Those who read my “2011 in Review” column may have noticed that after adjusting for several very popular picture searches, my second most popular column was “Ashley Madison”, published one year ago today; discounting those who viewed it on the home page, it was viewed 3569 times last year.  The reason for this is simple; upon seeing an ad for this con game disguised as a dating service, many people try to look it up online to see what others have to say about it.  Noel Biderman, the Toronto shyster who dreamed up this scam, anticipated this and acted accordingly:

Do a Google search for any phrase like “Ashley Madison scam”, “Ashley Madison fraud” or “Ashley Madison review” and you’ll find websites stocked with testimonials for the agency and either insinuating or outright stating that escorts carry venereal diseases.  Of course, as my regular readers know this is a crock of shit; escorts have a vested interest in staying clean, and promiscuous amateurs have far higher rates of every known STD.  Why are these sites so eerily similar and why do they all carry praise for the agency when their names suggest otherwise?  Because they’re all owned by Biderman, of course, as a quick whois search will reveal.  It took me a bit of diligent digging to find any REAL criticism of the agency…

What I found was revealed in last year’s column, and it’s not pretty; male customers have to…

…buy “credits” which are needed to do pretty much anything on the site (send a message, receive a message, start a chat, etc).  The agency employs a number of shills and/or robots which bombard male members with fake messages that cost credits to open, and sending messages to the fake “too good to be true” ads costs credits as well and goes nowhere…Everything is set up like a casino or a carnival con game, enticing the poor bastard to keep throwing good money after bad in a futile effort to get something for nothing.

Biderman has himself a sweet little racket going, but he couldn’t have anticipated that a certain website which exposes the swindle would end up as the second result from the top whenever someone Googles “Ashley Madison testimonials” (in fact, mine is the only site on the first page which isn’t owned by Biderman).  I’m also the first result on page two for the search “Ashley Madison scam”, and I’m sure you’ll get similar results by combining the agency’s name with words like “fraud”, “flim-flam”, “hustle”, “rip-off”, “shakedown” or “sucker game” (at least, you will now).

There are lots of hucksters out there pulling the wool over people’s eyes, so you may wonder why Biderman’s con in particular annoys me so.  There are two important reasons:  First, as I’ve stated many times, I think it’s reprehensible for a married man to cheat on his wife with an amateur, because she could jeopardize his whole marriage and even put his wife in danger, yet here is Biderman trying to convince people that the immoral course of action is moral and vice-versa.  Second, as I stated above, his fake “testimonial” websites all either imply or directly state the outrageous lie that escorts carry venereal disease while cheating housewives are somehow magically protected from viruses, spirochetes and even pthiridae via the prophylactic power of most holy matrimony.  As if that weren’t enough, he’s added other prohibitionist myths to his smear campaign in the past year; Aspasia recently sent me this photo of an Ashley Madison ad which Mariko Passion posted on her Facebook page.  Seven men a day, my high-priced fanny; that’s not “average” by any stretch of the imagination, except in the dirty minds of prohibitionists.  I only did that many in a day twice in my entire career, once in 2000 and again in 2005.  And though it may be true that the average woman has sex with seven men in her lifetime, the average woman doesn’t cheat on her husband either (and even the average cheating woman doesn’t hook up with random strangers on the internet).  As for that last line…92% of statistics are made up on the spot, eh Noel?

Now, sleazy Ashley Madison ads are nothing new; they’re practically a trademark.  But one has to wonder if Biderman hasn’t “lost his Ouija board” (as Grace would put it) on this one, reported in Huffington Post on December 20^th:

…Ashley Madison, a “pro-adultery” website whose slogan is “Life is short. Have an affair,” put up a billboard in Bucks County, PA, that “endorses” Newt Gingrich for president.  Gingrich has famously admitted to extramarital affairs in the past.  The billboard boasts a large picture of Gingrich, with the text, “Faithful Republican, Unfaithful Husband.  Welcome to the AshleyMadison.com Era”…site founder Noel Biderman explained further in a statement:

Now that Newt is the leading contender in the race for the GOP nomination, we felt compelled to make a point to illustrate how times have changed when a serial divorcee/adulterer is capturing the hearts of the American people.  Gingrich proves that marital fidelity has no bearing on someone’s ability to do a job.  Rather than judge him, Americans have finally embraced the reality that affairs are commonplace, and perhaps paradoxically, might be an indication of great leadership to come.  He is not the first nor last politician who will step outside of their marriage.

Of course, most smart politicians do their cheating with whores; those foolish enough to try it with amateurs risk losing everything, which makes them pretty much the same as other men…though Biderman would rather you forget that.

Moloch is the traditional (via the Bible) name for a Semitic god worshipped by the Canaanites, Phoenicians and Carthaginians.  There is some debate over whether the word is actually the name of the god himself, or else the type of sacrifice he demanded in times of crisis:  living human children thrown into a furnace at the base of the idol, sometimes in the shape of an open mouth.  Some historians dispute the scale of the practice, claiming that it was exaggerated by enemy writers, but there is little doubt of its historicity considering that it is described independently in Hebrew, Greek and Roman sources.  A cemetery in which the charred remains of such offerings were buried was called by the Hebrews tophet, a word which has since become synonymous with “Hell”.  And the name of Moloch has come to mean any institution or cause which requires a horrible sacrifice, especially of children.  Some Victorian writers used the name as a metaphor for industry which employed child labor, and modern America has its own Moloch:  our viciously-misnamed “justice” system, into the maw of which uncaring functionaries hurl kids by the thousands for the sake of a “war” as barbaric and ultimately futile as those lost by the Carthaginians over two millennia ago.

In the early ‘90s, politicians responded to rising crime rates with a number of measures designed to convince the Great Unwashed that they were “tough on crime”, including “three strikes” laws, wildly disproportionate sentencing and trying juvenile offenders as though they were adults.  And while some ruthless teenagers undoubtedly deserve more serious sentences than those available in the juvenile court system, most do not…and some states allow even prepubescent children (most of whom have not even achieved adult cognitive levels) to be tried and convicted as adults, with results that endure for decades if not for life.  Furthermore, this draconian “crackdown” occurred just as America was relapsing into a state of hysteria about sex, especially sex among legal minors; despite a total lack of evidence for the belief, the public and legal establishment became convinced that any kind of sexual contact (including mere conversations or the taking of nude or simply suggestive photos) before the magical age of 18 was inherently harmful, and that the older party – even if under 18 himself – was automatically “exploiting” the younger one, even if they were not in physical proximity to one another or the younger one was unaware of the sexual interpretation the older placed on such interaction.  This eventually led to the absurdity of charging teenagers with “child pornography” for “sexting” (because the little monsters should know better than to sexually exploit their innocent, childlike selves), and when combined with the nightmare of “sex offender registration” we arrive at a formula for mindless, destructive tyranny and child-sacrifice on a scale that would’ve made the Carthaginian priests avert their eyes in horror.

This article, which appeared in Time on January 8^th, gives some idea of the full scope of the injustice:

…more than one-third of the sexual abuse of America’s children is committed by other minors…these juvenile offenders pose a profoundly complicated challenge for the child-protection and criminal justice systems.  It’s a diverse group…encompassing a minority of youths who represent a threat…and a majority who are…unlikely to reoffend…[Our] public policy includes a federal law…with a requirement that states include…offenders as young as 14 on their sex-offender registries.  Many [experts]…object to the requirement, saying it can wreak lifelong harm on adolescents who might otherwise get back on…track…Some states have balked at complying…even at the price of losing some federal criminal-justice funding.  Other states have provisions tougher than the federal act, subjecting children younger than 14 to the possibility of 25-year or lifetime listings on publicly accessible registries that include [their] photos…Delaware recently [registered] a 9-year-old…Several other states have registered 12- and 13-year-olds.  ”We’re bringing down a very heavy hammer on the head of kids, with significant life-altering consequences,” said Marsha Levick…of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia.  ”It’s a knee-jerk reaction that’s foolhardy beyond imagination.”  [And] Nicole Pittman, a Human Rights Watch researcher…says states should halt the practice…”Most legislators do not believe children should be on the registry — yet it’s the kiss of death for most politicians to vote against any sex offender law,” she said.

…[A government] analysis…found that juveniles accounted for 35.6 percent of…[those accused of sex offenses]…against minors…93 percent [of them] were male [with an average age of 13]…and…59 percent [of “victims”] were younger than 12 and 75 percent were female.  The report referred to a popular misconception that juvenile sex offenders are likely to reoffend, and said numerous studies over the years have shown the opposite — that 85 to 95 percent of offending youth are never again arrested for sex crimes.  University of Oklahoma pediatrics professor Mark Chaffin…says efforts…are complicated by the tendency…to lump them together with adult sexual predators…”Now that the data has shown most of those assumptions were wrong, it’s difficult to undo those messages that people in the advocacy and treatment fields were putting out a generation ago.”

…While some youths commit violent, premeditated acts of sexual assault and rape, others get in trouble for behavior arising from curiosity, naivete, peer pressure, momentary irresponsibility, misinterpretation of what they believed was mutual interest, and a host of other reasons.  Some cases involve sibling incest; sometimes the offenders have autism or other developmental disorders that lessen their ability to self-police inappropriate conduct…sociologist David Finkelhor…of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center…[says the system] “…needs to differentiate between the kids we should stigmatize as little as possible…and others who need a lot of intervention…”

…The latest juvenile crime data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that arrests of juvenile sex offenders declined by about 25 percent from 2000 through 2009.  That would mesh with a decline in child sex abuse committed by adults, as well as a decline in the overall juvenile crime rate.  But data from New York City, Florida and elsewhere indicates that the prevalence of child-on-child sex hasn’t dropped noticeably.  In any case, forms of abuse evolve with the times as sexting becomes a common youth activity and easily accessible online pornography affects some children…”There’s a fear of technology — parents don’t think they can control it,” said Marsha Levick, who has been working…to dissuade prosecutors from criminalizing commonplace teen sexting activities…Nancy Arnow of Safe Horizon, a New York-based victim services agency…said the child-on-child sex abuse cases are among the most difficult.  ”We have to distinguish between sexualized behavior that might be pretty normal — experimenting, touching each other — versus molesting, subjecting another child to harm,” she said.  She recalled investigations of children as young as 7, and the arrest of an 8-year-old…

Another challenging type of abuse cases involves youths who are autistic…[Jay Deppeler, who runs a treatment program for adolescent male sex offenders,] recalled one autistic young man who…had committed a sex offense as a 14-year-old and later — after turning 18 — committed a property…offense…[he was then] obligated to apprise prospective employers of his full record, including the juvenile sex offense — making him “virtually unemployable…Long term, I fear his prospects are quite bleak,” Deppeler said.  ”What do we end up doing with a guy like that?”

Though there’s some good information in the article, it has a major flaw:  it doesn’t actually question any of the established “child sex abuse” narrative.  Oh, we’re told that the majority of the “offenders” are no real threat, but the assumption is still that they did something wrong and need “correction”.  The basic idea that it’s OK to punish someone for life for a non-lethal offense goes unchallenged, and though the article calls the belief in high recidivism among sex offenders a “misconception”, it wrongly qualifies the term with the adjective “juvenile” (in fact, adult sex offenders have a low recidivism rate as well).  Even Nancy Arnow, who clearly states that adolescent sexual experimentation is normal, feels compelled to add the qualifier “pretty” and to say it’s “difficult” to distinguish harmless activities from crime.  Adolescent sexual experimentation isn’t just “pretty normal”, it’s absolutely normal.  And there’s a very easy way to distinguish sex play from molestation:  did the supposed “victim” complain or draw adult attention via obvious stress or anxiety, or did some busybody adult discover the young people together and impose “exploitation” and “crime” paradigms on what was actually a harmless and mutually consensual activity?

One Year Ago Today

“Aggressive Ignorance” demonstrates the truth of James Baldwin’s statement that “ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”

What, you thought we were finished with updates for the month?  I’m getting so many of these now I’ll soon be changing the way I handle them; look for a new feature, “That Was the Week That Was”, coming next Saturday (February 4^th).  But in the meantime…

What the Hell Were You Thinking? (April 4^th, 2011)

I’ve suggested that amateur women protect themselves by taking tips from the pros, including checking in and out.  Well, somebody had the same idea:

…myDate…makes it easy to set-up a network…who will receive text and e-mail alerts should you not make it back from your date at a [predesignated] time…Provide details of your upcoming date, including where, when…contact information for the person you are going out with…[and] a check-in time…[when] you expect to be back home alone…If you don’t [check in]…text and e-mail alerts are sent to your [contact] list…if something goes wrong, you’ll have loved ones on your trail as soon as possible…if…you stay out longer than expected, you can always…change the check-in time…[or] cancel the whole thing if your date never shows up…

The main flaw in this is that the man doesn’t know about the “app” unless you tell him.  A callout does more than let others know your status; “it also sends a clear message to the man:  People know where I am and how long I’m supposed to be here…It’s difficult to stop someone who intends to commit a crime with malice aforethought; what basic protective measures do is to deter opportunistic crimes.  Locks prevent morally weak people from being tempted to easy thefts, and the knowledge that others know a woman is with him might stop a man with poor impulse control from succumbing to the desire to rape her.”

The Pro-Rape Coalition (April 14^th, 2011)

The evidence strongly indicates that as porn has become more available, the rates of rape and other sex crimes have decreased; some studies even suggest that porn is actually responsible for the drop.  Therefore, any politician who wants to increase the number of federal obscenity prosecutions is, whether he admits it or not, pro-rape.  Some of you might like to know the names of the current presidential candidates who want to see more American women raped, and XBiz is happy to oblige:

…Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have each pledged to enforce federal obscenity laws against major commercial distributors of hardcore adult pornography.  The pledges [were] compiled and published by Morality in Media [as] part of the organization’s…”War on Illegal Pornography”…None of the other…candidates nor President Obama has responded to efforts initiated by MIM to learn their views…

Sales Pitch (May 22^nd, 2011)

Sweden is so invested in selling itself as the “feminist” moral arbiter of the world that it’s willing to lie about the success of its eponymous model, pretending that it has greatly reduced both prostitution and the demand for it.  So I think it’s fair to consider this scandal (as reported in Feminist Ire) what the young people call an “epic fail”:

I posted…here…that, contrary to the claims of advocates of the Swedish model, brothels continue to thrive under the sex purchase ban.  Now, it seems that they’ve had a little bit of help from friends in high places:

A high-ranking civil servant in Sweden’s defence ministry has been sacked after it was revealed he was involved in running several Thai massage parlours on the side…The raids revealed that the wife of the defence ministry official operated three massage parlours in the Stockholm area and that he served as an alternate board member of the company that ran the operation.

And according to the Swedish Tax Agency,

“We have clear indications both in the trafficking of girls and that many deal with unreported wages and pay unreasonably low payroll taxes”.

This isn’t the first time a high-ranking official has been found to be personally involved in undermining Sweden’s claims to have all but eliminated trafficking and sex work.  Last year, the chief of police in Uppsala…was convicted on numerous charges including rape, purchasing sex, and “procuring” (translation: he was running a prostitution ring, involving underage girls).  And regular Swedish press reports prove that they have as many examples as any other country of police and government officers being (literally) caught with their pants down…What gets my goat is the deliberate deception of those Swedish officials who come to other countries and tell us…that it’s “impossible to run a brothel in Sweden” when your own fucking government official is running several of them – and when their tax non-compliance seems to be the main source of your interest in them…

The Punitive Mindset (October 20^th, 2011)

Remember how the unholy union of sadists and neofeminists are trying to ban porn in Connecticut prisons?  Well, as explained in this January 10^th article from Slate, it gets much worse:

…While you might think of masturbation as a sort of last refuge for the incarcerated…that is not the case.  In fact, a number of state prisons regard jerking off as a rule infraction…In North Carolina…it is a violation to “touch the sexual or other intimate parts of oneself  or another person for the purpose of sexual gratification”…Tennessee forbids “any behavior intended for the sexual gratification of the subject.”  Ohio prohibits “seductive or obscene acts, including  indecent exposure or masturbation.”  Kentucky regards inmate masturbation as “inappropriate sexual behavior.”  In California…masturbation is permissible provided it is stopped immediately if noticed by staff, blue balls be damned.  If the masturbator perseveres, even if concealed by bed sheets, he can be cited for “Intentionally Sustained Masturbation without Exposure.”    These policies are part of a long correctional tradition to forbid all forms of sexual activity…

In practice, inmates are seldom sanctioned, so long as they touch themselves discreetly.  In Connecticut, masturbation is against the rules only when performed “in a lewd and public manner.”  Other states have similar policies.  But the line between intentional and inadvertent exposure can be blurry in a context where inmates do not control their privacy and cells are sometimes defined as public places.  What’s more, some experts on prison sex contend that anti-masturbation and anti-porn policies in prisons are counterproductive because they effectively drive inmates to engage in risky sexual behavior…increased access to pornography—which goes hand-in-hand with increased access to one’s doo-dads—might be just what correctional facilities need to stem prison rape…

…the idea that sexual amenities could or should be part of the American correctional tradition never gained wide acceptance.  Prison policy…grew more punitive in the ’70s…Today only six states allow conjugal visits, down from more than a dozen two decades ago… [Another] new factor [is]…the female prison guard…women are steadily replacing men because prisons prefer to hire guards without criminal records and with some education beyond high school—both of which favor female applicants…[also] they can legally oversee housing units for both male and female inmates, whereas men often are permitted to guard and conduct pat-searches only on other men.  The result is that male inmates are accorded less privacy in which to masturbate than female inmates…

Prisons must also protect female guards from the hostile work environment…as established in a [2006 federal] case…The threat of sexual harassment is now also used as a justification for keeping porn out of prisons…Connecticut said explicit materials create a hostile environment for staff…[and] Pennsylvania’s 2006 ban was designed to improve working conditions for women…But…what if porn—and its natural consequence, masturbation—has the potential to deter sex crimes like prison rape?…a review paper on porn and sexual aggression from 2009 points out that as the availability of sexually explicit content has exploded in the Internet era, sex crimes have dropped nearly everywhere the matter has been studied.  That doesn’t match with the theory that using porn facilitates rape, and some researchers even argue that porn might have a protective effect, by giving people a safe outlet for pent-up desires…patients seeking treatment in sex offender clinics often say porn helps them restrict their urges to their imaginations rather than acting them out by force.  In effect, masturbation displaces rape…yet in prisons, Stone Age attitudes toward…sexuality still rule…Correctional officials may wish inmates were sexually inert, but a more pragmatic attitude might yield better results…

Ask yourself what kind of sick mind would want to be a female guard in a male prison, and I think you’ll understand where a lot of this “harassment” nonsense comes from.  Angry, sadistic neofeminists aren’t allowed to literally castrate men, but they want to get as close as possible.  And if their ridiculous demands cause more men to be raped, that’s just a bonus.

One Year Ago Today

“Wild Guessing (Part Two)”  dissects the Schapiro Group’s treatise on stealing grant money from worthwhile programs using lies, exaggeration and appeals to emotion.

A busybody is, by definition, one who cannot resist meddling in other people’s business even when his victim’s actions have absolutely no effect on him.  And because respect for the rights of individuals has generally increased since the late Middle Ages, busybodies (both those with political titles and those without) in “democracies” usually have to find ways to justify their meddling in order to keep the opinions of the masses in their favor (or at least divided enough to prevent unified opposition).  The chief means of doing this is via propaganda, and one of the chief targets of such busybodies is sex (especially commercial sex).  In the four stories we’ll look at today, the busybodies in the latter three use a very old moral panic (disease as punishment for “sin”) as an excuse for persecuting sex workers, but in the first con artists use a relatively new (130 years) moral panic (sex slavery) as a means of robbing busybodies.  Investigative reporter Andrew Drummond broke the story on January 6^th:

Officers of the Australian Federal Police were summoned to the Thai government  complex in Bangkok…and urged to look into [an] alleged fake rescue…by an Australian registered charity…The Brisbane based…”The Grey Man” [claimed to have] rescued 21 Akha hill tribe children and saved them from certain slavery in factories and brothels…[but a Thai government] investigation…found that the children never left their village…[they] were all living at home and were attending a school on a daily basis…under a special government fund [which provided] all their meals, uniforms and schoolbooks…The Grey Man [which is staffed by ex-special forces and former and active Australian policemen] issued an appeal for funds…after their claimed rescue…but on October 21 last year they removed all references to the rescue from their site and Facebook pages…[Their] president initially announced the rescue had taken place, then denied it again.  He later said his denial was to protect the children…

[Thai authorities are] investigating …breaches of both the Child Protection and Computer Crime Acts…It’s alleged that The Grey Man abused [and defamed] the children by putting their pictures up on the net and linking them with prostitution to raise cash…The Grey Man President John Curtis has claimed that the children and local community [were] intimidated by Thai government officials and his organization…[was] the subject of a vendetta by Thai [NGOs] because The Grey Man had shown that they were better [by rescuing] more than 140 children from sexual abuse in Asia…Also subject of the enquiry is an American registered charity “Children of South East Asia” (COSA)…[which] supplied the pictures…exhibited on [The Grey Man’s] Facebook site…

I hope the matter really was called to the attention of Thai authorities by another NGO; once these sleazy opportunists start fighting each other, all we have to do is sit back and watch.

The next item, also from Australia, is another look at the mining-community controversy we’ve seen before; what makes it interesting is the combination of so-called “health experts” spreading lies they have statistical proof are false, an unusual version of the “gypsy whore” myth and the paternalistic attitude of unnamed “community members” toward adult miners:

A prostitute from Queensland’s mining regions…[says] discrimination against her work was “disgusting” and putting sex workers in danger…[she says motel owners] “kick you out, no refund – regardless of whether you have one or seven days left”…she [also] said…the harsh treatment posed risks to sex workers and could force them on to the streets…The reports have…sparked concerns from health experts about the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.  They have also had community members concerned about the fiscal responsibility of high earning miners who appeared to be wasting money.  Late last year University of New England associate professor John Scott told Australian Mining there was no evidence to suggest a rise in sex workers translated to a rise in sexually transmitted diseases in the community.  He also said there had been no study to back up claims rural sex work had increased beyond normal levels.  “There hasn’t been any data on it, but my hunch is that it would not be epidemic in these areas,” he said.

The “dirty whore” myth appears again in this January 9^th article from the Daily Caller:

…The Korea Times reported that [a] survey of 500 South Koreans over age 60 determined that 66.2 percent are having sex, and that 53 percent of that group — or 35 percent of the survey group overall — said they pay for sex.  Paying prostitutes is illegal in South Korea…The Korea Herald reported on Sunday that more than half of the sexually active senior citizens said they buy anti-impotence pills, and 19.6 percent of them said they used sex toys.  The government-funded study also found that prostitution in South Korea is closely linked with sexually transmitted diseases.  One out of every eight interviewed  seniors suffered from gonorrhea…Prof. Chae Kyu-man of Sungshin Women’s University told another newspaper that the government “should induce them into venting their sex drive legally and in a healthy manner.”

Only one in eight have an STI while half see whores, so of course the disease must come from the whores rather than those good, clean amateurs the government wants to somehow force to have uncompensated sex with old men.  Of course, the government of South Korea is under considerable political and economic pressure from the U.S., so it lies for the same reason as “The Grey Man”:  profit.  The same is of course true of Michael Weinstein; the latest on his crusade appeared in the LA Weekly on January 10^th:

The L.A. City Council today said that yes, porn stars must wear condoms when performing within city limits.  The 11-1 vote means that a costly ballot initiative asking you, the voter, to approve just such a rule can be avoided.  The AIDS Healthcare Foundation…noted that the City Council’s approval seems to defy a move by City Attorney Carmen Trutanich to block the initiative in court…[on grounds that]…it would supersede the state’s authority over workplace safety enforcement…The industry is against condoms, arguing that…production will simply flee the city and perhaps go underground, where things would be more dangerous…Our industry source…said this law will not apply to studio shoots and will only affect off-site and “location” production…Diane Duke, executive director of the…Free Speech Coalition, sent the Weekly this response to today’s votes:

Performer health and safety is a priority for the adult film industry, which is why the industry’s standards and self regulations have been successful as represented by the industry’s low rate of STI transmission…Government regulation of film making would likely undermine existing health and safety efforts and industry standards that are effective as well as take the government into dangerous new territory.  This approach betrays our Constitution; it betrays the hard lessons we’ve learned in the 25-year fight against HIV/AIDS; and it betrays aggressive health and safety efforts in place that are proven and effective.

Given Weinstein and AHF’s history of using lies and grandstanding to line their own pockets, that brings us back full circle to the first item in today’s column.  And until the busybodies are prevented from interfering in other people’s lives, there will always be plenty of opportunities for con artists to capitalize on their deep-seated urge to meddle in things which are none of their business.

One Year Ago Today

“Wild Guessing (Part One)” is my debunking of a “study” by the Schapiro Group, a marketing firm which crows that its new “methodology” represents “a quantum leap forward in determining…the magnitude of the problem” of “child sex trafficking”.  And what is that ground-breaking methodology, you ask?  Why, guessing their ages of escorts from pictures they post online, of course.

Humans are obsessed with assigning blame.  To a degree, this is understandable; when something bad happens, we want to know why it happened, and if somebody caused it we want to know who so we can keep that person from doing it again.  Unfortunately, the preferred way of stopping harmful behavior is by inflicting even more harmful behavior on the guilty party and any “accomplices”; though some people are satisfied with one scapegoat, others seem to feel that it’s a shame to waste a perfectly good opportunity for violence and therefore want to accuse as many people as possible.  And still others (of whom an inordinate number seek employment with the police) seem wholly unconcerned with whether the victim of such “punishment” is actually the guilty party; they just want to inflict violence on somebody, and after all a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.  Or as the ever-clever Philippa expressed it, “The State wants an eye for an eye, but it doesn’t care whose eye.”  It’s much easier for such troglodytes to torture somebody they don’t like (or whoever’s convenient) than to actually have to go out and figure out who might really be guilty.  And if there’s a convenient (and preferably helpless) target handy, why trouble themselves any further?  Best just to get to the fun part.  My column of one year ago today provides a perfect example of this syndrome; faced with an unknown serial killer, the newspapers blamed an established villain (namely, Craigslist) and district attorney Thomas Spota blamed the victims.

Another, much weirder example of this appeared in Slate on January 6^th:

…I’ve written before about the fascinating research underway on the phenomenon of zoophilia and the reported 1 percent of the human population that feels a primary erotic attraction to other species.  Yet I’d absolutely no idea about the brutal oppression that not only zoophiles faced in centuries prior, but also the animals themselves that had been involved in their sordid affairs.  Today, I think, most people would feel sympathy for an animal that had been violated by a human being, but in the past, they were seen as being just as morally culpable as their sexual partners.  And while today’s zoophiles continue to face…jail time and fines…the “buggers” of the past were burned alive…Indeed, a panic over porking pigs grew so intense in Colonial New England that it became, for a time, the “other” witch-hunt.

…In 1646…a servant by the name of George Spencer…was executed for making love to his master’s pig.  He swore that he didn’t do it, but, unfortunately for Spencer, the sow happened to give birth to a deformed fetus (“a prodigious monster”) that resembled George a bit too closely for most people’s comfort…just like the pig fetus, this grumpy old man also had “butt one eye for use, the other hath (as itt is called) a pearle in itt, is whitish and deformed”…a fellow New Haven [Connecticut] citizen with the ridiculously unfortunate name of Thomas Hogg…found himself at the center of an intense buggery investigation when a neighborhood sow bore a deformed fetus with “a faire & white skinne & head, as Thomas Hogg is”…the governor and deputy governor personally frogmarched him out to the barnyard toward the sow in question and ordered him to “scratt” (fondle) the animal before their eyes.  This was done to gauge just how intimately familiar Hogg and hog might be.  “Immedyatly there appeared a working of lust in the sow,” the court records recount for us, “insomuch that she powred out seede before them.”  When Hogg reluctantly titillated the teats of a different sow, that animal showed no sign of returning his affections.

It wasn’t just pigs.  In the nearby colony of Plymouth…a 16-year-old boy named Thomas Granger…[was] indicted for taking indecent liberties with…“a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey”…There was little question in these righteous minds that the boy should be dispatched to the flames…but there was a lot of head-scratching…over which sheep, exactly, he’d been defiling.  This was vital to sort out, because if they executed the wrong sheep, they risked the unthinkable happening:  a monstrously bleating, hoofed prodigy might drop undetected onto Plymouth.  So, naturally, a line-up of busily masticating victims was staged for Granger.  With one trembling finger, the boy pointed out those five naïve, amber-eyed ruminants that had been targets of his secret woolly lust…

…the issue of animal consent has become central to the legal treatment of zoophilic behavior.  Injunctions against human-animal sex…now seem to derive from the question of whether a hog can ever really agree to make love to a Hogg…Can an animal be smart enough to give sexual consent to a human partner?  Even if it were smart enough, would it have means by which to express its desire?  The zoophiles themselves would say that it can…We no longer hold animals morally culpable for having sex with people, but we’ve now Bambi-fied domestic animals to the point that they’re regarded as sexless innocents…Disgust reactions aside, the challenge lies in teasing apart the animal’s actual consent to sex from the human partner’s mere perception of the animal’s giving consent—a perception that, like that of any erotically-charged mind, is prone to a dangerous confirmation bias.  Having said that, however…it’s not entirely clear that some animals, in some circumstances, cannot derive pleasure—even benefit—from sex with humans.  Anyway, it’s often the animals that are doing the penetrating…and in cases involving an erect horse penis the size of a small moped, exactly who’s being assaulted becomes difficult to sort out…

If you have time you may want to read the original, which is extremely funny.  But the portion I’ve quoted here is enough to make my point, which is that very little has changed; people and their governments are still sticking their noses into the private behavior of individuals and making a really big deal out of anything that involves sex.  Remember, the original reason for criminalizing bestiality had nothing to do with “cruelty” as it’s usually framed nowadays; nobody in the 17^th century gave a damn if a man whipped his horse half to death or slaughtered his livestock in some unnecessarily cruel way.  But let him, um, know his nanny goat in the Biblical sense, and it was the stake for both of ‘em.  And just as in the 17^th century, people still want to shift the blame (sometimes even to the victim) or spread it around to as many bystanders (innocent or otherwise) as possible.

Postscript

I have just a few more not-entirely-random thoughts on the bestiality thing I’d like to share.

First:  Yes, it’s icky, but someone doing something which is icky to most people  is insufficient grounds for sending armed thugs (who tend to behave in a pretty bestial manner themselves) to persecute him for doing it.

Second:  Readers with long memories may recall my writing that “…there are valid arguments for laws against adultery and bestiality that aren’t based in Christian morality, but we’ll leave that for another time.” The quoted essay makes the secular argument for prohibiting bestiality:  nonhuman animals, like children, are unable to give informed consent.  The secular argument for prohibiting adultery is simply that it’s a violation of a contract.

Third:  I’m highly doubtful that anything like 1% of the population is primarily attracted to other species, especially considering that only 2% of Furries admit to zoophilia.  I might believe that 1% of sexually broadminded people have had a cross-species sexual encounter, but primary attraction is (if you’ll pardon) a horse of a different color.

My column of January 10^th contrasted the religious views of prostitutes with the views of the religious toward prostitutes, and related the story of a priest who avoided dealing with a group of streetwalkers until chance (or perhaps God) forced him to see one of them as a real person.  Not all clergy need to be so pushed; in my column of last February 12^th I introduced Reverend Paul Turp, who spoke out against attempts by the Hackney council to put local strippers out of work by closing down their clubs, and in the comments for that January 10^th column The Dudes are Emerging pointed out two stories about another member of the London clergy who feels called to reach out to sex workers, Sister Lynda Dearlove.

As Dudes remembered, I have great respect for nuns; in one of my earliest columns I wrote:

Like many Catholic girls…from south Louisiana, I attended an all-girl Catholic high school run by nuns.  And though my path is quite different from theirs and would undoubtedly horrify most of those good ladies, I have nothing but respect for them as a group…the education they gave me has served me well, and despite our different philosophies and spiritual beliefs we have in common a decision to pursue a life different from that of most women in modern society…one of my [favorite] teachers…[was a nun who] first exposed [me] to the idea that there are many paths to God, and we are called upon to follow the one which our hearts tell us is right despite what others might think.

I imagine that Sister Lynda, profiled in this article from the Guardian of January 5^th, would agree:

…Sister Lynda [is] a nun [dedicated] …to working with  sex workers in one of London’s most notorious red-light districts, King’s Cross.  And just like the convent, the “safe house” [she] has set up is women-only.  ”Women operate differently, and it helps street prostitutes – just as it helps nuns – to have a space that they know will only have women in it,” she says.  Women at the Well – the project’s name comes from a gospel story in which Jesus meets a woman at a well who is living in an “irregular” relationship, and refuses to judge her for it – looks like just another anonymous hotel [on the outside]…But…inside… there are bright, cheerful paintings on the walls, a cafe and a clothes store, a computer room and lots of [showers] with body lotion and fluffy towels.  “The women who come here can have counselling, and help with finding accommodation, but we also offer massages and manicures and the chance to get your hair done,” explains [Sister] Lynda.  ”Most of these women have never had…any pampering in their life; what we’re doing is helping them see that they matter too, that they have permission to care about themselves.  The thing most of them most want is simply a long, hot shower…”

Most of the women who come here…have had desperately disadvantaged lives.  ”Typically they’re in their 30s through 50s, and they’ve been involved in prostitution since they were teenagers.  Many have mental-health problems; the majority didn’t finish school, and almost none of them grew up in stable families.  I’m not saying there’s only one sort of background for prostitution – you do see women who come from much more advantaged backgrounds, but that’s far less usual…”  What Women at the Well aims to provide…is something most of its clients…have…no experience of…the sense of being part of a family.  ”That’s what we’re trying to do that’s different from the other services the women might access,” she says.  ”Ours is a very holistic service, and we aim to give the women a place where they feel genuinely valued, looked after and cared about.”

…women using the centre are [also] offered sexual health advice.  This is a treading-on-eggshells issue for a project run by a Catholic nun – but it’s clear that [Sister] Lynda operates as close to the wire as she possibly can without invoking the ire of the Catholic hierarchy.  ”We enable women to have contact with sexual health services because they’re in a high-risk occupation,” she says.  ”It’s important to deal with it effectively, just as we aim to deal effectively with their mental and physical health…[I was] heartened by the Pope’s recognition  that within the context of prostitution, using a condom is primarily about the intention to reduce the risk of infection and an assumption of responsibility”…For some years she ran a shelter for homeless people: but gradually she realised there was one group of clients the shelter wasn’t [caring] for.  ”Those women were street prostitutes, and they were the most disadvantaged group of all – and in a shelter that was dominated by men and their needs, the women simply weren’t being heard,” she says.  What angered her on these women’s behalf was that as disadvantaged children they had been seen as “deserving” – whereas once they were effectively forced into prostitution, society ceased to care.  ”One minute they’re ‘children in need’ and we’re trying to help them, the next minute they’ve turned 18, we’ve failed to help, and suddenly it’s all their own fault.”

Women at the Well is funded from a variety of sources, including the Sisters of Mercy [Sister Lynda's order].  ”My fellow sisters were happy to back me – they believed, as I believe, that this is the work our order’s founder, an 18^th-century Irishwoman called Catherine McAuley, set us up to do…She worked with women in extreme need, just as I do.”  Other funding comes from grants and individual donors, with around a fifth coming from central government…Over the last three years Sister Lynda has become increasingly respected among those who champion the rights of sex workers – in 2010 she was awarded the MBE, and last year she was nominated for an International Women of Courage award…

The reporter can’t quite resist some subtle editorialization and injecting an Olympics angle which, though not directly stated, implies a “human trafficking” connection.  But Sister Lynda herself doesn’t buy into propaganda, as demonstrated by this two-year-old article from the Islington Tribune:

…the streets of King’s Cross are a safer place for all thanks to…Sister Lynda Dearlove…[a] 51-year-old [Roman Catholic nun] who was awarded an MBE in the New Year Honours List…she has witnessed first-hand the problems the women face during regular night patrols around the area…[Sister Lynda said,] “There is no religious judgment.  We just aim to improve the quality of people’s lives and to break down the barriers for these women…We offer training but also help to empower women by raising their personal confidence.  A lot of time they just need someone to treat them with respect – many of them have been looked down on by everyone they have met.”

…The drop-in centre provides a range of support and employment advice services for more than 150 prostitutes each year…Sister Lynda said crack cocaine is a “massive problem” for prostitutes in King’s Cross and backed [government] proposals…to open a…drug clinic in the south of the borough.  She said:  “Of most of the women we meet on the street, very few are working with pimps.  It is not organised at all and…many of these women are self-medicating with crack, which is a psychological addiction – it means their mental health becomes an issue.

“I am absolutely for decriminalisation of prostitution.  One of the main problems for prostitutes is that they become locked in a cycle and much of that has to do with these women going in and out of prison.  [Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs)], which are used to police prostitution, are a big issue.  We have a positive relationship with the police, but ASBOs are easily breached and often women find themselves in custody…Then there are CRB [Criminal Record Bureau] checks.  If a prostitute comes to us and she applies for a job, for example as a cleaner in a hospital, she will be CRB checked and not even given an interview.  For many it feels like there is no escape, but there are ways out and we can show them that…”

Perhaps one day some members of the American clergy will develop the courage necessary to follow the example of people like Sister Lynda and Reverend Turp, both in reaching out to sex workers and in speaking up against the evil propaganda which supports the continued criminalization of sex work, and thereby makes the lives of all sex workers (especially those at the subsistence level) far more difficult and dangerous than a more just society would tolerate.

One Year Ago Today

“January Updates” reports on the death of a German porn star, Marriott’s announcement that its hotels will no longer offer in-room porn, and British police tricking female activists into sex in order to bust them.

One year ago today I published “Numerology”, my most-viewed post of all time (discounting the three with extremely popular illustrations).  As of today it has been viewed 3790 times, and that doesn’t count all the times it was viewed on the home page.  I’m really quite proud of that article because as far as I know it’s the only realistic estimate ever done of the number of professional whores in the United States; previous estimates either counted only streetwalkers (and were therefore far too low), or else presented wild guesses dressed up as facts.  Despite what the trafficking fanatics claim, figures based on sound methodology and realistic estimates are very important, unless of course one wants to sound like an idiot by claiming that about one in ninety teenage girls in America is a “sex slave”, that the number of “sex slaves” in the world exceeds the population of Australia by a considerable margin, or that there are as many one-year-old hookers as 25-year-olds.

So, I’ve decided to observe this column’s first birthday by presenting a catalog of other essays and studies, both mine and others’, arranged by title, with a short description after each.  I hope it proves especially useful to those of you who are writing essays of your own or debating prohibitionists and need a convenient list of supporting materials.

All Shapes and Sizes:  Basic data on the size and shape of human genitalia.

Amazingly Stupid Statements:  My answers to a number of common non-statistical prohibitionist arguments.

As Young As Possible:  My debunking of The Schapiro Group’s Atlanta “study”.

Bad Fantasy, Good Reality:  The truth about 10% of women declared “trafficked sex slaves” by the U.S. State Department.

Bad Jobs:  The ten most depressing jobs in the U.S.; sex work is not among them.

The Ban on Purchasing Sex in Sweden:  The So-Called “Swedish Model” by Bob Wallace, Principal Policy Officer, Office of the Prostitution Licensing Authority of Queensland (See Down Under)

Beyond Gender: An Examination of Exploitation in Sex Work by Suzanne Jenkins (See Out of Context)

Bone of Contention:  Contains links to a few different (but very similar) estimates of the percentage of all prostitutes who work on the street.

By the Numbers:  An analysis of how Prostitution and the Sex Discrepancy in Reported Number of Sexual Partners (see below) supports my estimate of the total U.S. prostitute population.

Chupacabra:  Demonstrates that the fraction of prostitutes with abusive, controlling pimps is almost the same as the number of women in the general population with abusive, controlling husbands/boyfriends; also links statistics of underage girls with pimps.

Coming and Going:  Contains a calculation of the annual amount of money the state of Texas wastes on incarcerating prostitutes.

A Commentary on “Challenging Men’s Demand for Prostitution in Scotland” by  Teela Sanders et al (See A Load of Farley)

The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in New York City by Ric Curtis,   Meredith Dank, et al (The John Jay Study; see A Narrow View and Water Seeks Its Own Level)

The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico  by Richard Estes and Neil Weiner (See A Tale That Grew in the Telling)

Counterfeit Comfort:  Reports on the cost and ineffectiveness of sex offender registries.

Deconstructing the Myth of Careful Study:  A Primer on the Flawed Progression of the Child Pornography Guidelines by Troy Stabenow (a scathing critique of federal guidelines for “child pornography” sentencing)

Dirty Whores:  Statistics on STI transmission and the shocking rate by which the infection rate in promiscuous amateurs exceeds that in professionals.

Dirty Whores (update):  Statistics on the rise of STIs among British amateurs, including the admission that sex workers are not an important vector of such infections.

Dog Bites Man:  Reports on Catherine Hakim’s study which demonstrates that the rate of hypergamy (“marrying up”) among Western women has actually increased since the 1940s.

Don’t Buy It:  My debunking of the notion that major sporting events are accompanied by a rise in prostitution (with links to evidence).

Down Under:  My synopsis of The Ban on Purchasing Sex in Sweden (see above)

The Growing Moral Panic Over Prostitution and Sex Trafficking by Ronald  Weitzer:  I think the title is self-explanatory.

Handy Figures:  A compilation of figures which appeared in other columns, with links.

Harm Reduction (May update one):  Links to a study showing that Portugal’s decriminalization of drugs actually reduced their use.

Human Trafficking, Sex Work Safety and the 2010 Games: Assessments and Recommendations by the Sex Industry Worker Safety Action Group:  An exhaustive study which conclusively demonstrates that there is absolutely no correlation between mega sports events and either sex trafficking or a dramatic increase in prostitution (See Don’t Buy It).

Imaginary Crises:  My report on Christina Hoff Sommers’ debunking of the claim of a “rape epidemic” on American university campuses.

In Their Own Words:  A short list of very telling quotations from neofeminists.

John Jay Study:  See The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in New York City

July Q & A:  Reports on surveys of favorite sexual positions, by percentage of respondents.

The Law of Averages:  My calculation of the real average age at which American prostitutes enter the trade, with a link to Emi Koyama’s debunking of the “average entry at 13” propaganda.

A Load of Farley:  My debunking of Melissa Farley’s work in general and “The Growing Demand for Prostitution” in particular, with links to other articles debunking her as well.

Lying Down With Dogs:  Contains an unflattering list of all countries in which prostitution is criminalized.

Meretrices and Prostibulae:  A glossary of the many types of whores found in ancient Rome.

A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse by  Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch and Robert Bauserman:  A vilified, censured study which demonstrates that (contrary to popular belief) consensual sexual contact does no psychological or emotional harm to most legal minors.

More Q & A:  What percentage of men see prostitutes?

Mortality in a Long-term Open Cohort of Prostitute Women by John Potterat, et al:  Study of streetwalker mortality rates misquoted by Melissa Farley (see A Load of Farley) to claim that “the average prostitute dies at 34″.

The Mythology of Prostitution by Ronald Weitzer:  A general critique of neofeminist anti-prostitute propaganda

A Narrow View:  Introduces the John Jay study (Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in New York City, see above), which demonstrates that few underage prostitutes have pimps.

New Directions in Research on Prostitution  by Ronald Weitzer (See Out of Context)

Not an Addiction and Neither Addiction nor Epidemic:  Debunking the notion of “sex addiction”.

Out of Context:  Quotes and links several studies of sex worker satisfaction and reveals the sources of many of the false claims made by prohibitionists about sex work.

The Pigeons Come Home:  A synopsis of Calum Bennachie’s complaint to the APA about Melissa Farley (see below), with links.

Pimps:  Contains my calculation of the fraction of prostitutes controlled by abusive pimps.

Pornography, Public Acceptance and Sex-Related Crime: A Review by Milton Diamond:  Demonstrates that as availability of porn increases, sex crimes decrease.

Pornography’s Effects: The Need for Solid Evidence by Ronald Weitzer:  A review of two neofeminist anti-porn screeds (by Karen Boyle and Gail Dines)

The Pro-Rape Coalition:  Contains statistics (with links) demonstrating the positive effects of porn on society.

The Proper Study:  Explains why there are so many bogus prostitution studies and links a number of good ones.

Prostitution and Sex Crimes by Kirby  Cundiff:  Demonstrates that sex crimes decrease when prostitution is decriminalized and predicts a 25% decrease in rape if it were decriminalized in the U.S.

Prostitution and the Sex Discrepancy in Reported Number of Sexual Partners by  John Potterat et al:  Contains a census of streetwalkers and demonstrates that most male infidelity is conducted with prostitutes.  (See By the Numbers)

The Punitive Mindset (update):  Links to a number of resources on the subject of masturbation in prison, including laws restricting it, statistics on female guards in male prisons and studies (including Pornography, Public Acceptance and Sex-Related Crime) demonstrating that pornography reduces rape.

Request to APA to revoke Melissa Farley’s Membership by Calum Bennachie  (See The Pigeons Come Home)

Sales Pitch:  My synopsis of The Swedish Sex Purchase Act:  Claimed Success and Documented Effects (see below)

Schadenfreude:  Contains a number of links to material detailing the abuses heaped upon sex workers by those who claim to be “rescuing” them.

A Short Glossary of Prohibitionism:  I think this is self-explanatory.

The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking  by Ronald Weitzer:  I think this is also self-explanatory.

The Soft Weapon:  Synopsizes and links the Village Voices’s debunking of Schapiro Group “studies”.

The Swedish Sex Purchase Act: Claimed Success and Documented Effects by  Susanne Dodillet and Petra Östergren  (See Sales Pitch)

A Tale That Grew in the Telling:  My debunking of the Estes & Weiner study (The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, see above), from which so much “trafficking” propaganda is derived.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (update):  Reports the latest absurd lies about “sex trafficking”.

Terminology and More Terminology:  Short glossaries of terms used by hookers, both online and off.

A Thousand Words:  A visual demonstration of why “trafficking” fanatics should support decriminalization.

Validation:  Describes Jennifer Hafer’s University of Arkansas study, which demonstrates that most women make a rational decision to enter prostitution.

Validation (update):  Describes Nick Mai’s study, which debunks several key aspects of trafficking propaganda.

The View from the North:  Links to a Canadian study which demonstrates that “most prostitutes are consenting adults who do the work to pay the bills like any other job, that only about 15% are streetwalkers, and that very few are forced into the work by men.”

Village Voice Strikes Again:  My synopsis of Village Voice’s attack on Ashton Kutcher’s spurious claims about “sex trafficking”.

Waking Up:  Contains a short synopsis of data from several studies on the attitudes of female university students toward sex work.

Water Seeks Its Own Level:  A synopsis of information from the John Jay Study (“The typical [underage hooker] is not a tween girl, has not been sold into sexual slavery, and is not held captive by a pimp“) and Nick Mai’s study (“Most foreign prostitutes in London are not trafficked and choose to sell sex because it earns more money than other jobs“).

We Told You So:  Reports on U.S. government findings of waste, fraud and abuse among groups who receive anti-trafficking grants.

Where are the Victims?  The Credibility Gap in Human Trafficking Research by  Johnny McGaha and Amanda Evans:  I think this title is also self-explanatory.

Who Watches the Watchmen?:  Quotes and links a study showing that only a miniscule percentage of “missing” minors are actually abducted.

A Whore in the Bedroom (November 2011 update):  Describes and links a study showing that a husband’s sexual satisfaction is the single greatest indicator of whether a marriage will succeed.

Wild Guessing (Part One) and Wild Guessing (Part Two):  My debunking of the Schapiro Group’s “study” for the Dallas Women’s Foundation.

Other Resources (PDF)

The Epic of Gilgamesh
Fredrick Federley’s Anti-Swedish Model Speech to the Riksdag (May 12th, 2011) translated by Michael Goodyear
The Himel Decision (September 28th, 2010) overturning prostitution law in Ontario (complete text)
The Power of the Powerless by Václav Havel
The Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, June 2011 (recommends decriminalization of drugs in all countries)
Twenty-One Different Frameworks of Sex Work Law and Still Counting by Cheryl Overs (various ways of categorizing legalization status)

Oddly enough, I received these two questions within minutes of one another; I felt both of them might be of interest to many readers.

I am currently in a relationship with a woman I care for very much, but sexual intercourse is painful for her.  She has no problem getting naturally lubricated and aroused, but upon initial entry she experiences pain which soon reduces to discomfort but never completely stops.  She is always encouraging me to finish fast, which can be a problem as I tend to take a long time (30-45 minutes) due to being less sensitive from circumcision.  I’ve tried lubricant, oral sex, cowgirl position to allow her control (but she prefers doggy style), long massages to relax her, etc but nothing works.  I cannot discuss this with her because she’s a bit shy about it (we live in an Asian country).  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

It sounds to me as though your lady has a physical problem of some sort.  Human sexual anatomy, especially female anatomy, is complex and there are any number of minor issues which might not be noticeable to her outside of intercourse.  What she needs is to take the problem to her gynecologist; I understand this may be difficult for you to bring up to her and equally difficult for her to admit to the doctor, but if she becomes aroused and has no psychological aversion to sex, it’s almost certainly something physical and a doctor may be able to help her clear it up.  Some young women never visit a gynecologist until they become pregnant; if your girlfriend is among them, she might seek a referral from her mother or an older sister or friend rather than just picking one blindly (assuming one is allowed to choose one’s own physician in your country).

Even after her problem is overcome, though, I need to tell you that 30-45 minutes of intercourse is excessive for most women.  Men hear or read that women like sex to last a long time and think that means we want to be pounded for hours; with rare exception, that simply isn’t true.  For women, “sex” means the whole experience, not just intercourse; when we say we want it to last a long time we mean a long time from going into the bedroom to leaving it again, NOT a long time between penis entering vagina and being withdrawn again.  For most women, five to ten minutes of actual rooting is plenty, and the longest preference any woman has ever expressed within my hearing was about twenty minutes.  Even experienced ladies like me tend to start getting raw after that, and exceeding a woman’s comfort threshold can become very painful very quickly; the body just wasn’t designed to take more than about 20 minutes of intercourse because it’s already 2-5x longer than most men need.

Your difficulty in climaxing in a timely fashion has nothing to do with your being circumcised; 95% of the men I’ve been with were circumcised and had no such problem.  It could be some physical abnormality, but in my experience most such issues in men are psychological rather than physical.  Men often worry so much about finishing “too fast” that they go exactly the opposite way, which causes just as many (if not more) problems than premature ejaculation.  So while your lady is checking with her doctor, you also need to work on focusing your attention during intercourse on what you’re doing rather than anything else, and recognizing that she sincerely means it when she tells you it’s better for her if you finish quickly.

A few nights ago I was taking a long walk through a poor neighborhood when a homeless young woman (early 20s) asked me for spare change.  I very often give $5-$10 to homeless people, but I had no cash and so couldn’t help her.  Walking away, I wondered if she would sell sex (I could have gone to an ATM).  The most I could have offered her would have been about $50 US.  It’s a fantasy of mine to hire a real escort, but if this young woman had agreed I would have felt shabby, and worse, exploitative. This puzzles me because in principle it’s the same as any other sex work, which I have never thought of as being demeaning to the worker or a matter of shame for the john.  Perhaps you can untangle this for me.

It’s difficult for even the most freethinking individual to escape influence from the culture in which he is embedded.  You hear all the time nowadays that for a man to hire a woman for sex is “exploitation”, and even if you don’t believe that consciously it’s hard to shake completely.  Add to that your natural generosity (which might unconsciously rebel at the thought of attaching “strings” to your charity) and the fact that since she didn’t suggest sex first, you might feel like a cad for “tempting” her into doing something “wrong” (cultural influence again) with the lure of money.

From a practical standpoint, it’s probably a bad idea for a man to be the one who suggests a commercial sex transaction to a woman he isn’t absolutely sure is a professional; you don’t want to insult her, and if she’s never done it before and ends up hating herself for it, it’s much better for all involved if it was her idea rather than someone else’s.

One Year Ago Today

“A Manufactured War” demonstrates that CNN’s participation in the promotion of “sex trafficking” hysteria is only the latest example of the tradition of “yellow journalism” started in the last few decades of the 19th century by people like William Randolph Hearst.

Though the popular conception of the Victorian Era is that it was a time of very repressive sexual morality, one must never lose sight of the fact that this was only among those of the middle class.  The upper and lower classes were every bit as randy as they had ever been; roughly 8% of the female population of London were prostitutes, and the 19^th century saw the third great flowering of courtesans in Europe (the previous two being Golden-Age Greece and 16^th-century Venice).  And in the second half of the century the advent of mass communications, rapid transit and the modern financial system made it increasingly possible for strong-willed women like Lola Montez and Mata Hari to capitalize on their sex appeal, attracting wealthy patrons as actresses had since ancient times:  on the stage.

Clara Ward was born in Detroit, Michigan on June 17, 1873; her father was Eber Ward, a millionaire who made his fortune in lumber, mining, steel, shipping and rail.  He died of apoplexy (brain hemorrhage) when Clara was two, and the bulk of his fortune passed to Clara’s mother Catherine (née Lyon), his second wife.  Since she was only 31 (Ward was thirty years her senior) she soon remarried to Alexander Cameron, a Canadian lawyer she met in New York City.  The family moved to Toronto, and at 15 Clara was sent to school in London.  In the autumn of 1889 her mother took her on a tour of Europe in order to find her a noble husband, and in Nice they met Prince Joseph de Caraman-Chimay of Belgium, whom she married in Paris on May 19, 1890.  This sort of arrangement was not unusual at the time; an impoverished European noble married a wealthy (but common) heiress, and she gained a title while he gained a fortune.  It was a mutually beneficial match; Clara became only the second American-born princess (the first was George Washington’s great-grandniece Catherine Gray, who had married Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew), and she paid off her husband’s debts (to the tune of $100,000) and repaired his crumbling chateau (a further $300,000).

Clara bore her husband two children, Marie Elizabeth and Joseph Anatole (in 1891 and 1894 respectively), but this quiet, settled period was not to last long; she was beautiful, voluptuous and inconstant and had attracted the attention of King Leopold II.  As one might expect, the Queen was unhappy about this and the Princess de Caraman-Chimay soon found herself persona non grata in Belgian society.  The Prince therefore moved his family to Paris, where things only got worse; while dining at a fine restaurant, Princess Clara became enamored of the Gypsy violinist, Rigó Jancsi.  After only a few secret trysts she ran away with him in December of 1896, and her husband was granted a divorce on January 19, 1897.  The paparazzi, who had been intrigued by her since her engagement to the Prince was first announced, followed the couple across the continent to Budapest, where a pastry chef named a rich chocolate dessert after Rigó in order to capitalize on the publicity.

Her mother, on the other hand, was deeply ashamed by the press’ attention to her daughter’s escapade and disinherited her; Rigó (whom she married in 1898) had no money, and the divorce court awarded her abandoned husband the children and alimony of $15,000/year (half of her income from her father’s estate).  The Princess (she used the title until she died) had to come up with a way of making large sums of money fast, and like most women throughout history she relied on her sex appeal to do it.  Capitalizing on her notoriety, she contracted with the Folies Bergère and Moulin Rouge to pose on stage wearing skin-tight costumes while Rigó played the violin.  Though she literally did nothing but stand absolutely still (the general term for such a performance is tableau), the novelty, her fame and her beauty attracted sufficient attention for her to take the act on tour, and she made $6800 ($176,000 in 2012 dollars) in Berlin that April.  She modeled for photographers, licensed her image on postcards, and accepted money for “private performances”, which caused frequent and bitter arguments with Rigó; they separated in 1900. Her next husband was Giuseppe “Peppino” Ricciardi, an Italian tourist agent in Paris whom she married in June of 1904 and divorced in 1911.  Her last husband was her chauffeur, Abano Caselato, to whom she was still married when she died of pneumonia at her Italian Villa on December 18^th, 1916.

Idylle Princière by Toulouse-Lautrec, depicting Clara and Rigó Jancsi

Like so many courtesans, the Princess died very young (only 43), but unlike most the names of her lovers (other than Leopold II and her four penniless husbands) are completely unknown.  They must have been quite wealthy, though; despite her enormous expenses, steep alimony and lack of visible income after about 1906, she left a fortune of $1,124,935.96 in cash and about $50,000 in real estate (over $23 million in 2012 dollars).  Ironically, her will dated to just after her marriage to Ricciardi and she had never changed it after their divorce, so he inherited a third of her estate (her two children got one-third each).  In a way, she was like the Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian of her time:  a wealthy sex symbol with no discernible talent who parleyed her highly-publicized sex life into a career as a model and “reality star”.

One Year Ago Today

“Walking Stereotype Sues Whore” may be the most self-explanatory column title I’ve ever used.

In Ionesco’s 1959 absurdist play Rhinoceros (filmed in 1973 with Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder and Karen Black), the inhabitants of the characters’ town begin turning into rhinoceroses.  Though the cause is not explained, there is a strong implication that the transformation is at least partially voluntary, because the more people change the more others join them.  At first the townspeople are outraged, but by the end of the play everyone has become a rhinoceros except for the protagonist, Berenger, who considers joining the rhinos but just can’t force himself to change.  The play is generally interpreted as a political allegory; no matter how ridiculous a mass movement is (Ionesco probably had fascism and communism in mind), nor how ugly and destructive it makes its adherents, it will often continue to grow in popularity until many who once opposed it now defend and may even join it.

The metaphor popped into my head on January 5^th while reading the comments on Laura Agustín’s column of the previous day; one of the commenters stated that she knows a sex worker who accepts some of Melissa Farley’s monstrous lies, and I replied:

A lot of sex workers buy into the “trafficking” mythology as well; I’ve read many comments and emails from such women who look around for where the “anti-trafficking” fingers are pointing and fail to realize that the supposed “sex slaves” are them and their friends and associates.  It rather reminds me of Ionesco’s absurdist play Rhinoceros, in which the people who haven’t turned into rhinoceroses begin to perceive themselves as ugly outsiders.

It should be obvious that moral panics, like Ionesco’s “Rhinocerism”, are psychologically contagious; most people who are exposed to them are essentially brainwashed into accepting them, the victims of their own herd mentality.  And so insidious is their influence that even some people who should know better are drawn into them, making whatever rationalizations are necessary to resolve the cognitive dissonance caused by the conflict of their knowledge and their desire to go along with the crowd.  Thus many escorts, who intellectually know that the notion of prostitutes as coerced “sex slaves” is ridiculous, accept the “trafficking” hysteria by rationalizing that there is indeed an epidemic of “human trafficking” in other countries, or among streetwalkers, or in other places they conveniently never visit.  Some of them even accept the outrageous claims of numbers and ages, egotistically assuming that they are part of some supposed elite of “free” hookers despite the fact that every other whore they know is equally “free”.  Some even spin idiotic conspiracy theories in which there is a secret network of pimps who magically “get” girls and secretly control them without clients or other escorts being any the wiser.  Many clients, too, are caught up in the hysteria; they worry that girls they hire might be secretly “pimped”, and that patronizing them somehow contributes to that prohibitionist devil, “demand”.

There is only one way to fight this contagious fantasy, and that is by rejecting the entire “trafficking” paradigm.  In a September 2010 essay entitled “Willing Brides and Consenting Homosexuals” Cheryl Overs pointed out the danger of ceding any ground to the prohibitionists on this issue:

…I have noticed emergence of a new term “willing sex workers”.  The danger here is that this term signifies that even those who support decriminalisation of sex work are now accepting the trafficking paradigm by repositioning willing sex workers as a subset of this broader category “sex worker/victim of trafficking or sexual exploitation”…The implications of this slow but clear shift are enormous.  Health and human rights promoting programmes…can now be seen as applicable only to “willing sex workers” while  “unwilling” sex workers deemed to be trafficked or sexually exploited need raids, rehabilitation and anti-trafficking programmes.

Perhaps the most depressing thing about this is that sex workers themselves and other well-meaning folks are buying into the trafficking paradigm…I am not going to argue about how many people are forced into sex work, but even in that overstudied  “hotbed of sex trafficking” Cambodia, the only credible study [showed that] less than 2% of sex workers say they had been sold or coerced (CACHA 2008).  How might this compare to the percentage of married women who were forced into marriage – even in the “hotbeds” of forced marriage?  What percentage of gay men have been forced into sodomy?  We don’t know, but clearly both happen.  But it would be absurd to preface the words “bride” and “gay man” with “willing” or “consenting”.  Can you imagine reports that say that condoms should be distributed to “consenting homosexuals”?  Can you think of anything more absurd, more homophobic or more stigmatising?  Can you think of anything more absurd than describing Kate Middleton as a “willing bride”?  Positioning “willing” and “unwilling” doesn’t contribute to justice for people who have been raped, beaten [or] imprisoned in the course of either marriage [or] homosexuality and no one would suggest that.  Nor would anyone suggest that rejecting the terms “willing brides” and “consenting homosexuals” amounts to a denial that those things happen.  Yet this is exactly what the trafficking paradigm sets out for sex workers…

Perhaps the highest priority for the sex workers rights movement should be…to reject the entire paradigm of trafficking and sexual exploitation.  Only by doing this can we focus on convincing the public and policy makers that public health, human rights and social development outcomes for sex workers depend on justice for all…our slogan says it perfectly – “only rights can stop the wrongs.”

Those with long memories may recognize her point as essentially similar to the one I made in my New Year’s Day column for 2011:  “It isn’t necessary to have an adjective to describe every way in which a given person isn’t  unusual; we assume the usual unless something different is specified, not vice-versa.”  The vast majority of sex workers take their jobs as willingly as anyone takes any job, and it’s no more necessary to say “willing sex workers” than it is to say “willing doctors”, “willing teachers”, “willing cops”, “willing maids” or “willing cashiers”.  The trafficking paradigm is an ugly fantasy which flies in the face of both reality and human nature, and must therefore be rejected completely in order to avoid being swallowed up by it; anyone who claims that the unnaturalness of a man becoming a rhinoceros is “a matter of opinion” is well on his way to becoming one himself.

One Year Ago Today

In “The Specialist” we meet Wanda, a call girl who specializes in clients of a most unusual (and exceptional) nature.