What these girls don’t realize is that they are victims. I don’t understand why anyone would choose to do this. – Lea Benson
China moves ahead of the US in this area of human rights: “…a court [sentenced]…Li Tianyi, the 17-year-old son of prominent entertainers in the military, to 10 years in prison for gang rape, with four others…the…court…ruled that even if a woman is a sex worker…that doesn’t mean it’s O.K. to rape her…”
…former New Orleans police officer [Thomas McMasters], who was fired in 2011 for falsely arresting a woman on prostitution charges, was reinstated…with full back pay…[because] the NOPD…took too long to conduct its internal review…
I received no fewer than five birthday presents this week! Ted sent I ♥ Sex Workers, Eddiejc1 sent And Then There Were None and Ada, Leonard Fahrni sent Big Sister, and Krulac sent Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance. Thank you all so very much; y’all may not really understand how much it means to me to be so appreciated for what I do that y’all want to send me these gifts.
The app is just a short-term sugar arrangement, but the anonymous (though clearly female) writer just can’t stand that some women are more interested in profit than “romance”:
If you can’t get a date through any socially acceptable means…apparently you should resort to bribery…[via] Carrot Dating. Creator Brandon Wade…of…SeekingArrangement.com, seems to believe that all it takes to get women interested in a guy is a “gift”…[such as] a tank of gas or a plastic surgery procedure…
…drunken sheriff’s deputy [Paul Derrick] was recorded…when he tried to arrest…female [Marine Brittany Ball] at a…[South Carolina] restaurant…because she…turned down his advances…He…[screamed] at her and [barked] orders as he twisted her arms behind her back…When a few men approached…he threatened to arrest them…Sheriff Leon Lott initially backed Derrick…suggesting that Ball was “resisting”…[but] after a week of pressure…[he] placed Derrick on leave without pay…
And if they had been in a less-public place, it might have gone like this:
A…Houston police officer…pleaded guilty [to rape]…in exchange for [only] 10 years in prison. Adan Carranza…responded to a fender bender…handcuffed one of the drivers and put her in the back of his patrol car…waited for the other drivers to leave…[then] raped her in the backseat…and…took her to jail for reckless driving…DNA and video evidence confirmed the woman’s story…he…will…have to register as a sex offender for…20 years [after release]…
An Example To the West (TW3 #24)
…in…response [to the American TIP report]…Thai law enforcement authorities are…pulling sex workers out of brothels, [though] there is little evidence to suggest that [they]…are actually victims of trafficking. In 2012…police investigated three times as many cases of sex trafficking as the year before but that lead to only a couple of arrests…the largest organisation for sex workers in Thailand called for a stop to the “rescues” of prostitutes in Bangkok, arguing that many of them…choose to work in a profession which pays them more than the bare minimum…
…Charles Samuel Couch says that he was wrongly ensnared in a Manhattan Beach [California] sex sting at a public bathroom…and he’s suing the city, the police chief, and 16 other cops…he was…chaperoning a boy…[when] an undercover detective…entered a stall next to the kid’s…[he] bolted…[saying] “There is a man looking at me in the stall”…The two fled, but…Couch was “tackled, choked and handcuffed”…interrogated for “several hours,” his car was ransacked…and the [boy’s] parents…who vouched for Couch, were called…Detectives also took Couch’s laptop…and kept it for more than a month…[claiming it] had been used “as the means of committing a felony”…the Daily Breeze published Couch’s photo as one of “18 arrested in sex sting”…
Think of the Children! (TW3 #40)
Sex rays are also dangerous to plants and wildlife!
…Fuck for Forest…makes porn…to raise money for conservation efforts…Unfortunately, they have trouble giving away their sex-tainted cash…co-founder Leona Johansson [said]…“Many NGOs are afraid of us.” The World Wildlife Fund told them that it would take their money, but wouldn’t allow any official connection between the two organizations because “we cannot be linked to certain types of industry.” And the Norwegian Rainforest Foundation refused their donation outright. “I cannot see that this helps the work for the rain forest,” the foundation’s director told a Norwegian TV station…
Presumably grants funded via government violence help the work for the rain forest in a way voluntary transactions can’t.
…US Navy Commander Michael Vannak Khem Misiewicz and Naval Criminal Investigative Service…Agent John Bertrand Beliveau II…are accused of accepting bribes from…Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd. in exchange for preferential treatment regarding contracts, as well as for tipping the company off to federal fraud investigations…Misiewicz was reportedly gifted with all-expense paid trips for him and his family, prostitutes, cash, luxury hotel rooms, and tickets to shows…
I reached a total of two million page views just before midnight on Wednesday. Thanks so much to all the readers who have helped make this blog a success!
Businesses that allow patrons to pay to be cuddled are springing up everywhere. One…is The Snuggery in…New York…no sexual contact of any kind is allowed…An establishment with a similar business model in Madison, Wisconsin, may never get the chance to cuddle anyone, as city officials are worried that the Snuggle House will end up being a front for a brothel…
But that’s nothing compared to this one:
Barton Jason Lewis Bagnes is asking the Utah Supreme Court to throw out his lewdness convictions, arguing that he did nothing sexual…He was sucking on a candy pacifier and throwing fliers folded into paper airplanes onto lawns when two 8-year-old girls approached him…Bagnes’ trousers were low enough to display a diaper with the Elmo…character…[and] he pulled down his pants to show them the diaper…the fliers that landed in people’s yards showed children of various ages in diapers, some posed provocatively. Two web addresses were scrawled on the flier, promoting sites that showed sexually explicit images of children in sheer underwear…Bagnes’ history of diaper-flashing goes back to 1999, when he first was convicted of lewdness and was placed on the state sex offender registry…Bagnes has claimed he wore diapers because of urinary incontinence and displayed them to children to spread awareness of the medical problem…
…Mike Ware of Fort Worth and Keith Hampton of Austin, filed writs of habeas corpus requesting the release from prison of Elizabeth Ramirez, Cassandra Rivera, Kristie Mayhugh, and Anna Vasquez, who have become known as the “San Antonio Four”…the [National Center for Reason and Justice and the] Innocence Project of Texas and asserts that all four women were wrongly convicted…and that new evidence establishes their complete innocence…The only evidence…against them was the [coerced] testimony of the two children…and medical evidence that is now known to be faulty. The trial was also severely tainted by homophobia…
Tizzy Wall on another horrible member of the same degenerate clan as mugshot and revenge porn sites:
ExposingJohns.com…[collects] information by creating fake ads on private entertainment advertising platforms and then [exposes] the folks who unknowingly contact them…For a mere $195.97, they will “investigate the claims” to delete the profile of an “exposed john” within two weeks, and expedited services carry an even heftier price tag, costing up to nearly $500 for a “premium 24 hour investigation”…
As a woman who miscarried at 22 weeks, stories like this are especially horrifying to me:
Glenda Xiomara Cruz [of El Salvador] was crippled by abdominal pain and heavy bleeding in the early hours of 30 October 2012. The 19-year-old…went to the nearest public hospital where doctors said she had lost her baby. It was the first she knew about the pregnancy as her menstrual cycle was unbroken, her weight practically unchanged, and a pregnancy test in May…had been negative. Four days later she was charged with aggravated murder …at a court hearing she was too sick to attend. The hospital had reported her to the police for a suspected abortion…last month she was sentenced to 10 years in jail…
Libertarianism Happens To People
…Wisconsin…state Rep. John Nygren…is sponsoring [two] bills aimed at…minimizing the damage from heroin overdoses…The first would offer limited immunity for people who call 911 or bring overdose patients to an emergency room…The other would expand those with access to Narcan, a medication that reverses the effects of an overdose. Nygren is sponsoring these laws after confronting his daughter’s heroin habit, and her near fatal overdose in 2009…
Where Are the Protests? (TW3 #319)
The Swedish sports world has been rocked by a migrant labour scandal whereby sports clubs duped migration authorities with sham contracts for foreign players…non-EU employees…must earn a minimum of 14,300 kronor ($2,200) a month, but [one revealed]…she had been paid about 5,000 kronor a month…[and another] no more than 2,400 kronor…
The student unions at the universities of Nottingham and Birmingham have become the latest to ban the pop song “Blurred Lines” from their respective campuses…Essex University’s student union became the twentieth to ban the sale of the Sun and the Daily Star…Greg Lukianoff…of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)…[said] “UK student unions…think of themselves as…very progressive…But they are echoing…the old Victorian censors…campaigners in both eras share this idea that there are certain moral ends which are so much more important than someone’s measly right to freedom of speech. This…leads to people wanting to blot out normal aspects of everyday life: sexuality, sexual expression, speech that might be offensive to women…”
Project ROSE Prostitution Diversion Initiative…was [protested] by a group of sex workers and allies that refer to themselves as the Phoenix Sex Worker Organizing Project [sic]…Phoenix police and students from the ASU School of Social Work team up twice a year to arrest local sex workers and [force] them [to] choose between a six month diversion program or criminal charges. According to…SWOP…diversion programs…”ignore the fact that many people who work in the sex industry are not victims in need of rescue, but consenting adults who should not be arrested, coerced into diversion, or incarcerated for working”…
Project ROSE’s awfulness also inspired an editorial in Affilia:
Stephanie Wahab and Meg Panichelli provide a succinct analysis of the ethical considerations associated with diversion programs that arrest people…to force them to accept services…“targeting people for arrest under the guise of helping them violates numerous ethical standards as well as the humanity of people engaged in the sex industry”…Project ROSE is found to violate…the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics, the Council on Social Work Education Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards, and the International Federation of Social Work Ethical Principles. Informed consent…is violated because the services…rely on recruitment via “massive police…sting operations…social work…should not be in the business of arresting people for their own good.”
Remember “…officials are putting together ‘exit’ services to help the dozens of sex workers who face having their place of work closed down”? Clueless lawheads imagined closing the saunas would force those dirty whores to get “clean” menial jobs, but here’s what is actually happening: “Hundreds of Edinburgh sex workers have signed up to an [escort advertising] site – convinced they will be forced out of their…jobs…Six saunas are expected to be permanently closed…”
Tizzy Wall interviews Siouxsie Q on a number of subjects, but the most interesting part to me is her commentary on actors’ inane pretense that they’re better than whores when “HELLO? WE ARE OF THE SAME CLAN!!!”
Social Autoimmune Disorder
(TW3 #342)
In the US, new tools of tyranny always spread like a social disease: “…[Oakland, California] has been mailing letters to men suspected of cruising for prostitutes…The…letters avoid accusations, simply saying their vehicle was spotted in a high-risk neighborhood….Los Angeles may try the same tactic…Sanford, Florida started a letter campaign, but…will include photos of…license plates…“
The Italian Courtesans is from me – HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Maggie!
Thank you! I must’ve missed your telling me you were getting it; I’ll edit the entry. 🙂
You’re very welcome! And no – you didn’t miss anything – it’s MY fault. I have very bad “amazon karma”! Remember last time?! LOL
You wanna landin’ strip … you bettah get ripped …
The feminist response to Blurred Lines …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC1XtnLRLPM
Regarding the NOLA cop that was reinstated with backpay …
NOLA PD is fucked up. It’s not just them either – the whole city is a fabrication of corruptness.
I want to answer the woman who says, “I don’t understand why anyone would choose to do this. ”
i’ll give you a hint. They are arrested for being paid for sex. If they were just having sex for free, they wouldn’t be arrested, but they also wouldn’t get paid.
Maybe… they need the money? Just spitballing here…
You’re very kind to include we consumers, but that’s kind of like the bees thanking the bears for making the honey so sweet. The excellence of your writing is what makes this blog so successful. On behalf of your other readers, thank you.
“What these girls don’t realize is that they are victims. I don’t understand why anyone would choose to do this. – Lea Benson”
I don’t understand why people do a lot of things – doesn’t mean I want to stop them, since I would consider it none of my business.
“What these girls don’t realize is that they are victims. I don’t understand why anyone would choose to do this. – Lea Benson”
Mmm. Before I worked in the adult entertainment industry, I made minimum wage waiting tables. I got no respect. I walked home at night alone after closing, 2, 3 am, through the town.I could barely afford rent and food. Once I began working adult entertainment, I could afford a nice place, a car, food, new clothes, and save money. The bouncers dealt with any rude customers, and walked me to my car at closing time.
And all this time I was a victim! what a daft bint I was.
Two million page views is a very impressive statistic. And you got there through posts which are well written, interesting, provocative and are a melange of fact, opinion, polemic and fiction. And through interaction with your readers. And a lot of hard work.
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