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.

 

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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Rotten to the Core

Only crime and the criminal…confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.  -  Hannah Arendt

Most of you probably heard about this on Thursday:

A [San Antonio, Texas] jury…acquitted Ezekiel Gilbert of murder in the death of a 23-year-old Craigslist escort…Lenora Ivie Frago…died about seven months after she was shot in the neck and paralyzed on Christmas Eve 2009.  Gilbert admitted shooting Frago…but said the intent wasn’t to kill.  Gilbert’s actions were justified, [his lawyers] argued, because he was trying to retrieve stolen property:  the $150 he paid Frago.  It became theft when she refused to have sex with him or give the money back…Frago walked around his apartment and after about 20 minutes left, saying she had to give the money to her driver…[who] was [allegedly] Frago’s pimp and her partner in the theft scheme.  The Texas law that allows people to use deadly force to recover property during a nighttime theft was put in place for “law-abiding” citizens, prosecutors…countered.  It’s not intended for someone trying to force another person into an illegal act such as prostitution…

That article, which was reasonably objective by the low standards of modern American journalism, was not the one which was bruited about the most, however; that honor went to Gawker‘s “Texas Says It’s OK to Shoot an Escort If She Won’t Have Sex With You”, whose inflammatory headline masked its essentially-similar content.  Jezebel’s take on the matter, “How an Insane Texas Law Made It Legal for a Man to Kill a Prostitute”, carried it another step farther away from the real issue at hand, but Huffington Post won the obfuscation hat trick with “Ezekiel Gilbert Acquitted Of Murdering Woman Who Wouldn’t Have Sex”, a headline which almost completely obscures the real point.  But before we expose the moral putrefaction which made this deplorable outcome possible, let’s dispense with a few other distractions.

One:  This is not about Texas per se, no matter how much regionalists are trying to make it so; nor is it about “American gun culture” or any other such crap.  Pretending it’s about that is an unhelpful distraction from the real issues at hand, and therefore NOT A WELCOME TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION IN THE COMMENT THREAD.  Nearly every place in the world would excuse behavior not materially different from Gilbert’s as long as “authorized” people are shooting at those designated as criminals, and arguing about which specific circumstances justify it is a red herring.

Two:  I don’t really feel comfortable with using a woman who at first glance appears to be either an extortionist or a really inept cash-and-dash artist as a poster child for violence against sex workers.  No, petty theft doesn’t deserve death, but at the same time it’s really stupid, dangerous and unethical to go into a strange place alone with a strange man and attempt to cheat him (if Gilbert is telling the truth, which is by no means certain).  This is not “victim blaming”; it’s insisting that discussions be grounded in reality rather than some imaginary Utopia where life is fair.

Three:  To those who insists that Gilbert was essentially trying to rape Frago, because escorting is a legal business and it says right there in the ad that “money exchanged is for time and companionship only” and “this is not an offer of prostitution”:  Please shut the fuck up.  You are an idiot, you’re not helping, and you need to reread the last line in the item above and then get a life.

Four:  No, it really doesn’t matter that she had a vagina and he had a penis; the advantage of a gun is that it removes physical size and strength from the equation.  The core issues here would be exactly the same if a female drug user had shot a male drug dealer for selling her a bag of cornstarch for $150 instead of the heroin she was promised.

That last conveniently introduces the real issue here, the rotten core of this whole rotten situation.  In Texas (as in most of the United States), the exchange of money for sex is illegal in and of itself.  I’ll clarify that for international readers:  in the US, just talking about something or agreeing to do something completely legal suddenly becomes illegal if certain taboo magic words are spoken or even implied.  Let that sink in:  no evidence of any kind is necessary, just the cop’s accusation.  And it swings equally both ways:  a policewoman can accuse a man of soliciting her just as easily as a male cop can accuse a woman, and the chosen victim will be arrested and “named and shamed” with no due process whatsoever, just on a cop’s say-so.  Furthermore, in Texas and ten other states, prostitution can be a felony (i.e. the same class of crime as assault, rape, grand theft, manslaughter, etc); under rapidly-spreading “end demand” and “sex trafficking” laws, hiring a hooker can be as well (with a potential for decades in prison and other serious consequences).  In Craigslist-style hooking, there’s no screening in either direction; both parties know the other could be a cop, and that makes both of them understandably nervous…possibly nervous enough to walk around for twenty minutes and then lose one’s nerve, and possibly nervous enough to get trigger-happy.

And that’s just the beginning of the rot.  Consider that the prohibitionists have been spreading anti-whore lies for a very long time; we’ve been “degenerates” or “monsters” for centuries, “criminals” for one century and the victims of brutal “pimps” (who may also be international gangsters) for over a decade now (there was an alleged “pimp” right outside, remember?)  Which of these overlapping myths did the jurors believe?  The law used by Gilbert’s defense was enacted to allow homeowners to defend themselves against robbery, which Texas law pretends is no worse a crime than compensated sex.  The defense portrayed Gilbert as a man facing a “criminal” defined by Texas law as being at least as anti-social as a burglar, whom neofeminist prohibitionists have painted as being desperate, emotionally crippled and dominated by brutes.  Prosecutors like to select jurors who display strong “law and order” attitudes; it appears to me that this time, they succeeded better than they had hoped because the jurors simply refused to see the “criminal” Frago as a victim.  But before you condemn them as sociopaths, let’s try a thought experiment:  go back to number four above.  Can you imagine a big outcry in that situation?  If both participants in that incident were black, can you even imagine it becoming a national news story, let alone a source of outrage?  And if Gilbert had been wearing a certain blue costume, and his victim had been young and male, and the so-called “crime” had involved buying drugs rather than buying sex, it might never have made it into the San Antonio Express-News as anything other than a line item under the heading “police reports”.

This is the putrid heart of the whole stinking business.  Though we may disagree on the particulars (such as allowed levels of provocation and lethality), most people will agree that individuals have the right to defend themselves against criminals.  But when “authorities” and other dangerous busybodies stretch the definition of “criminal” to include people engaged in voluntary transactions, then spread propaganda in order to convince the populace that individuals so engaged are criminals in a true and meaningful sense rather than a merely arbitrary one, and then pass laws so dangerous and repressive that those individuals fear for their safety and actual criminals are drawn into the resulting black market, is anyone surprised when twelve ignorant people with no personal interest in the matter can be swayed by whichever of two important-looking men makes a more convincing argument?  Because that’s exactly what happened here, folks:  in matters of great complexity, when neither of the sides seems terribly sympathetic, our legal system is on exactly the same moral level as trial by combat; the contest is decided by the relative skill of the opponents rather than the salient facts of the question to be decided.  As long as we allow and even encourage our governments to criminalize private, consensual behaviors with no clear victim and no actual corpus delicti, lots more people are going to be senselessly killed and lots of senseless killers are going to get away with it.  And no hypocrite who supports such a system has any business whatsoever complaining about that inevitable and highly-predictable outcome.

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Guest Columnist: Sarah Woolley

Last month’s guest column by Kelly Michaels was so well-received I’ve decided to make it a regular feature on the second Monday of every month.  And as soon as I made that decision I knew exactly whom I wanted to ask first:  Sarah Woolley, whose writing I’ve linked twice before in TW3 columns.  Sarah is a freelance writer who is one of the rare non-whores who “gets it” so completely that she is a valued ally; her essays are not only bang-on perceptive, but also sparkle with the sort of dry English wit that makes her a joy to read.

Rhoda Grant, MSP has published the responses to her consultation on the proposed criminalisation of sex workers’ clients in Scotland.  The response from the Paisley Branch of Amnesty International (which supports criminalisation) is receiving a lot of attention for how it was presented and everything that is wrong with it.  Jemima101‘s analysis includes a response from Amnesty to say that Paisley’s statement “doesn’t reflect Amnesty’s position.  We’ve not commented on the Bill.”  Jemima’s piece also lists the human rights groups that support decriminalisation.  Meanwhile, Jewel examined the prejudices in Paisley’s statement, and its tendency to use second hand anecdotal evidence, including an employee of a women’s prison who spoke with:

…a young woman who had experienced prostitution of her own volition.  The young woman was adamant that she was not a victim and that it had been her choice.  Without wishing to patronise her in any way, her forearms were covered in so many scars it was impossible to see any unmarked flesh.  To those of us who have been fortunate to have had a (fairly) stable childhood, where abuse has not damaged our understanding of bodily boundaries, her defence of “not being a victim” has a hollow ring.

It is possible to tackle the prejudices in this statement without refuting the existence of individuals with abusive backgrounds.  However, it is difficult to do this because abolitionists use discussions of childhood and mental health problems to silence and dismiss sex workers.

The Paisley statement gave me déjà vu for the last time I poked my pretty head into a Q&A session at the Guardian where Naomi Wolf was discussing “What Women Want”.  Personally, I want a feminist discussion that won’t hinge upon vajazzles, Barbies, advertising and other La La lands but I’m prepared to make baby steps.  Step one is for wider criticism of glib statements like this:

Slow down, Wolf, slow down.

To be fair to Wolf, I too started to think of porn differently after a spurious correlation came to my attention when my favourite Tumblr – “Indifferent Cats in Amateur Porn“ - alerted me to the high percentage of women who were Crazy Cat Ladies before entering the industry.  (Insert pussy joke here).  Providing data (I don’t see any coming from Wolf or Paisley) to back up a claim for its own sake is one thing, but using that statistic to critique sex work as an automatically negative outcome of that abuse?  I call shenanigans.

Those who investigate or make assumptions, concerning the childhoods of marginalised groups – be they pornographers, kinksters or queer folk – are renowned for already knowing what they want to hear.  Namely that no woman in her “right mind” would do that, so we have to discover what made her that way.  That’s why there is little call to sift through the childhoods of lawyers and deep sea fishermen.  Arguing that sex work is inherently symptomatic of pain leaves those with abuse-free childhoods wondering what induced them into such a terrible career.  Was it their parents’ divorce?  Were they bitten by an angry stripper as a youth?

Not everyone will thrive in sex work, whether they were abused or not, but discrediting a woman’s choices with one piece of information only stigmatises abuse.  I believe that survivors have a right to mature into their own sexual identity and it’s not our call to say which form it should take in the interest of psychological health.  Claiming that a sex worker was “probably molested” is familiar to us under the guise of misplaced concerns and punch lines.  Take, for example, these Twitter gems:

Gosh. Twitter sure is a handy way of deciding who can’t touch my food.

Presenting rape as a fundamental element to what made a porn star “that way” discourages everyone, not just the woman in the Paisley statement, from discussing the nuances of life after abuse.  When survivors contemplate “coming out” they make a decision that concerns far more than “am I ready to make this step?”  Comments like the above are examples of the prejudices they will be exposed to when a Wolf in sheep’s clothing refuses to see their lives through anything other than a broken lens.  Abused as a child?  Want a tattoo?  Prepare to discuss whether or not it’s an integral part of “reclaiming your body” or a form of self-harm.  And no, you’re not allowed to just think tattoos are awesome.  When a woman deviates from what’s “normal” it’s comforting to dismiss her with psychopathology.  Charlotte Shane at Tits and Sass responded to those who regard all sex worker past as prologue with this:  ”Bottom line:  Not all sex workers were molested or beaten or criminally mistreated while growing up.  Some of them were, just like some doctors and some teachers and some plumbers were.”  In other words, the abuser is always the problem.  Not the vocation.  If someone feels compelled to join an industry to which they aren’t suited, we should ensure that our society isn’t closing off other opportunities with society’s habit of using a sex worker’s resume as a weapon against their reputation.  If Wolf and the Paisley Branch want to derive some significance from shaky studies that suggest more abused women sell sexual services than frozen bananas, they need to recognise the women who can reconcile consensual sex with an abusive past.  Even if that consent is on camera.  Not doing so is just as damaging as denying that some sex workers identify a negative link between their job and their history of abuse.

Some performers will have to stop working because their past catches up with them.  Only those women can say if it was their job that was triggering bad memories or something as mundane as a perfume that blindsided them as they waited for a bus.  When it comes to triggers, no one gets to choose what penetrates them.  There will also always be people for whom sexual spaces, commercial or otherwise, are sanctuaries.  No job application should be motivated by a therapeutic need, but it’s a bonus when a community benefits a person’s life.  Although she doesn’t work in porn, xoJane’s Emily McCombs has written about enjoying taboo sex in a life after sexual trauma.  Emily writes that “A lot of factors go into the creation of a fetish” and one of those for her is “almost certainly trauma”.  For her, this element doesn’t make it a foregone conclusion that controversial sex is non-consensual and damaging.

When it comes to the anonymous woman described by the Paisley Branch, the finer points regarding how she feels her experiences inform her choices is not an insight we’ll gain from talking over her.  I’m going to wager that explicit imagery doesn’t, as Wolf suspects, “Desensitise people to the humanness” of sex workers. However, we do diminish a woman’s humanity when we demand, regardless of how she perceives things, that the price of her past must be her future.

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Links #153

Police officers who risk their lives every day…deserve every possible protection, and those who treat them with disrespect [and] harass them…deserve to pay a price for their actions.  -  Joe Griffo

This was definitely not a quiet week for news.  The giant surveillance scandals (which I linked the first hint of five weeks ago) dominated the US media and were big news nearly everywhere in the world, because everyone is affected; nearly all internet traffic passes through servers on American soil, and the US government claims the right to interfere with or spy on any of it without bothering to let anyone know.  Even the smaller world of harlotry was buzzing with stories; I featured a record-setting 26 of them in yesterday’s TW3 column.  But the field of interesting links was a little quieter except for the usual police brutality stories.  The top contributor this week was Radley Balko, with everything down to the first video (itself provided by Buzz Aldrin).  The second video was banned from British TV for being “sexist and degrading to women”, and was contributed by Mike Siegel; the links between the two are from Mike Riggs (“judges”), Lenore Skenazy (“magic word”), Cthulhuchick (“badgers”),  Grace (“killer shrimp”), Jesse Walker (“hero”), Gods & Monsters  (“ducks”), my cat (“smuggler”), and Thomas Larson (“zombies”).

• Linguistic maps of the US.
• Cop beats partly-deaf woman for talking on a phone.
• Man reports himself as suspicious for public photography.

• A drug court judge is in drug rehab after another judge he was partying with ODed on cocaine they bought from a probation officer.
• Cops beat man for driving while black, flee upon finding he’s also a cop.
• Murderous cops play at attacking Rasputin (note “stop faking” mantra).
• This week’s edition of “Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever.”
• Cop claims 4^th amendment is instantly negated by magic word “gun”.
• Extremists chased through London by women dressed as badgers.
• Killer shrimp’s claws strike at velocity of a .22 caliber bullet.
• Cops murder horse for “crime” of being ridden by a drunk.
• New York politician wants “annoying” a cop to be a crime.
• Yet another male punished for saving someone’s life.
• Big yellow ducks are not allowed in China.
• Another feline smuggler.
• Because of zombies.

From the Archives

• When women in professions which barely differ from prostitution claim that they’re “better” than we are.
• Why it’s OK that a large fraction of whores’ fees are actually paid by clients’ employers.
• Busybodies define a problem into existence, then pretend to “solve” it by brute force.
• Another guy plays BDSM games with strangers and no signed contract.
• “If you dare to disagree with me again, I’m going to stop reading you.”
• The events leading up to the birth of the sex worker rights movement.
• Mira Sorvino calls Sacramento “leading destination for sex traffickers”.
• Tolerating others’ icky behavior is the price for others tolerating ours.
• Transgender hookers charged as clients for “end demand” purposes.
• Sex rays can flow through computers or become embedded in paper.
• Swedish Model proponents try to hijack the term “decriminalization”.
• Why are they so much more sensible about sex work Down Under?
• Colorado spends money it doesn’t have yet to harass sex workers.
• Irish Police are forced to admit that prohibitionists are full of crap.
• Sex businesses counterattack prohibitionists with civil litigation.
• From Australia, examples of why legalization isn’t good enough.
• Another gang leader sentenced on “human trafficking” charges.
• Octomom backs out of a lucrative contract due to hurt feelings.
• Two Detroit men accused of being serial killers of sex workers.
• Driskill Mountain, the loftiest prominence in my home state.
• I think you’re probably better off just learning on the job.
• Male escort says essentially all of his clients are male.
• The third and fourth members of my Hall of Shame.
• The only whore ever to become a Disney princess.
• Why criminalization is dangerous to public health.
• The great Satoshi Kanazawa firestorm of 2011.
• “Study” finds porn-hating women hate porn.
• San Diego makes excuses for rapist cops.
• First they came for the hookers…
• The Versatile Blogger Award.
• R.I.P. Ray Bradbury.

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That Was the Week That Was (#323)

We whores are sure these politicians are not our sons.  -  sign carried by protesters in Istanbul

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

“The FBI seized and ran a child pornography website for two weeks in November 2012…in an attempt to identify its more than 5,000 customers…”

The Leading Players in the Field, Not

Nepal’s Supreme Court has accused a prominent anti-trafficking group of detaining a woman against her will so she could undergo counselling for being a lesbian…The court ordered the release of the woman from a centre run by…Maiti Nepal…which has been championed by…Joanna Lumley and…Demi Moore…The group’s founder, Anuradha Koirala, was awarded a “CNN Heroes Award”…in 2010…and Moore hosted a television programme called “Nepal’s Stolen Children” highlighting the organisation’s work…

It Looks Good On Paper

When “whore as criminal” and “whore as victim” collide:  “…a [Nebraska] human trafficking bill…would [have given] immunity from prosecution to [minors]…arrested for prostitution…Amanda McGill…offered an amendment that…would place [them]…under the jurisdiction of a juvenile court…[for] treatment…”  Because indefinite commitment is so much better than a criminal charge.

Dirty Amateurs

“Sweden…[is] the…STD…capital of Europe…half of young Swedes don’t use condoms when having sex with a new partner and…30 percent…use no contraceptive…at all…”

Somehow, I Doubt She Thought This Through

A woman…in Connecticut [called] police to complain about how she was being treated by a pimp…they did not find the pimp…but…did find…Jennifer Lowery with a…customer.  Police charged Lowery with prostitution and 60-year-old Ricard Burford…with patronizing a prostitute…Lowery told them she…decided to conduct some business while waiting…

See No Evil

Melbourne artist Paul Yore is likely to be charged with producing child pornography following the seizure of several of his art works…which allegedly depicted sexual acts with children’s faces superimposed on them…Yore described the…seizure as “very small fragments of a collage of…thousands of different objects…basically junk I’ve been collecting”…

Not To Be Taken Internally

…Apryl Michelle Brown had black-market silicone injections which turned out to be BATHROOM SEALANT…“My body had a massive allergic reaction…the only way doctors could save my life was to amputate my buttocks…hands and feet”…

A Whore in Church

A profile of a former sex worker who’s assisted me with research on a number of occasions:

…Mary Setterholm…was a teenaged prostitute…[she] will graduate from Harvard Divinity School (HDS) with…a plan to help others find their way back from the edge of despair…She married young and had five children.  The union was rocky and abusive.  Once divorced, she returned to prostitution as a…way to take back some control…In 2003, a meeting with an inspiring nun named Sheila McNiff helped Setterholm to confront the abuse she had suffered as a child at the hands of clergy, and guide her back to education…Setterholm…[founded] Serenity Sisters…[a] support group…for exploited women and recovering prostitutes…She hopes to enter a Ph.D. program…expanding on her…thesis work, which explored the way prostitutes have been used in religious teachings as a stand-in for deviant or disbelieving members of society…

A War for Peace (TW3 #11)

…Over the last 30 years…Iran is…moving in the [sexual] direction of Britain and the United States…Declining birth rates…signal a wider acceptance of contraceptives…the country has experienced the fastest drop in fertility ever recorded in human history…the average marriage age for men has gone up from 20 to 28 years old…and…women…five years later than a decade ago…The rate of divorce…has also skyrocketed…[previously] sex workers were virtually invisible…Now…there [are] close to 85,000…in Tehran alone…

Bullies With Badges

…Adam was, until recently, making a living as a self-employed web designer in South Carolina…he was hired to make a porn site…[with male] masturbation videos…after the site had been online for…24 days, Adam’s home was raided by [a SWAT team] and all of his computer equipment was seized…Adam [said] “the [customer] was [allegedly]…paying guys to let him give them blowjobs and film it…it definitely wasn’t…on the site…I wasn’t expecting four armed guys to bust into my mother’s home and steal all of my assets.  They’ve…ruined me…”

Note that Adam wasn’t charged with anything; the police stole his entire business to be indefinitely held as “evidence” of someone else’s misdemeanor.

Whorearchy (TW3 #19)

This story about yet another Spanish city’s war on streetwalkers is not really noteworthy, but I love this picture which illustrates it.

Traffic Jam

Remember the supposed “child sex trafficking ring” run by “Somali gangs” that federal prosecutors were all puffed up about last year?

…every defendant who has gone to trial has either been acquitted or had their conviction thrown out.  The government’s case was weakened when…a key witness…refused to testify, saying he is afraid for himself and for his family.  So prosecutors charged Abdullahi Farah with two counts of contempt of court and obstruction of a child sex trafficking case.  He was convicted…in April…and…is facing a maximum of 20 years…for the obstruction conviction…and…life in prison [for contempt]…Legal experts say…it’s almost unheard of for prosecutors to come down so hard on one of their own witnesses…

Considering that “agents said Farah gave conflicting accounts and sketchy details” and the judge “said he had problems with Farah’s credibility”, I think the truth is obvious:  sleazebag prosecutor Van Vincent tried to pretend a bunch of petty thugs were a gigantic conspiracy, but drew a judge who wouldn’t roll over for him and is taking it out on the only available scapegoat.  Consider the prospect of life in prison for a contempt charge, and then tell me the US isn’t a police state yet.

Japanese Prostitution (TW3 #21)

An American alibi-ya:

Paladin Deception Services, the self-proclaimed…”Leading Fictitious Reference Provider,” can “put together almost any fictitious scenario that you require”…Our agency can provide you with…testimonials over the phone in the local area code that you require.  We’re confidential, professional, innovative, and affordable.  Most importantly, we keep it legal…For only $54 (and $19.95 for each additional month), you get set up with a phone number, alibi verification and even options including…creation of a fictitious boss…

Backwards Into the Future (TW3 #21)

A United Nations Special Rapporteur has recommended that provisions relating to sex work in Namibia be repealed, stating that the “stigma, discrimination and violence” suffered by sex workers…often discourages them from accessing public services…[and hampers] efforts to reduce the spread of HIV-AIDS…Magdalena Sepúlveda states that…criminalisation of sex work…creates a climate…that fosters further violence and discrimination…

Birth of a Movement

Melissa Gira Grant published a short photoessay on sex worker participation in the current demonstrations in Istanbul, in earlier demonstrations in Madrid, New York and Mexico City, and in the Lyon church-occupation that launched the sex worker rights movement.

True Colors

…On 30 May 2013…Ye Haiyan was detained by police after being assaulted at her home…[she] is an advocate for the rights of sex workers and people living with HIV/AIDS…[who] has been consistently targeted…because of her work…[she] managed to send out a series of messages on Twitter appealing for help…

Bone of Contention (TW3 #29)

Once again:  aren’t the late-night noise and public sex to which residents object illegal even if no money is exchanged?

…politicians have called a roundtable meeting…to look for ways to control street prostitution in South Auckland.  The meeting…may lead to amending or abandoning a bill…to give…the Auckland…police powers to arrest both prostitutes and clients who engage in commercial sex in a banned area…

The Scarlet Letter (TW3 #52)

Marc Randazza thinks of a clever way to attack “revenge porn” sites:

Adult entertainment attorney Marc Randazza filed two civil cases against revenge porn site UGotPosted.com on counts of distributing child pornography and failing to comply with 18 U.S.C. § 2257…the site posted…“sexually explicit images” of 14-year-old Abigail Talley’s [genitals]…2257 requires individuals or entities hosting adult content to inspect a government-issued form of ID to determine the name and age of every performer featured and to keep records of such information…had the defendants complied, it would have been apparent that the plaintiff was a minor…Despite the ongoing case, and intervention by an FBI agent…the defendants have yet to…remove the photos…

Sex Workers Against Trafficking (TW3 #139)

The main tip-off on…two sisters kidnapped from Dhaka…came from a sex worker in Pune, who contacted one of her relatives in Kolkata, who in turn contacted the girls’ relatives in Bangladesh…these girls had allegedly been lured with false promises and kidnapped by a…close acquaintance…[who] sold them to a brothel…

Banishment

Government actors issue a warning of a problem created entirely by government actions:

…Kyle Evans with the Murfreesboro [Tennessee] Police Department…said sex offenders tend to congregate at hotels…”It meets the statutory requirements for them when they can’t live elsewhere”…The TBI confirmed 16 convicted sex offenders listed their home address at the Regal Inn…[and] said there is nothing illegal about hotels renting to sex offenders…

Absolute Corruption

…Twenty-five years after it first indicted [Jesse] Friedman, the Nassau County [New York] District Attorney’s Office…could completely exonerate him.  Out of a dozen major child-sex-ring cases that roiled the country between 1984 and 2005, Jesse’s is one of the last convictions still standing…in November of 1987…postal inspectors intercepted…child pornography addressed to [his father]…police admitted that not one of the 30 children they…interviewed…reported any kind of abuse.  But…they kept re-interviewing the children—some as many as 15 times, and often for hours at a stretch…The children began to buckle, telling tales of extraordinary abuse…the Friedmans’ computer class was [claimed to be] a nonstop nightmare of coerced sex acts, where Arnold and Jesse abused kids…in plain view of other students…playing “naked leapfrog,” sodomizing kids as they jumped from one to the next…[children were supposedly] molested an average of six times during every one of the 20 90-minute classes they took…

Natural Processes

…Of those who report their rapes, around 4–5% also describe experiencing orgasm. But the true numbers are likely much higher…[one] child therapist…[wrote on Reddit]…“There have been very few studies on orgasm during rape, but the research so far shows numbers from 10% to over 50% having this experience…In professional discussions, colleagues report similar numbers”…Despite what many rapists would like to believe, arousal does not mean that an assault was enjoyable or that a victim was asking for it…our bodies respond to sex…entirely without our permission or intention.  Orgasm during rape isn’t an…expression of pleasure.  It’s…a physical response…like breathing, sweating, or an adrenaline rush.  Therapists commonly use the analogy of tickling.  While tickling can be pleasurable, when it is done against someone’s wishes it can be very unpleasant experience…[yet] the one being tickled will continue laughing…

Under Every Bed

The supposed penetration of “sex trafficking” into every nook and cranny of the U.S. continues; notice the Profession of Faith in the first one:

Sex trafficking is real in South Dakota and won’t…be tolerated…”I still think there are a lot of naive people…who don’t feel it happens in their community but it is happening in their community,” Dawn Stenberg…of the Junior League of Sioux Falls…said…awareness…includes…hotel employees watching for young women who frequently come through their doors, and banks watching for suspicious transactions…[such as] “backpage.com transactions.  They see a lot of that illegal activity through that,” Stenberg said…

If that kind of surveillance state doesn’t scare you, consider instead the rather disgusting sexual fantasies of Florida cops and bureaucrats:  “Orange County announced the creation of a task force aimed at stopping human trafficking in central Florida…Some of the victims…forced into prostitution are as young as 12 years old…most of the victims are children…Kathy…was 11 when she was sold to sex traffickers before being rescued by the FBI…”

Obfuscation via Dysphemisms (TW3 #319)

Tulsa, OK continues its wicked crusade to charge whores with felonies via “use of a computer to violate state statute”.  And just for good measure, they also charged one of them with the “crime” of owning a house.  Don’t read the comments unless you want to feel ill.

Guest Columnist:  Kelly Michaels

Kelly appeared on the Sex With Timaree podcast to speak about her “Whoremom” project; please give it a listen and spread the link around!

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Unmentionables

This essay first appeared on Cliterati on April 28^th; I have modified it slightly for time references and to fit the format of this blog.

The ancients believed that there was power in names, and that they could be employed in spells designed to control or harm the thing so named.  Beings of power were believed to know when their own names were spoken aloud, and might turn unwelcome attention upon the speaker (hence the expression “Speak of the Devil…”); similarly, evil spirits who overheard a topic being discussed aloud might take glee in ruining something good or exacerbating something bad, which is why people still knock wood or say “God willing” after talking about a positive development, or speak about disease and misfortune in hushed tones or euphemisms.  Given the traditional importance of offspring, it’s no surprise that taboos developed around the act which creates them, nor that our ancestors couched everything related to that act in euphemisms and evasion and hid the generative organs from the sight of malign entities who might hex them.

The world has changed a great deal, and children are no longer vital helpers for our farms, caretakers of our twilight years and inheritors of our property; furthermore, few of us believe in evil spirits or magic words any longer.  Yet the superstitions around sex continue; we pretend that it is magically different from all other human behavior, that the normal rules do not apply where it is concerned, that doing it in the “wrong” way or for the “wrong” reason is somehow ritually unclean or even harmful, that rules and laws are necessary to control it, and that violating such rules is a Very Serious Matter indeed.  The most atavistic among us even claim that the sight of pictures of humans engaging in sex is “harmful” to those for whom the apparent position of the sun has not yet returned eighteen times (a number of great cabalistic significance, no doubt) to the same astrological orientation as it was at their birth; moreover, the very existence of these pictures is claimed to inflict magical harm on women, whether we gaze upon them or not!

Given the enduring popularity of these fantastical beliefs, it’s no surprise when politicians and others who pander to the lowest common denominator embrace them.  But when a commercial enterprise does so, the results can be absolutely ridiculous; it’s not possible to please both those who are sexually mature and those who believe that their salvation depends on depriving other people they don’t even know of sexual entertainment, but by Aphrodite they sure will try!  Take Amazon, for example:

[In April], without warning, Amazon removed the ability of anything rated “adult” to show up in a search on its main website.  Upmarket porn is still there; but to find it, you have to…search specifically for the title…Previously, this sort of filtering had only been applied to books which contained things like incest…but now it’s…all erotic fiction.  Even 50 Shades of Grey, one of the most ubiquitous books in the world right now, is caught by the filter.  Obviously, this makes it much harder to find very ordinary smut…This level of prudishness, of trying to protect adults from themselves, is pathetic.  It’s yet another example of pre-emptive, absurdly risk-averse censorship, appeasing a probably non-existent offended user...

It’s not just Amazon, of course.  Plenty of other tech companies are ludicrously prudish.  Apple is notorious for maintaining a ”no porn” rule in the app store, as well as banning smutty books from its iBooks store chart, even joining repressive Middle Eastern regimes in refusing to publish books because the covers display female backs and bottoms.  PayPal has refused to accept payments for “adult” purchases of books...

You can also add Hitachi to that list:

…the classic Hitachi Magic Wand…has always been marketed as a “muscle massager” and currently features lovely pictures of 1980s-era models on its box, innocently placing the wand on their necks or shoulders…it has been a perennial bestseller in sex toy shops across the country and has been used in hundreds, if not thousands, of pornographic films.  It’s so popular that a number of companies not affiliated with Hitachi create accessories for it—especially caps that pop over the head to turn the wand into things like a male masturbation sleeve or an insertable g-spot stimulator.  Why do people love it?  Simply put, it’s one of the strongest vibes out there.  Most vibrators are battery-operated or rechargeable, but the Magic Wand plugs into a wall socket for maximum power.  Its long handle houses a relatively large motor, and its tennis-ball-sized head shakes so vigorously that prolonged use can leave body parts numb and tingling.  For some people, this supercharged toy is the only thing that can ensure an orgasm…It is also extremely sturdy and will last for decades.

Despite its popularity, its…manufacturer has been growing increasingly uncomfortable with the Magic Wand’s reputation as a sex toy.  Hitachi…also makes…many other products, and it doesn’t want its brand name to be primarily associated with orgasms…[so it] had decided to stop manufacturing the Magic Wand altogether.  [US distributor] Vibratex, sensing the wailing, gnashing of teeth and possible rioting that would ensue if this came to pass, convinced the company to keep producing it, but remove the Hitachi name..in June, the Hitachi Magic Wand will be re-launched as the Original Magic Wand, with new packaging and a slightly different design…

Unlike ultra-puritan Apple and Paypal, Amazon and Hitachi are more than happy to profit from sex; they simply want their connection with it to be obscured.  Like writing “f**k”, this will fool exactly nobody and just makes those who indulge in the practice look juvenile and rather pathetic.  Obscuring or avoiding words while maintaining the reality to which those words refer is no different from my grandmothers whispering words like “cancer” or Harry Potter characters referring to Voldemort as “He Who Must Not Be Named”; it’s a primitive attempt to hedge off evil by keeping a taboo subject behind a veil.

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Pimping the Pimp

For the life of me I have never met a person even remotely like the stereotypical pimp, and yet I “know” they exist, largely because I have been told so over and over again.  -  Brooke Magnanti

Myths don’t just lay down and die; they take a whole lot of killing, and like Rasputin they often get right back up again after one thinks they’re done for.  After all, I’m sure most of you who remember the Satanic Panic thought it was gone for good once it was laid to rest in the mid-nineties; you couldn’t have known it would be back a decade later in a new guise.  So even though regular readers have watched me hack apart the myth that Nevada is sex work-friendly on several occasions, my axe will not rest until it’s completely dismembered and its mangled bits are burned together with the remains of the sex trafficking hysteria (with which it has become entangled the past few years).  The Nevada variety of the panic is even more fixated on the lurid, racist stereotype of the “pimp” than is typical in other places, and that is particularly evident in this article; every passage in which the word appears irresistibly brings into my mind the rather revolting image of a telephone interview in which the reporter-interviewer and cop-interviewee are both masturbating furiously while sharing the fantasy which any sex worker or ethical researcher will tell you has essentially no basis in fact whatsoever  despite its popularity with the aforementioned cops and reporters.  And now that I’ve infected you with that mindworm, let’s take a look at the work of fiction in question:

There was a time when the term “human trafficking” stirred images of Third World immigrants working their fingers to the bone in sweat shops, sewing the latest fashions at a warehouse in the garment district of some major American city…Over the past decade or so, however, the definition of human trafficking has been evolving to include the women working the bars, strip joints, dance clubs, outcall or escort services, massage parlors and street corners in search of tricks or johns.  And now a modern-day abolitionist movement that includes Las Vegas law enforcement officials, the state attorney general’s office, legislators and grass-roots activists — supported in many cases from local pulpits — wants to reclassify the pimps who dominate the world’s oldest profession as modern-day slave traders…

Reporter Tom Ragan wastes no time in packing as many distortions, dysphemisms, euphemisms and other departures from fact as he possibly can in his opening lines.  No, there was never a time when “human trafficking” meant sweatshops to the average American; in the ‘90s the term was largely used as a synonym for “people smuggling” (carrying willing but undocumented immigrants across borders for a fee), and when the panic was recycled from the old “white slavery” and Satanic panics by a coalition of neofeminists and religious fundamentalists in the first few years of this century, it was already synonymous with prostitution.  The direction of “evolution” in the narrative was from “sex trafficking” to labor trafficking rather than vice-versa, and that happened because governments recognized they could use it as an excuse for restricting immigration.  Cops use it as a way to get the feds to pay for their hooker-rolling parties, and prosecutors as a weapon with which to cage people for decades for consensual activities; they both love it as another means of gathering loot and for putting down uppity whores by pretending that we’re “dominated” by pimps despite the fact that few of us have even ever met a pimp, much less been “dominated” by one.  But by far the vilest bit of propaganda here is that word “abolitionist”, which is used by prohibitionists to pretend they’re all about “freeing” people when in reality they’re only interested in grinding peaceful adults under their boots and “helping” them into prison.  And given the highly-uneven racial application of every kind of prohibitionist law, including those against sex work, the word “abolition” in this context is a slap in the face to black Americans.

The next paragraph lauds AB 67, which I’ve already discussed, and contains this scintillating quote:

 “The heat is on the pimps; they’re just users and abusers,” said Alexis Kennedy, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas criminal justice professor…“And it’s important to address them first and foremost.  When you reduce the supply, you reduce the business.  The places that have been most successful are the ones who go after the customers and the pimps, not the prostitutes.”

Kennedy is either an ignoramus or a liar, and I honestly don’t know which is worse in an academic; there is no evidence that ANY criminalization strategy has ever reduced  prostitution, no matter who they “go after”.  Any fool could understand this; pimps are so rare that even if the law executed them all there would be no discernible effect on the trade, and since clients are just typical men every “end demand” strategy ends up targeting the hookers again anyhow.  “End demand” is effective at one thing, though: reinforcing the legal precedent that women are moral imbeciles who cannot be trusted to make decisions about sex.  This is briefly mentioned in the next section of the article, which contains its only good quote:

…Michael Horowitz, the conservative think tank fellow considered the father of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, has even harsher words for what has become of…the anti-trafficking movement…“Now it’s just one big federal entitlement program, and everybody is more worried about where they’re going to get their next grant and whether they are going to get it.”

But that is little more than an aside, and the story soon returns to sexier fare:

…the [Las Vegas] Police Department…painted a grim picture…in a pitch for a federal grant to combat human trafficking:  “Trafficking of minor girls to Las Vegas…for the purposes of prostitution, has and continues to be a highly desired destination for pimps”…

After that, the exercise devolves into a succession of hilariously-wrong claims and tortured, pearl-clutching statements.  Strip clubs are “where pimps/traffickers lure young women from…around the world to be groomed as ‘Exotic dancers.’  These pimps look to ‘Turn them out’ into a life of prostitution after exposing them to ways to sexualize their interaction with men through exotic dance.”  A prohibitionist “appears in churches…to recount horrific stories of abuse by pimps…[but] offers few details.”  Touring escorts are said to have been “trafficked into…Las Vegas, their bodies exploited and sold for sex.”  The words “daddy”, “family” and “bottom” are said to be “slang associated with prostitution”.  The Salvation Army’s profitable ($500,000) slice of the “anti-trafficking” pie is mentioned, and the incestuous interaction between vice cops and fundamentalist churches is described at length.  But while the prohibitionists compare whores to Biblical slaves (meaning the Hebrews in Egypt, not the slaves held “justly” by the Hebrews throughout the rest of the book), they ignore the fact that the founder of their religion enjoyed socializing with sex workers, and once said to his own culture’s equivalent of cops and government lawyers:  “Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.”  Amen.

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