amendment rights. The…Act added “advertising” a victim of sexual exploitation to the list of thing that can trigger a sex-trafficking charge, meaning that user-generated ad platforms such as Backpage and Craigslist could find themselves facing the same charges as someone who forces someone else into prostitution—regardless of whether the platform knew anything about the ad. It also stipulated a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence (up to life imprisonment)…A wide swath of free-speech and civil-liberties advocates opposed the SAVE Act…[warning] that [its] reach wouldn’t just extend to Backpage but also social media such as Facebook and Twitter, online dating websites, and apps such as Tinder and Grindr…

Bait and Switch (#545)

If you’ll look back at what I’ve previously reported on Grady Judd, I’m sure you can guess what kind of tactics were used to entrap these people so Judd could destroy their lives for his self-aggrandizement:

A five-day human trafficking undercover operation in Polk County netted 95 arrests…The suspects range in age from 15 to 68 years old…Detectives filed 21 felony charges and 111 misdemeanor charges…“We’ve seen firsthand the negative social costs of how prostitution hurts families, children, and communities. And more often than not, there is a high correlation between other crimes and prostitution,” Polk Sheriff Grady Judd [vomited onto reporters]. “There is also a direct nexus between prostitution and human trafficking, and we are committed to identifying victims of human trafficking and getting them into [brainwashing] programs and out of lives of crime.”

Good Fantasy, Bad Reality (#578)

Because the government can’t find imaginary “sex slave rings”, it creates criminals in order to uphold its narrative:

…FBI agents…devised an undercover operation targeting…individuals…pursuing [an extreme BDSM]…fantasy…four individuals were…willing to pay thousands of dollars for a sex slave…The four…were indicted on human trafficking charges between December 2013 and May 2014. They all pled guilty, and in September 2015, an Arizona federal judge sentenced them to prison terms ranging from seven to nine years…[Agent Ryan] Blay said…“We didn’t want to wait until there were actual victims.”

It’s a sign of how badly US “justice” has deteriorated that the agent sees nothing wrong with that chilling final statement.

Between the Lines

Here’s a firsthand account of what it’s like to be targeted by an “Operation Cross-Country” sting (video courtesy of Tara Burns):

Fallen Idol

A porn studio has published a performers’ bill of rights in the aftermath of the sexual assault allegations against porn actor James Deen, which have driven the adult industry to reexamine some of the on-set concerns surrounding the issue of performer consent…Angie and Colin Rowntree, long-time adult film veterans who operate sssh.com (a porn for women site) and Wasteland.com (a BDSM site), instituted their studio’s first formalized “On-set Policies And Best Practices” document…Sssh and Wasteland said they are taking their current principles and making them crystal clear for all parties. According to Angie Rowntree, the document, which is now publicly available on their site, “is going to be an ongoing process” and will evolve as new potential concerns pop up…

Seizing Power (#593)

NPR has parroted government “sex trafficking” propaganda for years, but writing about this issue without mentioning Dart’s smackdown by a federal court is a remarkably revealing display of the organization’s total disregard for the truth:

Across the country, law enforcement is cracking down on sex trafficking of minors by going after online escort ads. Five years ago, Craigslist was pressured to shut down its adult-services forum. The new target is Backpage.com — Visa and MasterCard stopped processing transactions with Backpage this summer. Some in the sex industry are getting around that by using the virtual currency bitcoin. That’s the latest adaptation by an industry used to getting creative to avoid detection…Cook County Illinois Sheriff Tom Dart called a news conference to announce a victory this summer…Backpage…is fighting back. It’s suing Sheriff Dart and making its ads free…

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Posts Tagged ‘Worse Than I Thought’

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