Flush Criminalization

A tyranny based on…deception and maintained by terror must inevitably perish from the poison it generates within itself.  -  Albert Einstein

Nassau County, New York has wholeheartedly embraced the evil quackery of “end demand” with the exuberance of a broke hooker going into a multi-hour call with her favorite client.  But there the similarity stops; while the latter interaction is a moral, ethical, peaceful, consensual and mutually-beneficial one, the men upon whom District Attorney Kathleen Rice violently forced her loathsome attentions were deceived, brutalized and humiliated, and the only people who benefited were Rice (who scores brownie points with neofeminists), the police department (which scores stolen money and other property), and the individual vice cops (who gain the sadistic joy of harming others and fodder for later masturbatory fantasies).  But if Rice and her sleazy accomplices thought they were going to win public praise for their asinine exercise in the victimization of citizens, they were badly mistaken; even the fourth-grade-level “humor” in the name of their “operation” (“Flush the johns”, get it? Get It? GET IT???!!??? DO YA, HUH?  GET IT??!!!? HAW HAW HAW YUK YUK YUK!!!!) has received at least some small measure of the universal scorn it deserves from anyone older than ten.  Though sex worker rights activists always criticize large “sting” operations, the outstanding malodorousness of this one inspired some outstanding responses from our allies.  Jacob Sullum of Reason, whose support is always vocal and unwavering, had this to say:

It is hard to imagine a bigger waste of law enforcement resources than “Operation Flush the Johns,” the month-long sting that resulted in 104 arrests announced by…District Attorney Kathleen Rice…These men, whose names and photos Rice eagerly disseminated, were arrested…[for] a trumped-up version of a phony crime.  If anyone committed a real crime here, it was the cops, who lured these poor horny bastards to a hotel room under false pretenses, only to lead them away in handcuffs…[for]…patronizing a prostitute in the third degree.  Think about that for a minute.  There is no such thing as patronizing a pornographer in the third degree, patronizing a liquor dealer in the third degree or patronizing a race track in the third degree…because New York’s legislators have decided to allow these consensual transactions, even though moralists take a dim view of them, while prohibiting the voluntary exchange of sex for money.  That dictate entails some pretty arbitrary distinctions.  If two people meet through an online ad, one buys the other a nice dinner and they have sex afterward, they have committed no crime.  But if two people meet through an online ad and have sex, after which one of them hands the other $100 so she can buy herself a nice dinner, they may both be subject to arrest…Rice defends punishing these men for words they allegedly said to fake prostitutes by arguing that she is thereby protecting real prostitutes from risk…yet…the prostitution ban that Rice enthusiastically enforces makes sex workers vulnerable to abuse by traffickers, pimps…customers…police and courts…black markets created by such edicts are dangerous places characterized by fraud and violence, in contrast with the honesty and peace that tend to prevail in legal versions of those very same markets…anti-prostitution crusaders…refuse to acknowledge…the role they play in creating the victims they claim to be saving.

Sullum also debated criminalization on HuffPost Live against Michael Shively (who makes a very good living whoring his mad research skillz to Swanee Hunt) and Hall of Shame member Dennis Hof.  Yes, you read that correctly:  Hof is in favor of client stings and even promotes “pimp” propaganda for the same reason owners of established restaurants want food trucks harassed and owners of taxi cartels favor persecution of internet and smartphone-enabled competition (and yet he still has the nerve to portray himself as an advocate for sex workers).    On Sullum’s side (and ours) was also Lane Filler of Newsday, who published this on the subject:

…Why was this suddenly such an important crime to focus on?…[only] 39 people had been arrested on such charges in Nassau County … over the past decade.  More than 100 in a month shows a pretty serious change in emphasis, and one that goes beyond this sting, and beyond prosecuting customers.  In 2012, 26 cases involving prostitution charges were resolved in Nassau.  This year there have already been 140 prostitution arrests…Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice has never shied away from the spotlight.  In fact, she…seems drawn to it like a moth to a porch lamp…

And here’s one from the newest “Friend of Whores”, Cathy Reisenwitz:

…I guess the presumption of innocence isn’t a thing in Nassau County?  Even if they evade prison time, this arrest will haunt them for the rest of their lives.  And let’s not forget that their children and wives have been humiliated right along with them.  And for what?  The string comes as a result of “complaints about prostitution in hotels”…what business is it of anyone’s if a man contacts a woman…and meets her…for sex?…And while the police and DA are arresting and prosecuting over this victimless crime, they don’t have enough time to prosecute the gang-rape of a young girl with an IQ of 50 in a Nassau County public school…

And one from sex worker Cathryn Berarovich, who takes aim at one pet-peeve-triggering element of the story the non-sex-working allies missed:

…My first problem is the use of the word “John.”  In all my years as a sex worker, I have never once heard a hooker call her client a John.  I’ve never really swapped tales…with outdoor workers, but I’m not sure if those ladies even refer to clients in such a degrading, dehumanizing way.  The only people I’ve ever heard use the term were either anti-sex work civilians or police officers, two groups who generally don’t draw distinctions between the individuals involved in the sex trade, either as customers or providers.  I hate the term “John” because…stripping clients of their individuality contributes to the stigma surrounding my profession:  if the men who pay for sexual services aren’t individuals with normal human needs, it’s okay to demonize [those]…who cater to those needs…On a related note, it really, seriously bothers me to see these mugshots publicized.  People go to sex workers for a number of reasons–because they are ashamed of their desires, because they don’t have time to pursue relationships…because their partners are unwilling or unable to fulfill certain fetishes, because they are too awkward to approach nonprofessional women.  Absolutely none of the reasons that motivate most men to patronize sex workers are a cause for public shaming and humiliation…it’s sordid, tacky, and frankly vicious and so far as we know, none of the men pictured did anything to deserve such punishment…

Rice is of course trying to win the votes of moralists and ignorant women; her Swedish-flavored rhetoric casts her in the role of the “savior” of women victimized by men’s dirty, evil lust, and she’s even spoken up against the use of condoms as “evidence”.  But fewer and fewer people are buying it, and perhaps this vicious attack on an activity a large fraction of the electorate enjoy from time to time will backfire on her.  It’s long past time to flush politicians like Rice, and the brutal repression of human needs and desires they champion, down the same filthy commode in which support for the Drug War is already circling before vanishing into the sewer where they both belong.

 

Sleeping With the Enemy

The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.
-  Saul Alinsky

As most of you probably realize, in order to keep this blog going I need to do an awful lot of reading on the internet every day.  Readers send me many links, I discover some myself, and I get loads of them from Twitter; for every item which I eventually share as a link, a TW3 item or a full column there’s another I simply “retweet” and still another I pass over completely.  Most of this latter category are simply things in which I’m not interested, or things in which I don’t think my readers would be interested, or things I’ve already shared, or new items that nonetheless cover ground I’ve already covered.  And sometimes I disagree with the author’s spin, yet don’t find it so wrong that I feel the need to shoot it down.  But there are others (and I’m sorry to say far too many others) which I can’t even finish reading because of their declamation of absurdities, their overuse of meaningless shibboleths, or their adherence to wholly obnoxious fads; my eyes glaze over, I close the window by feel (because my eyes are glazed over, of course), and I move on and try not to accidentally open any of the numerous repeats of the link in other tweets declaring it brilliant or profound or whatever.

A large fraction of these oh-so-annoying words, phrases and ideas derive ultimately from Marx, generally (though not always) by way of feminism.  Even if I didn’t regard Marxism as an abomination against the individual, and even if it were not a failed social experiment, I would still find it bizarre that so many people who identify primarily as sex worker activists (though not many who identify first as sex workers) espouse it. First of all, despite the modern re-interpretations to which some Neo-Marxists subscribe, it is very clear that Marx considered prostitution to be a “disease” of capitalist society which would no longer be permitted in the communist paradise (presumably because the commune would magically make the sex drives and relative attractiveness of men and women equal).  Every communist state has criminalized sex work and punished it harshly, even brutally; under Mao women caught whoring were sent for “re-education”, and though the regime declared in 1958 that prostitution has been “eradicated”, the “re-education centers” remained full and top party officials had access to that which was officially declared not to exist.  Furthermore, neofeminism is really nothing but a form of Neo-Marxism with a few parameters redefined, and as we all know the neofeminists are no friends of whores.  Yet all too many posts by sex worker activists go on and on about “Patriarchy” (the neofeminist version of “bourgeoisie”) and “capitalism” and blah blah blah blah until whatever they were trying to say is drowned out by nonsense.

Now, it is true that some people use the word “capitalism” to mean plutocracy or fascism (the marriage of government and big business).  But that’s not the way those about whom I’m complaining use it; it’s clear from context they resent having to work for a living, and imagine some pie-in-the-sky Utopia in which people only work as much as they want to at whatever job they like, and yet somehow things still get made and the toilets still get cleaned.  This is a fantasy for children, not a serious topic of discussion for sane adults; yet there they are bleating away with rubbish like “surviving under capitalism”, as though they imagine it was any easier under feudalism, barter systems, tribal communism or other economic systems.  The very concept of a Utopia is impossible; it’s certainly not a topic on which an activist for the most pragmatic of trades should be wasting her time.  And to do so with paradigms borrowed from people who would like nothing more than to see that trade abolished is as counterproductive as anything I can think of.

But the most appalling of these sins of content is one which seems to have become a new fad in the past few months; some sex worker activists now also declare themselves misandrists.  To them I say, “please go home and find something else to do.”  The campaign for sex worker rights must be grounded in the right of all people to be free to do as they like with their own bodies; it is incompatible with centrally-planned economies, incompatible with dogmatic systems of thought which demand orthodoxy, and certainly incompatible with the idea that it’s laudable to hate some people for an accident of biology.  And how in Aphrodite’s name is someone supposed to provide a proper sexual service to a person she professes to hate?  The very idea is asinine.  I can understand burnout; I can accept that a hooker might so tire of sex with men, and with the offensive behavior of bad clients, that she decides to swear off of socializing with them after retirement.  But that’s not the same thing as hating men, and the latter has no place in a movement which will absolutely never in a million years succeed without the cooperation of the men these ridiculous women profess to “hate”; that sort of attitude belongs in the prohibitionist movement, not ours.  I’m not sure why the people I speak of can’t see the self-defeating nature of these negative beliefs and dogmas; those who embrace them are, figuratively or literally, sleeping with the enemy.

Links #154

Senate employees and contractors who believe they may have inadvertently accessed or downloaded classified information via non-classified Senate systems, should contact the Office of Senate Security for assistance.  -  Senate Security Office memo, June 7^th, 2013

A busy week this time around, both in links and in my life; I’m striving diligently to get ahead because I’ll be only able to do minimal work for the first three weeks of July.  And on top of everything else, I discovered this little surprise in my truck last Saturday, which as you can imagine has required me checking on them at least three or four times a day.  Anyhow, our top contributor this week was Radley Balko, with the first six links and the first video below them; keep in mind this exercise in “fun with fascism” portrays cops, not soldiers.  The second video (an honest campaign ad) is from Kevin Wilson (who also provided “crazy ants” and “drugstore”), and the others between the videos were supplied by Cheryl Overs (“ERB”), my cat (“griffins”), Jesse Walker (“surprises”), Gideon  (“never call cops”), Krulac (“workers’ paradise”), Lenore Skenazy (“truancy”), and Glenn Greenwald (“NSA”).

• What if international journalists used the same language to report on the US as US journalists use to report on other countries?
• A solid establishment of the precedent that anyone can be imprisoned for crimes committed by others on their property.
• Why you now need to lock your door at all times, even when at home.
• Cops arrest woman for asking to see a warrant they didn’t have.
• Does fighting over food cause premature aging?
• Cop admits to framing 185 innocent people.

• Paging Edgar Rice Burroughs…
• The smaller relatives of griffins?
• Geographical and temporal surprises.
• Suicidal “crazy ants” destroy electronics.
• A particularly odious form of “stop faking”.
• Drugstore chain fined $80 million for selling drugs.
• Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever, kitten edition.
• Cops tase severely retarded man for standing in his mother’s yard.
• Another blow for the proletariat from the Glorious Workers’ Paradise.
• Witness describes 5’5″ Hispanic man; cops arrest 4’10″ black woman.
• Prosecutor threatens to steal people’s children and assets if he thinks kids miss too much school.
• So many American kids now have an imprisoned parent, Sesame Street felt the need to address it.
• Senate staff told they’re not allowed to read any of the widely-available leaked NSA documents, and must turn themselves in if they do.

From the Archives

• Journalists don’t learn truth about sex work because they don’t want to.
• Canadian government tries to emulate American prohibitionist insanity.
• Swedish housewife sets up a BDSM dungeon in an abandoned bunker.
• Thai sex workers ask prime minister to stop licking Uncle Sam’s boots.
• This won’t stop until we stop giving cops so much power over people.
• Irish police raid homes looking mostly for people who don’t live there.
• CNN “trafficking” gurus aren’t real experts, but they play them on TV.
• UK organization fights for the sexual rights of the mentally disabled.
• Neofeminism is not a coherent political philosophy, but rather a cult.
• A helpful guide to not getting your comments posted on this blog.
• Yet another maniac chooses his victims from among sex workers.
• Mother Russia wants to prove she’s as pigheaded as Uncle Sam.
• Dear Men, please stop sending us penis photos.  Love, Women.
• The more laws a society has, the less moral its people become.
• Prudes object to their own lascivious thoughts about a statue.
• A handy compilation of numbers and figures about sex work.
• Dania Suarez announces plans to start a sex worker charity.
• Neofeminist prohibitionists condemned by their own words.
• Kristof says individual rights are old-fashioned and passé.
• How “sex trafficking survivors” are like UFO abductees.
• Malawian sex workers fight oppression via civil courts.
• Sex worker rights, big tents and lockstep conformity.
• I really wish politicians would stop proving me right.
• A short biographical sketch of my best friend, Grace.
• The beginning of a continuing pattern of overwork.
• The beginning of US attempts to suppress bitcoin.
• Tennessee criminalizes hurting people’s feelings.
• New York says dancing isn’t dancing if it’s sexy.
• The first two adventures of Aella the Amazon.
• Franklin Harris on Hollywood’s sex-negativity.
• Libertarianism in science fiction and fantasy.
• An ambivalent essay on “sex trafficking”.
• Happy 50^th birthday, silicone implant!
• Penguin perversion.

That Was the Week That Was (#324)

This is not just about sex trade workers…The government’s coming in through the back door…to tell you what you can and cannot do in the privacy of your home with another consenting adult.  -  Terri-Jean Bedford

Gateway

Ignorant reporter apparently believes “explain” is a synonym for “rationalize”:

…The purpose of the sting operation was to discourage sex providers and customers from engaging in the illegal transaction, which often is linked to child sex abuse, robbery, assault and drug use, Lt. Det. Cord Wood of the Corvallis [Oregon] Police Department said…“To gauge the number of thefts, assaults and robberies (associated with prostitution) is difficult because I really believe those are under-reported”…

Because obviously someone named for 128 cubic feet of chopped fibrous cellulose must be an expert in a trade he’s never practiced.

The Camel’s Nose (June Updates, Part One)

Just another reminder that though Al Franken claims to be an advocate of liberty, he’s actually a devoted supporter of the police state:  “I can assure you, this is not about spying on the American people…I have a high level of confidence that this is used to protect us…There are certain things that are appropriate for me to know that is not appropriate for the bad guys to know.”  Because tyranny isn’t “bad” as long as you wave a flag while stomping on people’s faces.

The Crumbling Dam

“Sex workers and their supporters marched and rallied in several Canadian cities…days before a Supreme Court hearing on whether laws restricting the sale of sex should be tossed out”, and prohibitionists fantasize about replacing criminalization of workers with that of clients.  Fortunately this view is unpopular in Canada, and editorials like this one from Catherine Healy and Sandra Ka Hon Chu are not uncommon:

The Supreme Court of Canada’s looming consideration…has led to vigorous debate about the merits of the “Swedish model”…[which] perpetuates…stigma, discrimination and violence…and institutionalizes an adversarial relationship between sex workers and the police.  Less discussed is the model of sex work employed in New Zealand….[where] sex workers are covered by legislation that protects them from exploitation while accessing labour laws to promote their welfare and occupational health and safety…There is no substantiated evidence of trafficking despite repeated efforts by the immigration department…

Presents, Presents, Presents!

This week I received a copy of The Art of Not Being Governed from SA.  Thank you so much!

The Sky is Falling!

Dating and highways cause sex trafficking!

Birmingham [Alabama] residents have voiced concerns over a billboard that suggests young women date a sugar daddy if they’re in search of a summer job.  Alexa James…[said] she wants the arrangements.com billboard taken down…”I-20 has now become the superhighway of human trafficking…Make a stand, call the mayor’s office, call your state representative.”  The service is an online dating site that facilitates mutually beneficial arrangements…and…has no plans to remove the billboard.

Above the Law

Yet again:  As long as government actors have excessive power over individuals, this will keep happening:

…two [Georgia] sheriff’s deputies…pleaded guilty…for their part in a scheme to send an innocent woman to prison…Judge Bryant Cochran solicited sex from [Angela Garmley] in return for legal favors.  Shortly after Garmley filed her complaint, she was arrested…and charged with possession of methamphetamines…Since this scandal broke, three women who worked in Cochran’s court have filed a separate lawsuit…claiming Cochran sexually harassed them…

And keep happening:

…a…19-year-old Omaha woman…[said] Deputy Cory Cooper made her perform oral sex after pulling over a vehicle containing her and her boyfriend on a marijuana violation…Cooper told the boyfriend to walk to the lake to dispose of the marijuana…then turned his attention to the woman…she said she felt like she had no choice…

Held Together With Lies

Ronald Weitzer speaks on the mythology of “sex trafficking” at Queens University, Belfast; unfortunately, this is audio only.

Crime Against Society (TW3 #14)

The ordeal of those victimized by New Orleans’ sadistic game is over at last:

…a settlement…will remove from the sex offender registry approximately 700 individuals who had been required to register solely because of a Crime Against Nature by Solicitation (CANS) conviction…“The lingering injustice, resulting from over 20 years of discriminatory enforcement of this law at police and prosecutors’ whims, will now finally come to an end,” said Andrea Ritchie, co-counsel to [the Center for Constitutional Rights] in Doe v. Jindal and Doe v. Caldwell…

The Naked Emperor (TW3 #24)

Though danah boyd’s last article on “sex trafficking” annoyed a number of activists with its ambiguity, this one is much more firmly anti-hysteria:

When most people think of sex trafficking…they immediately think of stereotypical images.  Like that of a vulnerable girl exploited by a pimp…But…[it] is more often about young people who are homeless, yet turned away from crowded shelters.  About teens exploited by family members (or kicked out of the house for being gay or transgender)…In other words:  systemic factors that have little to do with the actions of predators…one group of advocates long clamored for classified-ad sites, like Craigslist or Backpage, to be abolished — holding on to false hopes that eliminating these platforms would eliminate exploitation…the data I’ve seen suggests that this approach is neither effective nor productive…

Lying Down With Dogs (TW3 #29)

Cop threats to persecute travelling whores aren’t confined to the US:

…commissioner…Charity Katanga has warned that police will arrest…sex workers who have…started migrating from Kitwe to Livingstone ahead of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) general assembly in August…Mrs Katanga said the laws of Zambia…are clear…“If we do not find appropriate charges to slap on them, we will throw them in jail.  If they are migrating to Livingstone, we will also ‘migrate’ so that we can deal with them ruthlessly”…

The Public Eye

A profile of activist Laura Lee:

Growing up in a strict Irish Catholic family, Laura Lee was lined up for a respectable career as a lawyer.  But after watching a film…she wanted to become a call girl.  Aged 19…[she] took on a Saturday job at a massage parlour.  Now 35 and mum to a 12-year-old daughter, Laura campaigns for sex workers’ rights…

Across the Pond (TW3 #45)

A year and a half ago sex worker activists wondered if the creation of a single police force for Scotland would be a good or a bad thing.  Now the news is in:  it’s extremely bad:

Brothels were targeted by…police…who accompanied social workers to help potential victims…Customers and employees were taken onto the street and questioned at seven saunas…officers are pursuing inquiries relating to several serious sexual offences…police said:  ”Three people…have been charged with drugs offences…and it is estimated that assets worth in excess of £500,000 have been seized”…Since the country’s eight forces came under the single Police Scotland umbrella, regional variations in policy have surfaced…Edinburgh’s apparent sanctioning of prostitution had created a climate whereby city officials had to defend perceived leniency on the practice…

That £500,000 theft gives away the motive, and this demonstrates what I said Thursday about policies vs. laws.

Number Puzzle

Feminist Ire continues its robust tradition of debunking prohibitionist lies, this time in a guest post by Matthias Lehmann and Sonja Dolinsek:

…Der Spiegel published a…deeply flawed report…about…[sex] trafficking…Prostitution…has been legal in Germany since 1927…the new prostitution law of 2002 changed some aspects pertaining to the legal relationship between sex workers and clients and some criminal law provisions.  It recognized the contract between sex workers and clients as legal and introduced the rights of sex workers to sue clients unwilling to pay for sexual services already provided.  In addition, sex workers received the right to health insurance and social security…What is misleadingly called the ”legalization“ of prostitution is actually the recognition of sex work as labor.  However…some states actually never implemented the new law…Most states…declare…[so many restrictions] prostitution [is] de facto illegal…sex work is not allowed for non-EU nationals…who…are thus…excluded from the law [and] therefore [cannot be protected by it]…

Big Sister (TW3 #139)

The UK emulates China and the Muslim theocracies:

Internet and telecom companies will be ordered by the Government to block “harmful” content…Maria Miller, the Culture Secretary, has summoned the bosses of companies such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook to a summit…at which she will demand…industry-wide co-operation to prevent the…sharing of  harmful material…[including] illegal porn, images of child abuse, material that could incite religious or racial hatred and so-called “suicide websites”…Possible new measures include greater use of online filters; making public Wi-Fi more “family friendly” so children cannot access harmful material…ensuring all companies sign up to industry guidelines and setting up permanent bodies to monitor content…

Because obviously, government is best-equipped to judge what’s “harmful”, and if the filters just happen to block educational and political content, too…well, omelettes and eggs and all.

Oscillation (TW3 #312)

A rare defeat for control freaks:

The federal government…told a judge it will…comply with his order to allow girls of any age to buy emergency contraception without prescriptions.  The decision ends a years-long fight between…Obama’s administration, which had argued that age limits for the morning-after pill are common sense, and women’s rights groups, which insisted the drug should be made…freely available…

Anti-sex groups claim the decision “takes away the rights of girls’ parents”…to ruin their daughters’ entire lives for one mistake.

The Story Behind the Story

Rob Arthur alerted me to the fact that Ricardo Cortés has written and illustrated a short, FREE primer on jury nullification entitled “Jury Independence Illustrated”.  Please read it, download it and disseminate it as widely as possible; it’s time people were reminded of their power to overrule the rulers.

The Widening Gyre (TW3 #315)

Drowning was the cause of death for Terrilynn Monette, the missing…teacher whose body was discovered in Bayou St. John…more than three months after…[disappearing] early on March 2…she…had been drinking, and…told friends…that she planned to sleep in her car for a while before driving to her apartment…

I lived near that bayou for years; there is nothing to stop a tipsy, exhausted woman from driving off the street and into it, without any help from Russian Mafia sex traffickers.

An Example to the West (TW3 #316)

One of Bolivia’s sex workers organizations, Organización de Trabajadoras Nocturnas (OTN), has called for the legalization of sex work in Bolivia and for sex workers to be granted retirement benefits and health insurance…The OTN has 50,000 affiliates, 80 percent of whom work in nightclubs…ONAEM (Organización Nacional de Activistas por la Emancipación de la Mujer), a major national women’s emancipation organization…supports [their] demands…

Bottleneck (TW3 #317)

…Scarlet Alliance…is urging the Federal Government to expand [a] controversial visa to cover foreign escorts…Jules Kim…said sex workers were just as skilled as other workers allowed to fly into Australia on the four-year work visas…The Immigration Department…said sex workers were not considered “skilled” because the job did not require a degree or diploma…but Scarlet Alliance…said overseas sex workers would be vulnerable to…exploitation unless they could apply for a long-term work visa…

Deafening Silence

In an incident that underlined the harsh treatment often meted out to Chinese sex workers, a…female police officer was “punched in the face” and “dragged” from a hotel room during a botched anti-vice operation…Ms Wang…had been visiting her daughter in…Zhengzhou…when police unexpectedly appeared at the door…she told the men she was also a member of the police…but her pleas fell on deaf ears…

Guest Columnist:  Sarah Woolley

As Sarah explained, the Paisley branch of respected human rights group Amnesty International made the bizarre decision to endorse Scotland’s attempt to impose the Swedish model despite clear proof that it harms sex workers.  When Wendy Lyon informed Amnesty of this, the organization immediately demanded the branch revoke its endorsement and, as Melissa Gira Grant explains, has now issued (for the first time) a clear pro-decriminalization statement:  “What…Paisley Branch have done – perhaps entirely despite themselves – is to push Amnesty International to state their opposition to the criminalisation of sex workers and of adult consensual sex more clearly….sex workers in Scotland and around the world…can now claim Amnesty International in their corner.”

Fictional Interlude: Glorious Gifts

The glorious gifts of the gods are not to be cast aside.  -  Homer, Iliad (III, 65)

Every June I’ve published a story of Aella, a young Amazon warrior of the mythic past; the first one was “A Decent Boldness” and the second “A Haughty Spirit”.  And though you might be able to enjoy this one without having read those, you’ll probably understand what’s going on a lot better if you get to know the lady’s previous history first.

Asteria send me guidance tonight, for I am afraid.

I who alone of this living generation travelled West to the very end of the Earth, bathed in the waters of Keto and returned to tell the tale; I who walked in the ancient places of our people, rescued my dearest friend from the hands of barbarians and protected us both from the beasts of the wilderness; I who lived among strangers for five years and brought much of the learning of the Outer World back to the Motherland:  I am more frightened than I have ever been since earning the title of warrior.  For tomorrow, I must face the Council of Elders, thirteen grey old veterans of battles fought before my mother was born, and defend my conduct before them.

But for the life of me, O Blessed Goddess, I cannot fathom why what I did should have shocked the others so.  True, it was a new idea, but what of that?   Why was I brought home through so many dangers if not to share the knowledge and the ideas of our sisters across the sea?  Harmothoe says my mind was addled by my time in Man’s World, but she’s simply jealous because I returned from my journey with enough wealth to buy a farm and enough slaves to work it, while she’s stuck toiling on our mother’s place.  I offered to lend her my slaves this winter to clear new land, but that won’t win her the respect and admiration I’ve enjoyed since my return, nor an invitation to visit the Queen’s palace next month so that I can tell her of my adventures.  Of course, if the hearing goes against me tomorrow I may see her sooner than that, though as a prisoner rather than an honored guest.

And all this fuss over something so completely stupid.  Are not health, strength, beauty, wisdom and skill at arms gifts of the goddesses?  And are we not to use those gifts to improve our places in the world?  Don’t the more beautiful and distinguished among us have greater choice among the Scythian men at the Spring Festival?  After all, our Princess Penthesilia is the daughter of their King Arius, not of some lowly tradesman; our Queen sought out the best sire available when she was ready to bear the child who would succeed to her throne.  And though I am not of noble blood, yet my company was highly sought by the men this year for the same reason my Amazon sisters have sought it since my return: though men and women differ in many ways, we all love a good story and many of both sexes seek to borrow prestige by association when they cannot win it for themselves.

But all that attention was a mixed blessing; with so many men competing to mate with me this year, how was I to choose one?  I’m no mere girl to be impressed by a handsome face, and my experience in Man’s World taught me that many a great athlete is also a great fool.  I thought on this as I watched the games and partook in the feasting, and it occurred to me that the best approach would be a practical one.  After all, our motives for mating with the Scythian men are wholly pragmatic in the first place; it stands to reason a pragmatic means of choosing a mate is in order as well.  And one can never have too much wealth, so what could be more sensible than simply announcing that the man who gave me the most generous gift would be the one who could lie with me?  I thought it was a wonderful idea, and the men responded with enthusiasm; the winner gave me six snow-white kine and an equally-beautiful bull.  But to hear my sisters, one would’ve thought I had drunk myself silly and puked on the banquet table.  The next day it was the talk of the town, and by the end of the week…well, here I am.

Goddess, I suppose You know all this already, but it never hurts to summarize; besides, I want You to understand how I saw the matter.  Mother says I’ve disgraced our family, and Aunt Laomache says it just goes to show why Amazons shouldn’t associate with outsiders any more than is strictly necessary.  Granny is the only one who was helpful; she says what this demonstrates is that long periods of peace aren’t good for us, because when there isn’t anything real to fret about people make a big deal out of nothing, and in the absence of an actual enemy they invent imaginary bogeys to get worked up about.  She also said that the council only summoned me to shut up the prattlers, and that if they were truly concerned I would be spending the night under guard rather than lying in my own bed.  Also, Elder Dioxippe is Granny’s best friend, and Granny told me that she had talked it over with her and at least several of the Council were equally unimpressed with the gravity of my so-called sin; she predicted they would direct me to apologize to my family and sacrifice one of the kine to Astarte, and that would be the end of it.

I certainly hope so, but I can’t help worrying.  And that’s why I’m praying about this to You instead of Themis or Metis; there’s no justice in this situation, it seems like thinking logically is what got me into this fix, and perhaps divine inspiration is what’s needed to get me out.  If my punishment is as light as Granny thinks it’ll be, I’ll make a special gift to You; I think I might have conceived by the generous one, and if it’s a girl and I name her for You, she will be a constant reminder of Your grace.

And also of the fact that most people have no respect for pragmatism.

Which I Doubt

“Good morning, Pooh Bear,” said Eeyore gloomily. “If it is a good morning,” he said. “Which I doubt.”  -  A.A. Milne,  Winnie-the-Pooh

I sometimes feel as though I’m becoming the Eeyore of the sex worker rights movement, the resident wet blanket who reacts to every bit of seemingly good news cheered by other advocates by letting them know exactly why it’s not as good as they think it is.  Now, that’s not really true because my overall outlook is that sex worker rights are inevitable; however, there are bound to be a huge number of individual developments between now and then, both good and bad, and I think it’s important to recognize which are which.  Take this one, for example:

…In a letter…to Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said his office would not use possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution or loitering for the purpose of prostitution.  “Accordingly…the collection and vouchering of condoms as evidence by members of your department…should immediately cease.”  Advocates for sex workers have argued that officers’ use of condoms to support their arrests discouraged prostitutes from using condoms, presenting a public health risk.  A 2012 report by…Human Rights Watch found that such arrests sowed a fear of carrying condoms among sex workers…the Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said the department agreed that “it is not necessary to seize condoms as evidence of the intent of an individual to engage in prostitution.”  But…[he] added:  “We do not rule out their evidentiary value when going after pimps and sex traffickers.  If there is a bowlful of condoms in a massage parlor, we want our officers to be able to seize them as evidence against the trafficker.”  While prosecutors are generally wary of excluding whole categories of evidence, there is a growing consensus that condoms should not be part of prostitution cases that do not involve sex trafficking…Nassau County…prosecutors already reject condoms as evidence, even in more serious cases.  “It was very important to me to also extend the ban to traffickers,” said Kathleen M. Rice, the…district attorney.  Without it, she said, “traffickers will refuse to hand out condoms to their workers and in fact prohibit their use”…

While advocates were cheering this two weeks ago, my immediate reaction was “In other words, they’re just going to label more cases as ‘trafficking’ now.”  That’s already happening all over the country, not just New York; what was once recognized at simple prostitution is now being shoehorned into the “trafficking” narrative so cops can brag about heroically “rescuing” women, prosecutors can score the bigger points inherent in felony convictions and both can steal money and goods from those so accused.  Nor does a lack of evidence have any effect; even when sex workers testify that they were not coerced, prosecutors simply discount their testimony as “false consciousness”.  Most hookers are not idiots; we can read what is plainly written on the wall.  When prosecutors say they will continue to use condoms as evidence of “trafficking” and then demonstrate that they intend to call most if not all sex work “trafficking”, the net effect is no change whatsoever.

And that’s not even the worst of it.  This action is a classic political dodge, exactly the same as the one used in San Francisco two months ago; making this a policy rather than a law allows it to be suspended at any time, which will be as soon as the heat is off.  Once the media forgets about the issue, the policies will quietly be rescinded as needed.  Of course, they don’t even need to do that; both San Francisco and New York still pretend that cops arresting whores is for our “protection” from those evil “traffickers” we’re too weak and childlike to “escape”.  Even the Nassau County DA quoted in the story, who might seem sympathetic, refuses to get it; she has aggressively pursued an “end demand” strategy which casts sex workers as the “victims” of evil clients rather than rational actors in a business transaction, and pretends big, bad “traffickers” are forcing workers to do bareback, when it’s actually their personal decision.  I predict a lot more district attorneys will make similar announcements this year; it’s an easy way for them to feign concern for us while conducting business as usual and getting the feds to pay for it.

There’s one small glimmer in this gloom:  apparently, the American media pay enough attention to Human Rights Watch for its reports to become big news, and that news exerts sufficient PR pressure for governments to at least make a show of changing their policies; besides the condom report, a recent one on the dreadful harm the sex offender registry inflicts upon young people has likewise attracted considerable media attention and may soon result in a few of the braver politicians making displays of concern.  But while HRW is officially pro-decriminalization and last month openly called for it in China, the only thing it has so far asked of American “authorities” is a restriction of the sort of evidence they use to harass us; that will be changing soon, and I am told a full report on the injustices inflicted on sex workers in this country is forthcoming (complete with an explicit demand for decriminalization in the US).  Media coverage of that might engender a political pretense of looking at decriminalization which would be, as Eeyore put it, “Amusing in a quiet way…but not really helpful”; however, the resulting public discourse would help to shine light on matters the prohibitionists would prefer to remain obscure…and that would be a cause for optimism.

On a Mountaintop

At menopause, my wife’s libido went to zero, but she won’t take hormone replacement therapy due to fear of cancer.  She has refused sex for well over 3 years, and though she says she understands the stress I experience when denied sex, she doesn’t want it so I can’t have it.  And though she’s ultra-responsible in other aspects of her life, this is an exception.  We’ve been seeing a marriage counselor for years, and just 2 months ago she told me, “You know, it is never going to get better.”  I believe my wife when she says she loves me, but it’s a strangely limited love; we can cuddle but not caress.  When I hold her, I have the sensation of being high on a mountaintop, breathing the rarefied air.  So, how does a responsible, caring, active, intelligent woman reconcile her decision to terminate all sexual activity with a man she still professes to love?  How can someone who is so expert at understanding the consequences of her actions on others ignore something that she knows is incredibly important to me?

The problem is manifold but it has three main components.  First, modern Western women are taught a somewhat-milder version of Robin Morgan’s definition of rape:  “I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire.”  Now, most women don’t go nearly as far as Morgan, and in fact a large fraction don’t like initiating at all.  However, they do believe the part which says that the only valid reason for a woman to have sex is “her own genuine affection and desire”; they might not go so far as to call other sex “rape”, but they do believe there’s something wrong with it, that it’s somehow deficient, defective, disgusting or at least déclassé.  This is part of neo-Victorianism; Victorian women were taught that good women only had sex to please their husbands and have babies, while women now are taught that good women only have sex to please themselves or have babies.  In both cases, a large spectrum of female sexual behavior is branded as “wrong”, and modern women have just as much difficulty rejecting that repressive dogma as their great-grandmothers did.

Next, American Protestant Christianity has long taught that sexual needs are actually not needs at all, but only desires; by and large, Americans dependably (out loud, at least) reject the fact that sexual deprivation has deleterious physical and psychological effects, despite the fact that most people have either experienced them or observed them firsthand.  This has been enshrined as a tenet of faith by neofeminists; they not only insist that men don’t need sex, but teach that anyone who acknowledges the facts is a “rape apologist” who believes that any given individual man is somehow entitled to free sex from any given individual woman.  Because of American anti-sex culture nobody has the gonads to stand up to them and pronounce their beliefs utterly bat-shit crazy, and so even though most American women aren’t neofeminists the idea that sex is more akin to watching TV than to eating is a popular one.

Lastly, you must remember that the catechism of androgyny is extremely widespread; many people truly believe that all differences between men and women are the result of “socialization”.  They ignore primate studies, deny differences in brain architecture, and pretend sex hormones have no effect on behavior despite the fact that it’s incontrovertible that they do.  And once a person buys into this myth, it’s easy to deny (as many do) that men typically need more sex than women and suffer worse effects from sexual deprivation.  Though “social construction” dogmatists pretend belief in neutral norms, the fact of the matter is that they overwhelmingly believe that female norms are standard, and that typical male behavior is a pathological deviation from those norms.

What this boils down to is that your wife doesn’t know how important sex is to you, or else she unconsciously denies it.  Her behavior tells me she subscribes to all three of these beliefs to one degree or another:  You don’t really need sex no matter how much you say otherwise; she doesn’t need it, therefore you don’t either since men and women are the same…and if you really loved her you wouldn’t push, because duty sex is perverted.  You’re right when you say she didn’t choose to be this way; she was taught it just as we’re all taught bigoted attitudes and propaganda useful to maintaining the status quo.  I’m sure she really does love you, but she honestly believes giving you sex is as unnecessary and undesirable as acquiescing to your suggestions she learn to water-ski despite being afraid of the water.  She has told you point-blank that she will not provide you with any more sex; it would therefore be best for all involved if you make your own discreet arrangements and leave off trying to get it from her, since the effort merely creates conflict and produces no positive results.