If ignorance about sex is grounds for a court order forbidding it, neofeminists and religious fundamentalists need to start worrying. – February Updates (Part Two)
By February I had settled into a groove. Though I still posted each column just after eating breakfast (a habit I maintained until the end of July), I had a buffer of prepared columns I could intersperse with newer items so as to avoid being caught unprepared as I sometimes was in the first few months. Patterns which were to last for a very long time (some to the present day) were well-established: the month had two holiday columns (“Imbolc” and “Valentine’s Day”), a harlotography (“Josie Arlington”), a fictional interlude (“Carnival”), and the two-part “February Updates”, and “February Q & A” closed it out. There was also a miscellanea column named “John Law” because all of its items were about cops; somehow I forgot the title “February Miscellanea”, which did not appear until literally the day before the debut of “That Was the Week That Was” the following February.
Thanks to the fact that my columns debunking “sex trafficking” hysteria (especially the “gypsy whores” myth) catching the attention of reporters (as detailed in “Maggie in the Media”), the blog was growing fast; despite only having 28 days, February saw almost twice as many visits as January. With so much of my time focused on the Dallas Super Bowl hype, it’s no wonder there were so many columns on it this month. In “Don’t Buy It” I linked many resources debunking previous iterations of the myth; in “Life Imitates Artifice” I pointed out that the one single pimp arrested around the event admitted to getting the idea from the hype, and in “See How Well It Works?” I mocked the ludicrous excuses Texas “authorities” offered for the utter and complete failure of their apocalyptic predictions. I further attacked them in “Coming and Going”, but that actually had nothing to do with the Super Bowl; strangely, a map showing Texas counties made that column my most often visited one for that entire year.
My new popularity began to attract the attention of neofeminists, one of whom came by to lie (“Misrepresentation”) in an attempt to sell the vile Swedish model (which I also discussed in “A Distorted Lens” and “The Swedish Disease Spreads”). But while “Bedelia” represented herself as a “survivor” of coerced prostitution and pretended that all sex workers share her experience, just two weeks after her appearance I presented a four-part interview with Jill Brenneman, who was actually a coerced teen prostitute, yet understands that her experience was extremely unusual and that criminalization makes situations like hers far worse (three of the ways criminalization harms sex workers are detailed in “To Protect and Serve”, “Not the Same Tree” and “Crime Against Society”). And the month was rounded out with “Between the Ears” (why there is no chemical “cure” for low female sex drive); “Real People” (realistic media portrayals of sex workers); “Not an Addiction” (a debunking of “sex addiction”); “An Educated Idiot” (my first column on the unethical and incompetent Sudhir Venkatesh); and the self-explanatory “Old Men and Young Women”.
The third one is a great poster!
As to you introspection about how you developed your process, I think that is a great idea. It shows other potential writers that it takes a while to find out how to do it at all and then takes quite a while to do it efficiently and well. Looking at the finished product can be intimidating, you make it less so.
Ah, that would be the 4th one…
The third picture is, I think, the first illustration showing Sherlock in the Inverness cape and the deerstalker. Nowhere does the ‘literary agent’ mention them, yet they became his iconic clothing.
Don’t know how I missed the Jill Brennan interviews … but I just read them (plus the Q&A with readers).
Jesus – depressing.
Help me out with this a bit. I want to believe her but there’s a couple of things …
1. It’s the internet – and, like Stella Marr – there’s really only the story she tells. That doesn’t make her story inherently false though – I realize. It does make it hard for me to declare it “true” though. For the sake of decriminalization – I would certainly like it to be true – but I can’t suspend my objectivity for that.
2. This “Bruce” guy – is inherently a no-quarters evil person. I tried to remember, in my life – when I have ever met someone like that. The closest I can come is an Al Qaida fighter who views anyone who worships a different God than him as an animal – not even human. They also don’t view females (in or out of their religion) as human – though they say they do. Still, I have always thought their evil was driven by the fact that they are huge weak-minded dumbasses who are religiously driven to zealotry. “Bruce” doesn’t appear to have been a “dumbass” … what she alleges he did to her showed some serious intellect about human psychology … and, unlike an AQ fighter – he didn’t have “God” to blame for the evil he did to her. So I’m basically having a problem with the whole profile of “Bruce”. If he was this evil – shouldn’t have been evil to everyone? And … shouldn’t his luck have run out a LONG TIME AGO? Unless he was just smart enough to not get tangled with people who could either destroy him or beat the shit out of him – and this would be more evidence of his intelligence.
It’s an incredible story – true or not – and it certainly moved me – to the heights of great anger. Is this solely a male response here? I want to find that motherfucker and kill him … “Clyde Shelton” style. Obviously I can’t do that … I would never find the guy based on the information she provides (assuming he does exist as she says) I would never put a death sentence on a guy unless there was no question in mind this story was true and he did those things … and I really don’t have the time to do it anyway. I’m left with “blue balls” of rage after reading the piece. Am I the only one that feels this way? Cuz a lot of people seem to have an easy time just accepting the fact that this guy may still be out there – doing these horrible things. Maybe the next girl didn’t get away. Jesus Christ, this sucks.
That evil like “Bruce” exists – should not just be considered the “cost of doing business” as a prostitute. Those guys need to be caught – and dealt with (in horrific ways if you want my “vote”).
How do we catch guys like “Bruce” without engaging in this idiotic “human trafficking” bullshit? I know decriminalization helps some women – but it wouldn’t have helped Jill because she thought everything “Bruce” did was a loyalty test – including when the cops pulled her out of the closet.
Please don’t take it negatively that I don’t assign the grade of “truth” to the story – but neither do I judge it as false. I don’t know Jill personally. If there is some other information that can help me with this please share it.
But … what scares the living shit out of me is the thought that I might schedule a session with someone in a position such as Jill was. She was so highly trained to cover it up – how could I recognize it?
It’s a very though-provoking piece … true or not.