That Was the Week That Was (#52)

How can people reasonably be expected to conform their behavior to the law when it is impossible for them to figure out what actions it proscribes until after they’ve been arrested and prosecuted?  –  Jacob Sullum

What a Week!

It looks like prohibitionists are getting more desperate:

A car bomb was defused in…[the] parking lot…[of]  Paradise, one of Spain’s largest legal brothels…masked men sped up to the brothel in two cars.  A man got out of one…and shouted he was leaving behind a car with a bomb in the back…it took a bomb squad several hours to deactivate the device…Town Mayor Sonia Martinez said she would take action to try and close Paradise, because it “seriously damages the image of the town”…

Welcome To Our World

This is exactly why most whores in legalization regimes refuse to register:

…In a piece titled, ”The gun owner next door: What you don’t know about the weapons in your neighborhood“, the [New York] Journal News [published] the names and addresses of local residents who are licensed to own handguns…[in] Westchester [and] Rockland…counties…The article includes an interactive map…

Nor is this the only lesson the anti-gun crowd could learn from sex work legalization regimes; those who have studied them could explain to Sarah O’Leary that when the police are allowed to “regulate” something, corruption and abuse are the inevitable results:

…It’s unrealistic to think we can get the estimated 300 million guns off the streets…Lawful gun owners…are not the ones who endanger the masses of us.  The ones who use massive amounts of ammo against innocents do…If we used law enforcement venues…to regulate gun owners’ access to ammunition, we would greatly limit the unstable person determined to commit mass murder…Require gun owners to log on to a centralized government website to order their ammo, then pick it up at their local police stations…the only places where anyone can legally buy ammunition. Put limits on how much ammunition can be purchased at any given time, and over any given period…

The density of ignorance in this article is truly mind-boggling.  O’Leary imagines “mass murderers” use more ammo in a spree than target shooters use in an afternoon, that police are incorruptible, that a centralized database is a good thing (see article directly above) and that people can’t make their own ammo; in fact her level of ignorance approaches that of sex work prohibitionists, and that’s staggering indeed.

Backward, Turn Backward

In the profoundly perverse minds of “trafficking” fanatics, teaching someone to keep herself safe or work more efficiently is a “crime”:

…Police say 25-year-old Emilie Cook negotiated a $500 deal for herself and the teen to have sex with…an undercover cop.  ”[She]…was instructing a 16-year-old runaway on how to conduct prostitution,” said Trooper Melissa Matey with Louisiana State Police.  ”The 16-year-old has been taken into custody, and…[Cook] has been booked in the Orleans Parish Prison for trafficking children for sexual purposes…state police is [sic] anticipating more arrests and this case is ongoing…”

Note the pretense that this simple example of mentoring is part of some larger criminal conspiracy.

The Scarlet Letter

A new and revolting twist on “involuntary porn” extortion sites:

Potential Prostitutes  is only the latest sleazy site to wed personal photos to public humiliation…any woman may be be anonymously tagged as a prostitute…in a browsable “offender” database seeded with mugshots of convicted prostitutes.  Entries may be removed by those listed…[for] a hefty removal fee.  Along with Predators Watch, a nearly-identical sister site…it’s part of a growing fad for shakedowns that exploit public records, police mugshots, compromising Facebook photos and other embarrassing personal information…the sites were registered to a P.O. Box in Stockholm, Sweden, in the last few weeks…Its Twitter feed consists only of a burst of links to prostitution stings and scandals from early November.  Status People reports that only 6 percent of its followers are “good”, the rest being fake or inactive accounts…[Ken White of Popehat] writes that…”Courts are still determining application of Section 230 to extortion sites, [but] even the most generous application…wouldn’t apply if…the purveyors of the site were themselves the ones populating it with pictures under the guise of users doing it…Moreover, Section 230 is not a defense to criminal charges. Extortion is a…federal crime…[and if] the site makes deliberately false statements…to extort money, it…may [constitute] fraud…”

Backwards into the Future

Consider how closely this statement from a third-world militocracy resembles American anti-whore rhetoric:

Burma’s new quasi-civilian government has vowed to improve its record on tackling human trafficking…police chief Yam Len Mun…noted that Burma has already moved from tier three to tier two in the [US Trafficking in Persons] report…he said…the first priority for next year should be to educate workers in every factory in the country about the dangers of human trafficking.  Other…measures…include setting up telephone hotlines in border towns…and…[setting] up rehabilitation camps for trafficked workers who have been rescued…

The Mote and the Beam

The US Senate asking someone else to be a “responsible global citizen” is unbelievable hypocrisy, its ignorance is shocking and its embrace of “sex trafficking” is just sad.  But its sending the demand to the wrong corporation is totally hilarious:

The Senate passed a resolution…that calls on the newspaper Village Voice “to act as a responsible global citizen” by taking down its “adult entertainment” section of its classified advertising website…“The numbers are rising, in part because it has become frighteningly simple to order a child prostitute on the Internet…” Sen. Mark Kirk…said…“Just a few clicks on this site easily enables ‘johns’ to purchase children for sex.  Law enforcement believes that the existence of Backpage encourages the recruitment of victims for sexual exploitation because it allows traffickers to operate out of sight from police patrols”…Kirk said that experts estimate that each year as many as 300,000 children are at risk of commercial sexual exploitation in the United States and cited cases where those prosecuted for such crimes have used Backpage.com to advertise…“The profit-first mentality at Village Voice Media, which prioritizes the rights of pimps, not children, must end.”

Size Matters

The Mystic Mother of the Phoenix Goddess Temple was arrested again after investigators said they found her posting ads on backpage.com seeking sex in exchange for cash “donations.”  Tracy Elise, 51, was re-arrested on December 13, fifteen months after her initial arrest for running a suspected brothel.  Elise insists her church was misunderstood because it combines spirituality and sexuality…Prosecutors argue that the Goddess Temple was a ruse for prostitution and even though religion was discussed…that doesn’t change the fact that money was expected after sex…

Posting a new Backpage ad while awaiting trial for prostitution is such an incredibly bad idea, I must assume either the cops are lying or Elise is trying to create a test case.

Presents, Presents, Presents!

I received two extraordinarily generous gifts this week: from Juan Iglesias, a copy of Vincent Price’s highly-regarded 1965 cookbook A Treasury of Great Recipes; and from Dr. Brooke Magnanti,  over a kilogram of jelly babies plus several packets of Parma violets.  Thanks so very much to both of you!
.

Change a Few Words

It’s gratifying when others see the resemblance between decriminalization of drugs and prostitution:  ”Now that a couple of states have made it clear that pot is legal within their own borders, it looks like the momentum has shifted on drugs…Perhaps now is a good time to start directing some attention to another prohibition, and that is prostitution…”  While the author buys into “sex trafficking” hysteria and the “dirty whore” myth, he nonetheless recognizes that criminalization creates most of the problems, and that is a good sign for the future.

The Course of a Disease

Though England fought off the Labour Party’s last attempt to persecute sex workers and clients by imposing the tyrannical Swedish Model, the misogynistic puritans who run the party are at it again:  ”The government is coming under increasing pressure to…follow…Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland…[in imposing] the so-called Nordic model…“

Feet of Clay

Kristof’s awfulness is becoming so obvious, even the ignorant (such as someone who writes without a hint of sarcasm, “Paul Krugman is right about everything“) recognize him for what he is:

Nick Kristof travels the globe rescuing sex workers by getting them arrested and then attempting to find them jobs in sweatshops…His writing always features morally unambiguous black-and-white heroes and villains.  The heroes are frequently rescuing helpless maidens.  Kristof declines to see complexity in every great crisis he tackles, and largely refuses to acknowledge that money and American “intervention” are frequently…the cause of [them]…Kristof’s reliance on anecdote and personal narratives above all else…lead him to deeply stupid conclusions…

The Young and the Brainless

It’s for their own good!  ”[On Christmas Day] police arrested three men, 53 women and 16 transvestites for engaging in prostitution across Bangkok…to suppress human trafficking issues during the New Year holidays.  All suspects will be sent to local police stations for further prosecution.”

Metaupdates

Counterfeit Comfort (TW3 #16)

You may remember that when New York wanted to unconstitutionally punish people who had already served their sentences, it simply applied political pressure to get private corporations to do its dirty work for it:

New York State has teamed up with several major online game services to purge another 2,100 accounts held by registered sex offenders…New York’s Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP) requires convicted sex offenders to register all of their email addresses, screen names and other online identities with the state.  That information is passed along to sites and services so they can show predators to the door…

Obviously, there’s no possible way guys caught pissing in public or having sex with their girlfriends could ever start new anonymous accounts and not tell Big Brother about it.

Capricious Lusts (TW3 #37)

While Hollywood figures are lining up to climb on the “sex trafficking” bandwagon, Bollywood figures are beginning to support decriminalization:

…Legalising prostitution in India would be a step…to bettering…conditions…Prohibiting all activities related to prostitution…does not seem to be curbing the booming sex trade…Prostitution has been in existence since organised society came into being, and…these women provide services to all existing societies even today.  Isn’t it time we give…[them] the respect and dignity they deserve?…

See No Evil (TW3 #51)

…a Montreal jury acquitted  special-effects artist Rémy Couture of “corrupting morals” by creating gory photographs and short films…The government said his images were obscene…

Traffic Jam (TW3 #51)

Another judge acquits “trafficking” witch hunt victims due to a total lack of evidence:

A federal judge…overturned the convictions of three men on sex-trafficking charges…based on the government’s failure to prove the men were part of a single, overarching conspiracy…[and] because the government failed to turn over [to the defendants]…documents [which] showed contradictions in the testimony of the government’s principal witness…The [alleged] victim testified…that she was used as a prostitute…starting at age 12.  But…new evidence…suggests…[she] lied about her age…[and was actually] 18 or 19…

Gorged With Meaning (TW3 #51)

I’ll bet those pearl-clutching Welsh academics didn’t expect this:

…Former madam Becky Adams, who is taking part in a Swansea University project examining youngsters in the sex trade, said that the market was almost flooded with people trying to pay their way through university…“The market is almost flooded with them…An hour used to be £150 in the 90s and now you can find an hour for £70 or £80.  That is a result of supply and demand because there are so many more people at it.  And you cannot just blame the Eastern Europeans…”

This Week in 2010 and 2011

Beside the original “Presents” post and my previous columns for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, this week also featured two columns about whore goddesses, a response to criticism from another activist, a biography of the Madame de Pompadour, a deconstruction of the ridiculous claims of “social scientists”, a report on Google’s support of anti-whore activism and my answers to reader questions on vaginal looseness, sluts, P411, anal sex, penis size and talking to children about prostitutes.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#40)

[A] silly uberfeminist crusader…once called me a sex addict in a national newspaper…To some…[that] would be the gravest insult; to me it was the intellectual equivalent of claiming I am Father Christmas.  –  Brooke Magnanti

King of the Hill

The latest entry in the contest to claim bragging rights for “biggest sex trafficking hub in the United States”:  “Reports from cities with federal Innocence Lost Task Forces lists Toledo [Ohio] as the third largest city for human trafficking and sex slavery…”  Previous claimants include New York, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, Portland, Oregon and Sacramento, California; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Phoenix, Arizona; and the entire state of Tennessee.

Updates

Good Fantasy, Bad Reality

A southwest Missouri woman who says she shared her bed for years with her husband and his sex slave has decided she needs help defending herself against five federal charges.  Marilyn Bagley… is charged with conspiracy, sex trafficking, forced labor trafficking, document servitude and use of an interstate facility to facilitate unlawful activity.  She and her husband, Edward, are scheduled for trial in February.

My Body, My Choice

Note that prohibitionist “feminists” had no comment on this:  “Former U.S. Congresswoman Linda Smith…[who] founded Shared Hope International…said that efforts to stop the sell [sic] and trade of minors in the sex industry should be an extension of the ‘pro-life’ cause.”

Acting and Activism

“President Obama is not alone in the fight to end sex trafficking.  Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino…[is] starring in a new Hollywood film, Trade of Innocents, following a sex trafficking ring in Cambodia.”  Thanks, CNN; had you not told me that Obama wasn’t alone in pandering to hysteria, I would never have known.

Backwards into the Future

Even some politicians in Zimbabwe have more respect for human rights than their American counterparts:

Zimbabwe Parliamentarians against HIV and AIDS…wants government to decriminalise commercial sex work…The Director of the Public Personalities against AIDS Trust, Tendai Westerhof, [also] condemned criminalisation of sex workers…“It is disappointing that the country still criminalises sex work…these people suffer a lot as a result of the discriminatory laws…They are raped and cannot report such abuses.  As a result, they cannot access health services”…

Meanwhile, in South Africa, sex worker rights group SWEAT recently made a presentation in their parliament.

Down Under

Though the Australian cops in this story subscribe to fashionable “end demand” malarkey, some of them also admit that client persecution harms streetwalkers:

As a crackdown on kerb crawlers in St Kilda intensifies, street sex workers could be moving…to…Dandenong or Footscray, or [using smartphone] apps to meet clients in unsafe areas.  Police tried unsuccessfully for decades to curb the trade by targeting workers…But halfway through the new two-year strategy, they noticed that the switch to targeting clients was having unwanted consequences.  ”If we do push them out of the area, they won’t necessarily all leave the industry – and they’ll either adopt online or they’ll go and work in another location”…said [Senior Sergeant Brad Daly].  ”We might be creating things that we haven’t thought of yet”…lawyer Vanda Hamilton works with more than 50 legal and illegal sex workers and said…she feared many were being forced into troubling scenarios.  She said the only way to ensure safety was to follow New South Wales’ example by legalising street-sex work…”You’re never going to stop sex work, you’re just going to push it so far underground that you can’t help people”…

Guess what, Brad?  Virtually none of them are leaving the industry; they’re just going where you can’t see them.

Counterfeit Comfort

More of this, please (but where’s the ACLU?)

Less than a month after approving restrictions on Halloween activities by registered sex offenders, the city of Simi Valley has been sued…the…law bans Halloween displays and outside lighting every Oct. 31…[and] requires a sign on the front door in letters at least an inch tall:  ”No candy or treats at this residence.”  Both the prohibition on decorations and the mandatory sign violate free speech rights, according to the lawsuit.  A total of 119 registered sex offenders live in Simi Valley…None has been involved in crimes involving children on Halloween, according to police, who say they have no records of any such crime occurring in Simi Valley during Halloween trick-or-treating…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

Dr. Brooke Magnanti on the newest, even stupider adjunct to “sex addiction”:

…The Daily Mail…claims [that young men] are addicted…[to] Viagra…[which unlike sex] is a pharmaceutical drug…[which] could [conceivably produce] physical dependency…[their “proof” consists of an]…interview [with] exactly one guy who uses Viagra a lot during sex…and…one…“psychosexual counselor”…who says this is “just a small sample of the problem”…Any studies…Any scientific research in any labs anywhere?  Because I…don’t see any.  At.  All.  Reading further down the article I see their real target:  porn “addiction”…[and] sexually empowered women…How dare the ladies express interest and enjoyment in sex!  Why won’t we just lie back and think of England like we’re supposed to!?…

Presents, Presents, Presents!

Mere days after I added it to my Amazon wishlist, a reader who prefers to remain anonymous sent me a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale, which I somehow never got around to reading before.  Thank you so very much!

Profit from Panic

Hey, kids! Fight “human trafficking” for fun and profit! Implicate your neighbors! Persecute sex workers! Win big prizes!  “To raise awareness of human trafficking…the Department of Justice and Equality in Dublin and the Department of Justice in Belfast will launch a photography and video competition for Third Level students…Research human trafficking and present your understanding of the issue through a photograph or short video…Winners of each category will receive…1^st prize €1,000…2^nd prize €500…3^rd prize €250.”

Prudish Pedants

Here’s an interesting article debunking the fallacious notion that some kinds of porn are more “positive” than others, that “erotica” is intrinsically different from porn and that men can be “taught” to reject the kind of porn they prefer in favor of the kind women prefer…argued from a marketing perspective rather than a traditionally psychological one.  One important point:  “Human minds are not passive and infinitely malleable receptacles prone to any form of socialization and learning.  Successful marketers are well aware of this reality.  Ideologues, including some academics in the ivory tower, have much to learn!”

Misdirection

Remember when controversy over contraception was only something we read about in history books or in reference to unusually conservative Catholics?  I sure do.  But over the last two decades that equine carcass has been dragged out of the glue factory and is once again being set upon by sex-hating control freaks trying to call attention away from the uncontrolled tumescence of government, national debt and the police state.  The fact that the public obediently paid attention to this distraction has enabled lots of crazy people, including a group of nuns who produced an anti-contraception video chock full of propaganda because they obviously forgot that lying make Baby Jesus cry:

Feet of Clay

Anne Elizabeth Moore and Melissa Gira Grant write:

This week Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn’s book Half The Sky premieres on PBS as a two-part miniseries, providing an opportunity for his audience to step into his well-worn white savior shoes…viewers will survey the lives of young women whom Kristof and WuDunn have chosen as the best ciphers for their agenda…to…“turn oppression into opportunity”…[by] proposing dubious schemes for advancing women’s rights—like arresting sex workers in order to “rescue” them from prostitution, or enthusiastically supporting the creation of “sweatshops” to accommodate sex workers and other women in the global south…

In response, Moore & Grant presented a “collective evaluation” of Nicholas Kristof, in other words excerpts from essays by Laura Agustín, Teju Cole and many others (including yours truly).  The article is also mentioned in this Buzzfeed article, which shows the outcry is getting big enough for even the usually-oblivious media to notice.

Little Boxes

Catarina Migliorini says that cooking, driving, reading and every other human activity magically become different things if one only does them once:

…A 20-year-old Brazilian woman is auctioning off her virginity for a one-time tryst on an airplane…Catarina Migliorini says she’ll donate some of the money to provide housing for poor families in her native Santa Catarina…the Internet bidding [has already] reached  $160,000…[and] ends Oct. 15…Migliorini insisted in a statement to the Sao Paulo daily Folha that…”For me, it’s not prostitution…when someone does something once in his or her life, this is not considered a profession.  If you take a picture and it comes out good, you are not a photographer because of it”…The Daily Mail reported that Migliorini is [also]…part of an Australian film project called Virgins Wanted.  She’s getting $20,000 and a 90-percent cut of the auction price…

The HuffPo comments are, of course, predictably disgusting.  Meanwhile, Slate presents this series of portraits of female Iranian singers, who are legally barred from singing on stage for a general audiences because it is “immodest”.  This is not a hypothetical reductio ad absurdum; it is the natural result of busybodies having control over women’s interactions with men and attempting to draw imaginary lines between “good” and “immoral” behavior.

The Public Eye

Rachel Aimee, one of the founders of the late $pread magazine, covers one specific aspect of the “sex workers as mothers” topic:  deciding if, when and how to tell one’s children that one is a sex worker.  She interviews an escort, a stripper, a dominatrix, a nude model and a sex educator, and though as you might expect she doesn’t reach a definitive conclusion, she presents a lot of worthwhile food for thought.

Metaupdates

Think of the Children! in TW3 (#11)

Another good, clean organization refuses charity from nasty, dirty whores:

A pornographic website has launched a fundraising effort for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, but the nonprofit says it wants nothing to do with the campaign…the…website said it would donate 1 cent for every 30 views of certain videos featuring breasts during October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month…[but the Komen organization said] “We are not a partner, not accepting donations, and have asked them to stop using our name”…

Obviously, the Komen Foundation has not yet learned that they are supposed to care more about women’s health than about prudishness.

I Really Shouldn’t Even LOOK at an Issue of Cosmopolitan in TW3 (#25)

Priya-Alika Elias imagines what it would be like if Homer, Shakespeare, Joyce, Tolkien and others wrote Cosmo sex tips.  Alas, she didn’t do Lovecraft, but it’s still pretty damned funny.

Follow Your Bliss in TW3 (#37)

The…TSA…didn’t bother to do a background check on a priest who had been defrocked for molesting girls before they gave him a job, which included doing pat downs on children at Philadelphia International Airport.  The Philadelphia Inquirer…reported that…65-year-old Thomas Harkins…has since been promoted from the…job that required him to pat down children and now oversees screening operations for checked baggage.

This Week in 2011

I answered questions on NBA policies, Wikipedia, gravatars and epigrams, discussed busybody control freaks who use women’s dignity as an excuse for oppression, introduced you to a young courtesan named Su Xiaoxiao, reported on a complaint to the APA about Melissa Farley’s numerous ethical violations, and shared short items on marital sex issues, Gardasil, a Sydney mega-brothel, a pervert cop, BDSM persecution, Edmonton’s attempt to create a bottleneck, a claim that the average hooker is 13, cops’ armed robbery of a strip club, AHF and an essay by Catherine Hakim.

This Week in 2010

I introduced the concept of “sex rays”, talked about my boob job, explained how criminalization exposes whores to danger from real criminals, discussed the families of sex workers, presented brief biographies of the five victims of Jack the Ripper, looked at the archetypal “hooker with a heart of gold”, and shared short items about Congress’ first attempt to control the internet and two creepy men’s attempts to sexually violate women unnoticed.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#35)

Do we really need to create a black market for burgers and fries?  -  Jeff Stier

Coming and Going

Texas is finally beginning to realize that it has better ways to spend millions per year than locking up whores:

…a 2001 Texas law…allowed prosecutors to charge prostitutes with a felony…after three misdemeanor prostitution convictions…but now, with more than 350 prostitutes…occupying bunks in the state prison system, and dozens more serving time for drug and theft charges…questions are being raised about…the…waste of money.  For about one-fourth the cost, such nonviolent, low-level criminals could be rehabilitated in community-based programs aimed at curing their addictions to alcohol and drugs…

The tone of the article can be judged by the fact that it describes Melissa Farley as “a recognized national expert on prostitution.”  This Agitator guest post on the subject by Eric Sterling of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is far more satisfying:

…Consider the utterly unseemly entrapment of women by members of a vice squad.  Think of the state of mind of the undercover police officer doing this work.  Actually don’t think on this too long, it is disgusting…Assume that many prostitutes don’t like the work.  So what?  I know lots of lawyers who don’t like the work, too — renting their mind for thousands of hours a year for clients they find disgusting…Why do we judge this work to be illegal, other than on the basis of legal tradition?  How are these women…[their] families…[or] society benefited by sending prostitutes to prison?  How are their…employment prospects improved by arresting them?…

Thinking With the Wrong Head

Actually, I do believe they’re telling the truth; pathetic attempts to get it for free aren’t Vitter’s style:

Sen. David Vitter’s spokesman…denied the Louisiana Republican was responsible for sending and quickly deleting a message from the senator’s official Twitter account to a young woman…Joel DiGrado [said]…Vitter “never personally tweets — in fact, he doesn’t even have the Twitter account set up on his Blackberry…The only explanation would seem to be an inadvertent staff button hit, perhaps related to the fact that, at various times the senator’s account has automatically followed whoever follows his account”…

Hark, Hark, the Dogs Do Bark

Second sign that a human behavior is natural rather than cultural:  it’s observed in other primate species:

When offered the choice of playing with either a doll or a toy truck, girls will typically pick the doll and boys will opt for the truck.  This isn’t just because society encourages girls to be nurturing and boys to be active, as people once thought.  In experiments, male adolescent monkeys also prefer to play with wheeled vehicles while the females prefer dolls — and their societies say nothing on the matter.  The monkey research, conducted with two different species in 2002 and 2008, strongly suggested a biological explanation for children’s toy preferences…

The article goes on to discuss other studies which demonstrate that infant testosterone levels correlate with the amount of time they spend looking at balls or trucks vs. dolls, and even baby girls exposed to abnormally-high androgen levels in utero (a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia) prefer the “male-typical” toys.

Thou Shalt Not

Clearly, prohibitionism is a kind of mental illness:

…Deborah Cohen…suggests that some of the policies we use to control alcohol consumption could help beat back obesity.  “People realized…that alcohol was a problem…so they developed all kinds of regulations to make it less convenient…Perhaps now it’s time to rein in our easy access to food,” Cohen said…[measures] could include warning labels for foods high in fat and sugar, or maybe restrictions on where in the grocery store foods are displayed to curb impulse buying…Cohen [also] likes New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to ban the sale of large-sized sugary drinks…

Lysistrata

There’s nothing wrong with this in theory, but it will take much more than a week to have any effect:

The female wing of a civil rights group is urging women in Togo to stage a week-long sex strike to demand the resignation of the country’s president…Isabelle Ameganvi, leader of the women’s wing of the group Let’s Save Togo…said…her group is following the example of Liberia’s women, who used a sex strike in 2003 to campaign for peace…

The Rape Question

A Swedish booklet from 2007 (described in Oscar Swartz’  A Brief History of Swedish Sex) helpfully explains that begging equals rape:

…The…144 page booklet…gave a message that could not be misunderstood:  Girls should always and only think of themselves…[and] boys…should only think of the girl and her emotions and wishes and never of themselves.  Girls are encouraged to put on provocative clothing, drink, flirt, fool around, join boys from the pub, lie down in their bed, excite them – but at the last second say no.  She must never question whether…[it is OK] to act in such ways, since it is her legal right…If something did not feel good, girls are reassured that they must report their boyfriends, dates or lovers to the police…“If sex is achieved through begging and pleading…then it is rape”, says…psycho-therapist Monica Mardell…

In other words, if a Swedish man does anything other than mutely and passively submit to a woman’s sexual advances, he is a rapist.

Feet of Clay

Welcome to our world, chemists:

Last May, Deborah Blum…published a column pleading with…Nick Kristof to stop writing about chemical risk…[now] Kristof is at it again, [claiming]…“Big Chem” is preventing the Federal Government from protecting Americans from dangerous, endocrine disrupting chemicals…it appears that [Kristof] only reads [research] produced by a very, very small group of scientists – all on the farthest reaches of the environmental left.  He applies no statistical or experimental criticism to these studies:  they always “really” find what they claim to have found; and he seems unaware of the many non-industry funded studies or regulatory agency assessments that contradict them…

Naked Truth

If you’re anything like me, one Kristof-bashing session is never enough; so, here’s Melissa Gira Grant in Jacobin:

…“True, many of the prostitution ads on Backpage are placed by adult women acting on their own without coercion,” writes…professional prostitute savior Nicholas Kristof.  But, he continues…“they’re not my concern.”  He would like us to join him in separating women into those who chose prostitution and those who were forced into it; those who view it as business and those who view it as exploitation; those who are workers and those who are victims; those who are irremediable and those who can be saved.  These categories…fail to explain the reality of one woman’s work, let alone a class of women’s labor…But happy hookers, says Kristof, don’t despair, this isn’t about women like you – we don’t really mean to put you out of work.  Never mind that shutting down the businesses people in the sex trade depend on for safety and survival only exposes all of them to danger and poverty, no matter how much choice they have…

Metaupdates

A Tale That Grew in the Telling in October Updates (Part Three)

The claims of “sex trafficking” fanatics get more outlandish all the time:

The Internet has created the golden age of the sex industry.  It’s an $87 million a day business and it’s growing…Working in the commercial sex industry is the most dangerous job in the world.  Most of us think we understand the business of sex:  what it is and what (if anything) should be done to control it.  But the reality is complex and sinister.  Caught up in it are young men and women who are trafficked…Some opt in by choice.  But most don’t.  Unsuspecting victims fall prey to the elaborate schemes of predatory pimps who…know that a girl can generate upwards of $300,000 a year…

For perspective:  I used to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and I owned an escort service in addition to my own work, yet I still never made $300,000 in one year.  In fact, I think that all the living whores who can reliably exceed that every year could comfortably fit in my house.  But I guess for a mind stupid enough to believe that a hooker can see 50 men a night, $300,000 a year is quite reasonable.

The Crumbling Dam in TW3 (#20)

All over Canada, support for decriminalization continues to grow:

Giving the children of Vancouver’s missing women financial compensation and decriminalizing sex work, heroin and cocaine are just some of 37 recommendations set out by a new Missing Women inquiry report…the Independent Counsel recommendations detail a comprehensive list aimed at stopping another serial killer from preying on marginalized sex workers…“At the core of the difficulty is a set of police attitudes that are influenced by the unlawful status of sex work and drug use,” said the report’s author, lawyer Jason Gratl…“Sex workers and drug users are afraid to approach police because they fear persecution and arrest, even if they’re victims of serious physical or sexual crimes.”  When investigating the missing women, police rarely interviewed victims’ friends or family because…[they believed] the sex workers didn’t have friends or neighbours…

Reading Between the Lines in TW3 (#26)

“Oklahoma City police joined with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and the FBI to arrest 44 people in a prostitution and human trafficking sting.  The arrests include people accused of prostituting themselves, aiding a prostitute and soliciting the services of a prostitute. This is part of an ongoing nationwide investigation into human trafficking called Operation Cross Country…”  Total number of minors or “trafficked persons” arrested:  zero.

The Pro-Rape Coalition in TW3 (#30)

This was already a done deal, but now it’s official:

A Monday press release from faith-based advocacy group Morality in Media celebrates the Republican Party’s platform as now targeting all…pornography, not just illegal child pornography…“Distribution of obscene or hardcore pornography on the Internet is a violation of current federal law,” explained MIM’s President Patrick A. Trueman.  “Yet, most children in America have free access to obscene pornography as soon as they learn how to use a computer.  The average age of first exposure to obscene Internet pornography is now eleven.”  Trueman also suggested that…the federal government should police “obscenity,” not only…on the Internet, but also on hotel…TVs, cable or satellite television, and in retail shops…

Eleven as the average age of first exposure to the sex industry…now, where have I heard that before?

The Course of a Disease in TW3 (#31)

Apparently, prohibitionists have a very weird idea of what words like “support” and “help” mean, and have learned absolutely nothing from the catastrophic failure of the “War on Drugs”:

A new poll…has indicated that only 20 percent of the Danish population supports the government’s proposal to outlaw sex purchases, while a full 67 percent…are against it…But despite [this] politicians like Rasmus Horn Langhoff…contend that it must be done in order to support the women in the sex industry.  “…We must send a clear message that it is not okay to buy sex because of how negative it is for the women,” Langhoff [said]…“If we target the customers then we help the prostitutes who don’t need to go underground”…But…law group Gadejuristen (the Street Lawyer)…painted a…different picture.  “It’s completely wrong if you think that you can solve serious social issues by criminalising them.  Doing this will only worsen the situation,” [said] Nanna Gottfredsen…“You push the sex workers further into a grey zone.  They will hide themselves and their activities and social workers will no longer be able to contact those in need of help.”

This Week in 2011

Maslow’s Hammer; the inevitability of Nature getting her way; the counterfeit comfort of “sex offender” registries; how reality can only be fit into simplistic belief systems by ignoring most of it; questions on polyamory, penis size and racial preferences;  language patterns of New Orleans; and Michael Weinstein’s campaign to turn porn movies into commercials for his product.

This Week in 2010

Several of my most unusual calls and my favorite New Orleans eateries; three columns about very special girls who touched my heart; the original “sex trafficking” hysteria of a century ago; and my first column on the “condoms in porn” controversy.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#27)

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.  -  Rita Mae Brown

Twelve updates and four metaupdates.

Acting and Activism (January 8^th, 2011)

Yet another actor tries to prop up a sagging career with a flying leap onto the “trafficking” bandwagon:  Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan is going to Myanmar this week on a…mission to help combat child trafficking…UNICEF announced…that…Chan will…meet with officials of the Social Welfare Ministry and…police…

Backwards Into the Future (March 30^th, 2011)

Add Vietnam to the list of countries which aren’t known for their spectacular record on human rights, yet are doing better on the issue than the US:

The Vietnamese National Assembly recently [voted to stop detaining] thousands of sex workers in so-called rehabilitation facilities where they were held without right of appeal and forced to work (including for private companies) without pay…justice advocates…are hoping that drug detention centers…will follow soon…

Saddest Story of the Month (May 17^th, 2011)

Well, it’s not quite as bad as arresting someone for moving out of a dumpster...

A new law…is forcing convicted sex offenders to…move into tents.  More than 40 sex offenders at the Hand Up Ministries in Oklahoma City had to move out of trailers on the ministry’s property.  The new state law limits the number of sex offenders who can live in one dwelling.  Ministry founder David Nichols said without a place to live, many offenders won’t register and could go back to prison…”I don’t think that it’s going to lessen crime any.  I think it’s going to increase crime”…

Nichols is correct, but don’t expect the fanatics to listen.

A False Dichotomy (June 22^nd, 2011)

So here’s a thing in the Guardian (I hesitate to call a short collection of captioned photos an “article”) about “sex trafficking” in Burkina Faso.  Though the author claims that “thousands of girls and women are trafficked from Nigeria to the African hub of Ouagadougou,” and that “many are lured by promises of jobs as hairdressers or nannies,”I was struck by two things:  one, that the pictures look to me like any pictures of street or brothel workers in poor countries; and two, that the captions belie the claims of “trafficking”.  The caption for the third picture reads, “Juliette, also from Nigeria, has been working at Mercy’s for six years.  The 45-year-old sends money home each week to support her four children who live in Benin City.”  In other words, she has enough disposable income to support four children, and is free to send it home.  The caption for the 12^th (and last) picture tells us that “trafficking victims” are free to attend a church whose pastor lectures on the evils of the sex trade, and the one for the 5^th is the most telling:  “At Mercy’s, women work seven nights a week and pay 2,000 CFA (£2.60) each day to rent a room.  Men pay the women 5,000 CFA.  This Burkinabe girl has turned up at the brothel looking for work.”  In other words the rooms cost these “victims” less than half the price of one call (similar to the rates paid by American hookers), and local girls view it as a worthwhile place to work without being “forced” into it.

If It Were Legal (June 26^th, 2011)

Remember that bogus study who authors were so ignorant they equated an increase in ads with migrating whores, and claimed that 0.4% of something constitutes a major fraction?  Well, partisan prohibitionists are using it to blame Republicans for “sex trafficking” despite a greater rise in ads during the Democratic convention:

…Huffington Post and Jezebel are running with stories claiming that GOP convention-goers are “hands down” the biggest clients at area strip clubs during political conventions.  Along with strip club attendance, conventions also increase prostitution…and child sex trafficking…HuffPo continues…“A Baylor University study found that…conventions ‘increased the count of Craigslist sex worker ads by a substantial amount’”…researchers…found that sex ads increased by between 29% and 44% over their baseline level during 2008′s Republican convention in Minneapolis.  Ads increased by between 47% and 77% in Denver, the site of the Democratic convention.  Further, the study pointed out that a plurality of convention attendees are members of the media…

Dirty Amateurs (August 17^th, 2011)

MTV had the good sense to protect itself against STD-based liability claims from the cast members of Jersey Shore; there oughta be a law that these damned dirty amateurs get checked weekly by a government doctor, and arrested if they test positive.

Higher Education (December 11^th, 2011)

Something tells me that Professor Kubistant needs to find a regular escort:

A Western Nevada College student claims…that her human sexuality instructor required students to masturbate to pass his class, made them keep sex journals for class discussion, was obsessed with women’s orgasms and told the class “that he will increase their sexual urges to such a height that they won’t be able to think about anything other than sex”…Kubistant told the students that their final exam would be an assignment…which had to address such topics as early sexual exploration, sexual abuse, loss of virginity, homosexual experiences, promiscuity, cheating, arousal, climaxes, masturbation, sexually transmitted diseases and fetishes…

The Course of a Disease (February 16^th, 2012)

While groups like the soi-disant “European Women’s Lobby” produce ridiculous “end demand” tripe, European sex worker groups are producing ads like this:

It’s also available in 16 other languages.

Feet of Clay (April 5^th, 2012)

It’s nice to see the attacks on Nicholas Kristof continuously increasing:

…In a magnificent essay, ”Be Aware: Nick Kristof’s Anti-Politics“,  Elliott Prasse-Freeman…summarises Kristof’s oeuvre into a number of precise strokes:  ”By playing on his audience’s orientalist, classist and racist fantasies, Kristof fabricates legible narratives out of snapshots of distant worlds.  He then crafts stunningly simplistic solutions to the seemingly irrevocable problems that plague those backwards places”…

And if you like that one, here are plenty more.

The Notorious Badge (April 9^th, 2012)

Sarah Woolley’s excellent article from XOJane explains “Why I Wince Through Hollywood Sex Scenes and Not Porn”:

…if some actors exaggerate their distaste for nudity it’s because they’ve seen what happens to the women who enjoy themselves without penance…And so, a romantic, soft lit, topless scene from a chick flick can unsettle me in ways that a supposedly degrading, adult movie rarely manages to accomplish…I’m not saying that those who willingly participate in uncomfortable scenes are victims because…they get the last say on that matter.  However, I would rather watch the person who isn’t trying to numb things out with a bottle of vodka.  I’m not naive enough to think that sex workers are free from shitty days at the office but, given their job description, I’m less likely to be watching someone wary of getting their front bottom out, than if I were watching a mainstream actress in a sex scene…If a sex worker speaks out on slipping standards it is correct to condemn the appropriate parties but it is usually an entire industry that is maligned in the process.  If a mainstream actor brings a drink on set in brown paper (keeping the latter to hyperventilate into later) we applaud her for her craft and possibly chuck an award her way…

First They Came for the Hookers… (June 5^th, 2012)

Bubbles Burbujas on the problems with “pole taxes”:

…Connecting funding for victims of sexual assault to strip clubs is the primary reason I don’t like these taxes.  It is absolutely offensive to have the government tell us that we—or, rather, our customers—are responsible for rape and domestic violence, and that we should be taxed specifically for that purpose…While strip clubs are certainly a luxury expense…There is…no guarantee that the taxes will be collected from patrons since the tax is on the clubs, not the customers.  This means there’s a good chance that the fees dancers pay to work will go up to cover the club’s tax bill…Tracy Clark-Flory wrote about the latest round of state pole taxes at Salon, and spoke with anthropologist Judith Lynne Hanna…[who has criticized] the faulty “secondary effects” studies that blames strip clubs for increasing crime and breaks it down for the propaganda it is.  I wrote about the myth of secondary effects here after the Texas Supreme Court’s decision came down, and it’s good they’re being exposed for the shoddy research they are…

The Widening Gyre (July 6^th, 2012)

The inherent racism of “trafficking” mythology isn’t usually as obvious as it is in this June 8 cartoon.

Even though the law’s supporters say “We simply cannot have drivers knowingly profiting from the sex trade, willingly taking prostitutes from john to john, job to job,” we’re also supposed to believe this:

Cabbies can pick up all the scantily clad women they want without worrying about being charged with promoting prostitution, Mayor Bloomberg declared…“There’s no penalty for transporting a prostitute or decoy, but only for knowingly engaging in a sex-trafficking operation”…the mayor said…City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras…sponsor of the legislation, said such fears were overblown because her bill was targeted at a small number of cabbies involved in hooker rings…“It’s not the majority of drivers.  However, when you have a young girl being driven to 30, 40, 50 johns a night, it is a very big problem.”

Obviously third-grade math skills and a sense of the size of one’s own city are not requirements for a position on the New York city council.

Metaupdates

Good News, Bad News in TW3 (#10) (March 10^th, 2012)

As per my epigram, an example of governmental insanity in Western Australia:

…leading urban planning expert…Paul Maginn said the government’s …reform bill…would do little to move prostitution out of the suburbs.  “If you look historically…the sex industry is quite adaptive…they’ll still continue, it’s not going to be eradicated”…Maryanne Kenworthy, owner of the Langtrees brothels in Perth and Kalgoorlie, supports Mr Maginn’s claim…”This government is trying to stamp out escorts, which no country in the world has successfully done…Instead, the industry is going to go completely underground…How many of WA’s 4000 sex workers are going to get a commercial industrial area to work out of?  None, they can’t afford to, it costs half a million dollars just to get council approval”…

The More the Better in TW3 (#11) (March 17^th, 2012)

Zahia Dehar isn’t doing too badly for a “trafficked child”:  “There aren’t many fashion designers who can say they got their starts as underage prostitutes. But Zahia Dehar…first earned her fame as the center of a high-profile sex scandal involving three elite European soccer players in 2010…[then] crossed over into fashion, earning praise from Karl Lagerfeld and a cover shoot for V‘s Spain edition…”

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs in
TW3 (#25) (June 23^rd, 2012)

It’s good to see at least a few small countries standing up to Uncle Sam’s bullying:

The Guyana Government today denounced the latest installation of the US State Department report on trafficking in persons…“The Report fails to establish not one single fact.  The Task Force notes several inaccuracies and misrepresentations in the Report that must be addressed.  What is clear is that the architects of this Report have not made significant progress in improving the veracity, coherence and validity of their annual assessments.  The Ministerial Task Force denounces the Report since it comprises unsubstantiated generalisations and repetitive uncorroborated claims.  The Task Force strongly recommends that the US State Department seek to improve its methodology, establish proper baselines to guide comparisons, avoid use of anecdotal claims and develop a consistent, understandable, transparent and logical tier ranking system if countries are to benefit from these rituals…”

The Course of a Disease in TW3 (#26) (June 30^th, 2012)

Wendy Lyon takes a detailed look at the report which inspired Norway’s minister for social affairs to call for the Swedish Model to be scrapped; she discovers that besides the problems we’ve already discussed, the model literally forces sex workers into the street and promotes pimping.

One Year Ago Today

“Imaginary Lines” argues in favor of loosened immigration restrictions, and points out how the current situation helps to drive “trafficking” hysteria.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#22)

The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.  -  Victor Hugo

One new item, eight updates and two metaupdates.

True Colors

New Orleans charity Women With A Vision has been fighting for the rights of poor women, including sex workers, for years; their efforts were instrumental in bringing down Louisiana’s monstrous “Crime Against Nature by Solicitation” law which was used to place whores (especially black or transsexual ones) on the “sex offender” registry.  Apparently some hateful person was angry about this or their other work, because on the night of May 24^th he broke into their office and set a fire which destroyed it and virtually everything in it.

There’s no way to know whether the arsonist was motivated by hatred of prostitutes, black people, transsexuals, or some other disadvantaged group for which WWAV fights, but this action demonstrates the true colors of those who would deny rights to others, no matter what rhetoric they use to rationalize their position.  WWAV is desperately in need of help:  New Orleans area readers could donate time, women’s clothing, computer equipment, office supplies, etc (call 504-301-0428 to volunteer), and readers anywhere in the world can donate to WWAV at their site.  My readers have been very generous to me with presents, but for the next few months I ask that you spend that money helping WWAV instead; if you want it to be a present for me, just make the donation in my name.  Any help you can give will mean a great deal to me!

A similar incident occurred in China last week:

An outspoken advocate for sex workers reopened her office…after it was trashed by eight men who punched and threatened her life last week.  Ye Haiyan, 37, is the founder of Chinese Women’s Rights Workshops, an NGO that promotes sex workers’ rights and helps raise awareness of HIV/AIDS…Ye said the men did not look like gang members and she suspects that local authorities might have had a role in the attack…Earlier this year, she was also threatened over the phone and told to shut her office…

Updates

Lying Down With Dogs (November 24^th, 2010)

Another example of an African country whose anti-whore rhetoric strongly resembles that of the US, right down to the ludicrous euphemisms:

The Liberian government…disclosed that a campaign named…“Operation Save Our Future” has been launched…[to] minimize prostitution as well as sexual exploitation and abuse against girls…the operation will also tackle indecent dressing…Minister [Julia] Cassell said the prostitutes will be rehabilitated through basic skills including baking, sewing, hair dressing, and pastry…She urged the public to dress appropriately because the “government is now after them.”  She called on those involved into commercial sex working to desist from the illegal act and put their hands to use in a positive direction.

Because working independently for good pay isn’t a “positive direction”, but working in a sweatshop or doing other low-paid work for someone else is; that’s especially loathsome rhetoric in a country founded by freed slaves.  Note also that Liberian “feminists”, like their American sisters, are unable to recognize that the road from criminalization of prostitution to criminalization of “indecent dress” is a very short one.

Neither Cold nor Hot (April 6^th, 2011)

Jezebel has attacked evolutionary psychologists like Satoshi Kanazawa (who, incidentally, has a new book out) on a number of occasions, and now they’re fighting back:  Kanazwa’s colleague Barry Kuhle sharply criticizes the site for embracing the neofeminist “social construction of gender” dogma in his article “Giving Feminism a Bad Name”.  He examines the logical fallacies used by “gender feminists” (Christina Sommers’ term for neofeminists) to attack scientific findings, and blames them for the word “feminist” having become an insult.  Kuhle’s an interesting writer; I also enjoyed his recent column on why the ever-increasing alphabet soup used to describe sexual minorities (now LBTQIH and still growing) is ridiculous and should be replaced by a more manageable acronym.

Welcome To Our World Again (January 20^th, 2012)

Too bad Zimbabwe isn’t the only country so Bizarro that it’s willing to cut off its nose to spite its face on the issue of sex laws which cause higher rates of HIV:

President Robert Mugabe yesterday clashed with visiting UN human rights chief Navi Pillay after she appeared to suggest that legalising prostitution and homosexuality could go a long way in combating the spread of HIV/AIDS…Mugabe…swore that this would happen OVER HIS DEAD BODY…police in Harare have intensified a blitz on prostitutes and women found in pubs claiming they are trying to stop crime which is being promoted by prostitution…Mugabe…has previously described homosexuality as “worse than dogs and pigs”…MP Tabitha Khumalo…[said] “[Prostitution] is here to stay and we need to bite the bullet.  PLEASURE ENGINEERING…did not begin in…Zimbabwe.  It all began in the Garden of Eden and one of those PLEASURE ENGINEERS was Eve”…

In a sense, bigots like Mugabe are more consistent and less hypocritical than certain Americans who are very vocal in demanding their own sexual rights, yet support persecution of whores.  Also, I think I’m going to write MP Khumalo a fan letter.

The Rape Question (April 4^th, 2012)

This article about “brothel” raids in Ireland (actually, most were private flats in which women worked together for safety) is full of the usual agency denial and “sex trafficking” mythology, but I was especially struck by one passage:  “Mary Crilly, Director of the Sexual Violence Centre (SVC) in Cork [said], ‘I welcome the raids.  We need to end the demand for prostitution, as long as there are men who are paying for sex there will be a demand.  Prostitution isn’t about sex, it’s about money and exploitation’.“  This is of course the old “rape is asexual” dogma, but it does demonstrate how completely out of touch with reality these women are.

Feet of Clay (April 5^th, 2012)

The death-spiral of Nicholas Kristof’s reputation continues:

The Brooklyn prosecutor who had a starring role in…Nicholas Kristof’s expose of Backpage…has resigned amid charges she sat on evidence that would have saved a sex-crimes suspect from spending 11 months in jail.  The New York Daily News reported this week that  prosecutor Lauren Hersh quit after two black men charged with serially raping an Orthodox Jewish girl since she was 13 were released because the alleged victim had recanted her claims the day after she made them.  Hersh…failed to share [the recantation] with the grand jury or defense lawyers…Hersh was also cited in Kristof’s story about Backpage back in January, “How Pimps Use the Web to Sell Girls”…Kristof cited a case prosecuted by Hersh involving an underage prostitute, without disclosing the fact that Hersh only was able to track down the perpetrators because Backpage turned over identifying information…

Unfortunately, Fisher is a mealy-mouthed moralist who denies women’s right to sex on our own terms; he seems more concerned with the fact that Backpage is singled out than the fact that whores are persecuted.  But that makes his attacks on Kristof (his natural ally in moralism) all the more indicative of the latter’s fall from grace.

This poster for my favorite perfume was the most complained-about advert in the UK since 1995.

Little Boxes
(April 29^th, 2012)

As I’ve pointed out many times, it is impossible to draw clear lines between female sexual behaviors, and sugar babies are part of a continuum stretching from wives to professional harlots.  But while I usually demonstrate the strong resemblance between sugar babies and hookers, Helen Croydon makes the equally valid point that they are a lot like traditional “low maintenance” lovers, and defends such arrangements as sensible and rewarding:

…These models of relationships are an honest way of withholding commitment…That may not be appealing to everyone.  It certainly isn’t the route to finding a soul mate.  But not everyone wants one of those at every stage in their life.  Is it so wrong to underpin the foundations of a relationship with something other than 100% devotion and exclusivity?…payment…doesn’t necessarily have to exclude affection…“compensated relationships” are far more honorable and rewarding than meaningless, vulgar, no-strings sex encounters.  Yet we give more respect to the latter.  These days relationships can only be rubber stamped if they are all encompassing, full-time, cohabiting and long-term…

Whorearchy (May 10^th, 2012)

Until the mid-19^th century prostitutes and actresses were members of a single profession, and we still haven’t diverged much.  But one wouldn’t know that from listening to actresses – including those who have played sex workers – insisting that they’re better than we are:

Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi is demanding an apology from a Hong Kong newspaper after it published claims she had sex with disgraced Communist party official Bo Xilai for huge sums of money…the star of “ Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Memoirs of a Geisha” [allegedly] slept with Bo at least ten times between 2007 and 2011…[and] negotiated similar deals with several other powerful men…she [supposedly] earned around $110 million from prostituting herself…

Traffic Jam (May 20^th, 2012)

Reason posted a video of 20/20‘s 1985 report “The Devil Worshippers”:

…It may help, as you watch this, to know that the bodies of the alleged sacrifice victims never materialized, that the statistic of two million missing kids was a wild exaggeration, and that Mike Warnke, presented here as an expert on Satanic rites, was later exposed as a fraud.  But really, anyone able to think critically should be able to see through this without the benefit of hindsight.  What’s interesting is that so many people took it seriously at the time…Even if you ignore the actual misinformation in the program, this is as pure an example as you’ll find of how a scattered group of unconnected crimes can be presented as a grand, malevolent movement, particularly when they’re combined with anxieties about the influence of popular culture…

Here are the links for Part Two and Part Three.

Metaupdates

What a Week! in October Updates (Part One) (October 2^nd, 2011)

Another advantage to decriminalization:  access to the legal system.

A plan to build Australia’s largest brothel is poised to overcome local government opposition in a victory for Sydney’s sex industry over creeping regulation.  The $12 million, three-storey extension to the Stiletto brothel…can be approved once client numbers are capped…Even after being decriminalised in 1995, NSW brothel owners are increasingly turning to courts to reverse rejections by councils opposed to the industry…”Research usually shows brothels are not a problem in a community,” said Wayne Morgan, a lecturer specialising in sexuality-related law at the Australian National University.  ”Staff are usually very discreet, and clients, by their very nature, are very discreet.  This was partly the point of legalising brothels in the first place – to take out the criminal aspect”…

Counterfeit Comfort in TW3 (#8) (February 26^th, 2012)

Louisiana’s recent attempt to further destroy the lives of people who urinated in public or had consensual sex with their high-school girlfriends is not the only one to be defeated lately; those condemned to the American pariah caste are fighting back:

Registered sex offenders who have been banned from social networking websites are…successfully challenging many of the restrictions as infringements on free speech…Courts have long allowed states to place restrictions on convicted sex offenders who have completed their sentences…but the increasing use of social networks for everyday communication raises new, untested issues…Ruthann Robson, a professor of constitutional law at the City University of New York, said the bans could eventually be taken up by the Supreme Court…”If we think that the government can curtail sex offenders’ rights without any connection to the actual crime, then it could become a blanket prohibition against anyone who is accused of a crime, no matter what the crime is”…

One Year Ago Today

“June Updates (Part Two)” reports on San Diego’s excuses for rapist cops, Mira Sorvino’s declaring Sacramento the “leading destination for sex traffickers”, and yet another guy playing BDSM games with strangers without a signed contract.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#21)

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.  -  David Cronenberg

Eleven updates and two metaupdates.

Japanese Prostitution (October 21^st, 2010)

This is just so awesome:

…alibi-ya provide women in the…sex industry with a reputable but totally fictitious identity…[using] things like fake business cards, references and employment certificates…[and] even…fake [bosses] for birthday speeches and other family events…Shintaro Sakamoto runs an alibi-ya in Tokyo.  “We provide assistance to mainly hostesses and prostitutes,” he said.  “We help them to rent apartments, and we help them get their kids into nursery schools”…[if] parents ring the office their daughter supposedly works at, the alibi-ya will be ready with the deception, explaining their daughter is in a meeting and will call back shortly.  The alibi-ya will then ring the woman’s mobile and tell her to call home.  Even the caller ID is fixed so it looks like the woman is calling from the landline in her fake office.  There is nothing illegal about the service…

Real People (February 6^th, 2011)

Louise and Martine Fokkens are 69-year-old identical twins in Amsterdam who have worked as whores since the age of 19, owned their own brothel for a time and set up the first trade union for prostitutes.  A new documentary, Meet the Fokkens, looks at the colorful lives of these very unconventional ladies.

See No Evil (November 26^th, 2011)

I only wish lunacy like this was confined to Sweden; unfortunately, it happens all over the West now:

…Simon Lundström was convicted of possessing child pornography…despite the fact the “manga images” used to convict him featured no real children…The punishment Lundström faces is relatively minor – a fine of around $780…but…still marks him as a sex offender…[plus he lost] his job [as a manga translator and]…can no longer offer his services as a “manga expert”…the prosecution…argued that the images could be used to entice children…and even went as far as to suggest the artists…could have used real children as models…

Sex, Lies and Busybodies (January 27^th, 2012)

The Los Angeles City council has apparently begun to recognize that its stupid condom law is unenforceable:

The city administrative officer has asked for a 90-day extension…[citing] “complexities”…In recent weeks the…panel has heard from a contingent of vocal…industry officials who say the ordinance is faulty and unneeded…adult industry attorney…Allan Gelbard…[said] the…extension may give the panel more time to logically think things through.  “Perhaps, if they take a more thorough look at the constitutional issues involved…they will realize what a mistake…this ordinance truly was”…

The Immunity Syndrome (March 5^th, 2012)

It now appears the damage done by “abstinence-only sex education” may be even worse than previously believed:

Sixty percent of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 may not truly understand how proper use of contraception can prevent pregnancy, according to a new study from the Guttmacher Institute, which reports abstinence-only sex education may be leaving young adults with a subpar understanding of sexual health.  Forty percent of respondents…said birth control was not important because “when it is your time to get pregnant, it will happen”…Although…69 percent of women and almost half of the men… agreed they were “committed to avoiding pregnancy,” they seemed to question whether contraceptive devices such as condoms or birth control pills were an effective way to achieve that goal…

Thou Shalt Not (March 6^th, 2012)

Alas, the US does not have a monopoly on crypto-moralism:

…according to a study…in the…journal Pediatrics…young adults who listen to…music…with ear buds are almost twice as likely as non-listeners to smoke pot…And those who attend concerts or frequent dance clubs are nearly six times as likely as homebodies to go on a binge-drinking bender.  These findings are based on survey results collected from 944 low-income students…in the Netherlands…[who] ranged in age from 15 to 25…Risky music-listening behavior was defined as listening to music at 89 dBA for at least an hour per day…That music exposure can cause noise-induced hearing loss…[and] “increased feelings of isolation, depression, loneliness, anger, and fear”…But that’s not where the health risks end.  The researchers found that…those who put themselves at risk…were:

* 1.99 times more likely to [have] used cannabis in the last four weeks;
* 1.19 times more likely to smoke cigarettes daily; and
* 1.10 times more likely to have sex without using a condom every time.

…those who put themselves at risk by attending noisy concerts and clubs were:

* 5.94 times more likely to have consumed five or more alcoholic drinks in a row at some point in the last four weeks;
* 2.03 times more likely to have sex without using a condom every time; and
* 1.12 times more likely to smoke cigarettes every day.

…The researchers…say…public health officials…could design practical interventions, such as handing out condoms along with earplugs at concert venues, or by printing messages about alcohol abuse on concert ticket stubs…

Remember, kids, rock and roll is dangerous!  But at least it can’t make you as clueless as people who actually get paid to write rubbish like this, or who publish articles about adult behavior in a magazine for pediatricians.

Feet of Clay (April 5^th, 2012)

Walter Olson on Nick Kristof’s latest exercise in fatuity:

Is there a New York Times columnist as insufferably moralistic, or as neglectful of facts that contradict his argument, as Nicholas Kristof?  Last week Kristof mounted yet another of his high-horse save-the-children campaigns, this time against…Anheuser-Busch.  Kristof asks readers to join his boycott of the leading brewer for…permitting its output to be sold…just across the state line from the Oglala Sioux’s Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.  Though notionally dry, the reservation is in practice wracked with alcoholism…Unlike Kristof’s  column and blog post, the Times‘ earlier reporting on the dispute at least makes a few concessions about how the tribe’s alcoholism…has more complicated origins than [a new] lawsuit would make it seem.  For example, it quotes Oglala members who say the unusual Pine Ridge policy of complete alcohol prohibition…has been a failure…Kristof by contrast appears to have swallowed the lawsuit’s contentions in one hearty draft…

Olson goes on to point out that under Nebraska law, brewers have no control over distribution of their product by state-licensed wholesalers; in other words Anheuser-Busch couldn’t stop beer from being sold near the reservation even if it shared Kristof’s belief that “enlightened” white people should “protect” childlike non-whites from their own choices.

Much Ado About Nothing (April 18^th, 2012)

I hope this keeps up; if they fire every government operative who has ever hired a whore, the few remaining bureaucrats will be too busy filling out forms to have any time to intrude in the private lives of citizens:

Three Drug Enforcement Administration agents are under investigation for allegedly hiring prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia…Sen. Susan Collins…[said] “It’s disturbing that we may be uncovering a troubling culture that spans more than one law enforcement agency…the evidence…indicates that this likely was not just a one-time incident”…

Senator Collins, that is the understatement of the century.

Little Boxes (April 29^th, 2012)

Amanda Brooks has a knack for discovering oddities like “Fake Internet Girlfriend”, which describes itself as “a service that allows our clients to discreet [sic] employ real females to pretend to be their girlfriend online and communicate with them as if they were dating the person on various social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter or in some cases in gaming communities like World of Warcraft.”  So if it’s more important to you to look like you have a girlfriend than to just use that money to actually have sex (which could potentially relax you enough that you might actually attract a real girlfriend), this is for you.  Of course they insist that they aren’t an escort service, and I‘ll grant that…but honestly, isn’t this on the periphery of sex work?  It’s not at all unusual for a client to pay a girl just to have someone to talk to or to be seen with in public, with no sex involved; is this so different?

Pyrrhic Victory (May 17^th, 2012)

For those who felt I was being an alarmist about drones:

…Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Texas…is considering using rubber bullets and tear gas on its drone…“It’s simply not appropriate to use any of force, lethal or non-lethal, on a drone,” [said] Catherine Crump [of the ACLU]…“An officer at a remote location…[Tasing or targeting] people…[could be considered] unconstitutional force…”

Today, remotely-piloted aircraft armed with tasers and tear gas; tomorrow autonomous killer robots with machine guns.  And y’all thought that was just dystopian science fiction.

Traffic Jam
(May 20^th, 2012)

Phoenix, Arizona joins the “major sex trafficking hotspot” competition, implements a version of the Swedish Model and violates the separation of church and state in one fell swoop:  “…Phoenix has become a hot spot for sex trafficking in part because we’re a destination point and our major highways…Rather than arrest sex trafficking victims, Project Rose enables officers to bring them to Bethany Bible Church…” where they get all these wonderful services as long as they claim to be “trafficked” and invent a bunch of “leads” to keep the police happy.  Look for the creative claim that “trafficked children” are kept in “dog crates” to show up in more trafficking porn over the next few months.

In this article I also pointed out that the practice of young female gang members contributing to gang finances via prostitution is now being called “sex trafficking”, and as Emi Koyama explained in a recent post about a public forum on the topic, the government recognizes the truth:

…a [government] representative…was invited to make a statement, which she was completely unprepared for…she slipped the information that confirmed what many activists knew was the case but most government experts were smart enough to conceal:  that the U.S. Attorney’s Office views domestic minor sex trafficking as “primarily gang-related,” and has moved the issue to its “gang unit”; transnational human trafficking on the other hand was moved to the civil rights unit…human trafficking is becoming yet another way for young men of color to be criminalized and imprisoned…

Metaupdates

Backwards into the Future in TW3 (#6) (February 19^th, 2012)

Once again, Namibians prove that they understand human rights better than Americans do:

The Executive Director of…Rights Not Rescue, Nicodemus ‘Mama Africa’ Aochamub says…”we are thankful that Kazenambo Kazenambo [a government minister who called for legalization of sex work] is brave to stand up for us, but we…prefer that sex work be decriminalised…With legalising, we will work under municipal laws such as registration…red-light districts and [forced]…medical checks [and] identification cards…Time has come for sex work to be regarded like any other employment”…

Sales Pitch in TW3 (#9) (March 4^th, 2012)

Wendy Lyon on what a “sex trafficking” trial reveals about the “Swedish Model”:

…last week several men were convicted for what Swedish prosecutors have called one of the largest trafficking rings of its kind…You can read…about it here, here and here…but there are a couple things…worth drawing attention to.  The first is…[that “there was no lack of buyers”]…one of the women…[said] she had seven or eight customers on her very first night.  This doesn’t say much for the supposed deterrent effect of the sex purchase ban.  The second is the breakdown of [clients’] ages…36% were born in the 1960s, 21% in the 1970s and 30% in the 1980s…nearly a third…were teenagers when the ban was introduced in 1999:  further evidence (as I discussed here) that it hasn’t had the normative effect it was supposed to have on younger men.  The 17-year-old’s conviction is interesting for another reason…Sweden’s age of majority is 18, which means that he is legally still a child…The ideology underlying the sex purchase ban is that women cannot choose to sell sex; evidently, however, Swedish law considers that male children…can choose to buy it.  In other words, when it comes to trading sex for money, adult women are less competent than male children.  Could there be any clearer illustration of how this law infantilises women?

One Year Ago Today

“Chupacabra” compares the truth about pimps to their oversized legend.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#15)

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.  -  James Madison

Ten updates and two meta-updates.

Welcome To Our World (January 20^th, 2011)

Who else besides prostitutes and drug users are abducted and caged “for their own good”?

A 17-year-old suspected rape victim is being held in a California juvenile detention facility to ensure that she’ll show up to testify against her attacker…“The last thing we ever want to do is put a victim or a witness in custody, but when you have serious crimes of violence and multiple offenses, you have to balance the protection of the community,” [said the]…assistant district attorney…

Once again:  never, ever call the cops for any reason, not even if you think you’re dying.  Because once you do, they think you are their personal property to dispose of in any way they wish.

A Manufactured War (January 23^rd, 2011)

In the grand tradition of William Randolph Hearst, the New York Times doesn’t just report the news; it exaggerates, distorts and lies in order to make a “good story”.  And since it’s been on an anti-whore hobby horse for several years now, that means stuff like this:

…While the rest of Spain’s economy may be struggling, experts say that prostitution — almost all of it involving the ruthless trafficking of foreign women — is booming…powered in large part by the desires of young men…The State Department’s 2010 report on trafficking said that 200,000 to 400,000 women worked in prostitution in Spain…[and] 90 percent were trafficked…

No, “experts” say no such thing; those who promote this kind of garbage are mostly just making it up, either pulling numbers from thin air or using overly-broad definitions (such as defining any hooker who works in an area other than her native soil as “trafficked”) and then embellishing the numbers with unwarranted adjectives like “ruthless” and presenting scare stories as “fact”.  For more Times duplicity, see “Feet of Clay” below.

Neither Cold Nor Hot (April 6^th, 2011)

Once in a while, Jezebel stands up for sex workers; too bad it isn’t more often:

Sex workers are anti sex-trafficking.  It seems obvious…and yet you might not know this because sex workers rights activists have not gotten any air-time from the major anti-trafficking organizations…shutting down advertising sites…means losing the ability to screen clients beforehand…SWOP and other sex worker advocacy groups have ideas around what could actually help trafficking…

Don’t Take My Word For It (September 29^th, 2011)

Three German students may have discovered the secret to heterosexual male prostitution:  don’t charge anything or expect much business:

…three business students from the University of Mannheim…offer…female students uncomplicated and anonymous one-night stands…posters…promise “Good Grades through Good Sex.”  The young men claim that their project is about emancipation…and…should be recognized as more than a mere coital campaign…Female students who spend their evenings drained and fatigued in the library and are in the mood for a little closeness and intimacy are encouraged to send an email.  Then one of the three men will meet with them…[they] claim that five one-night-stands have taken place so far…

Scapegoats (January 26^th, 2012)

Since this report is several years old and was not available on any mainstream news site, I suspect it’s an urban legend circulated among animal-rights types;  supposedly an orangutan named Pony was “rescued” from a rural brothel in Borneo, where she was employed as a prostitute and shaved several times a week to make her more presentable.  Unless someone manages to dig up a properly-documented article, I must point out that claiming huge numbers of men would pay for sex with an ape seems closely akin to the notion that similar numbers want sex with traumatized prepubescent girls:  both are prohibitionist myths intended to smear men in general and whores’ clients in particular.

The Immunity Syndrome (March 5^th, 2012)

Here’s an unsurprising report showing that American states with “abstinence-only” sex education have the highest teen pregnancy rates:

The number of teen births in the U.S. dropped again in 2010…to about 34 per 1,000 girls… Mississippi continues to have the  highest teen birth rate, with 55 births per 1,000 girls.  New Hampshire has the lowest rate at just under 16 births per 1,000 girls.  This is the lowest national rate for teen births since…1940…Researchers…found that teenagers who received…comprehensive sex education were 60 percent less likely to get pregnant or get someone else pregnant.  And in 2007, a federal report showed that abstinence-only programs had “no impacts on rates of sexual abstinence.”  But 37 states require sex education that includes abstinence, 26 of which require that abstinence be stressed as the best method…research shows that [these] deter contraceptive use  among teenagers, thus increasing…risk of unintended pregnancy…

Above the Law (March 8^th, 2012)

Naomi Wolf’s analysis of the TSA’s true motivation is much like mine:

…this week, the Supreme Court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor…Justice Anthony Kennedy explained that this ruling is necessary because [one of the 9/11 conspirators] could have been stopped for speeding.  How would strip searching him have prevented the attack?  Did Justice Kennedy imagine that plans to blow up the twin towers had been concealed in a body cavity?  In still more bizarre non-logic, his and the other justices’ decision rests on concerns about weapons and contraband in prison systems.  But people under arrest – that is, who are not yet convicted – haven’t been introduced into a prison population.  Our surveillance state shown considerable determination to intrude on citizens sexually…the use of forced nudity by a state that is descending into fascism is powerfully effective in controlling and subduing populations.  The political use of forced nudity by anti-democratic regimes is long established.  Forcing people to undress is the first step in breaking down their sense of individuality and dignity and reinforcing their powerlessness…the TSA…genital groping policy…is designed to psychologically habituate US citizens to a condition in which they are demeaned and sexually intruded upon by the state…

Useful Idiots (March 15^th, 2012)

More evidence for those who still don’t accept that neofeminist propaganda denying the agency of prostitutes and other non-neofeminist women is inevitably used to classify all women as passive, infantile moral imbeciles:

[Wisconsin governor] Scott Walker…quietly signed three controversial bills on the eve of a holiday weekend…A woman seeking an abortion must [now] undergo an exam and consult with a doctor alone, away from her friends and family.  The doctor must determine whether someone is pressuring the woman into the procedure…

Mandatory prosecution laws for domestic violence and Swedish-flavored anti-prostitution laws have established the precedent that women are incompetent to make any decision which involves sex, and that if a woman makes a decision “authorities” don’t like it must be the result of coercion.  This merely follows that precedent to its next logical step; look for more like it in upcoming months.

Feet of Clay (April 5^th, 2012)

Thanks to Jacob Sullum of Reason for pointing out this excellent article:

…[Nicholas] Kristof’s own newspaper profits from the sort of advertising for escort services, strip clubs, and other forms of adult entertainment that Kristof has linked to the underworld of child sex trafficking…About.com is “a wholly-owned subsidiary of the New York Times Company”…[which] accounted for 5% of all [company] revenues…in 2011, roughly $100 million…the Times also owns a 49% stake in Metro Boston…[which] also happens to make money from  adult advertising…[Kristof’s] salary partly comes from the same ads, and the same allegedly criminal activity, that he tried to pin on Goldman Sachs…Though [it] immediately divested itself of its stake in Backpage.com, that was not enough for Kristof, who told CNBC he would have preferred to see the company apply its investment towards “bringing about change” in the online advertising industry.  He added that Goldman Sachs should have sold its 16 percent stake in Village Voice Media to “an anti-trafficking organization.”  Will Kristof apply that same standard to the New York Times–and himself?  The newspaper and its shareholders must give up over $100 million in annual revenue; are they ready to contribute to the cause?  And if not, will Kristof devote his column to campaigning against his employer?  Will he appear on CNBC to report “The Times‘ Ties to Sex Trafficking?”  If not, why not?

The Notorious Badge (April 9^th, 2012)

In the TV movie The Client List Jennifer Love Hewitt played a mother who becomes an erotic masseuse to make ends meet, and the movie proved so popular it is now a series.  I have been told the character and her work are portrayed positively, and this interview with the actress leads me to believe that:

Since the movie has come out and with the upcoming show, have you been approached or contacted by any women who work in the sex industry?

No, I haven’t.  I mean, I’m sure maybe once the show starts airing a bit, I might be able to meet some of those women or they might feel more comfortable to come up and say hello and have open discussions about those things…I feel like [prejudices come]…from lack of knowledge and fear and maybe not knowing the whole story…the more that you look into those industries, a lot of those women are single moms doing the best that they can or are someone’s daughter who fell on hard times…of course, some of them…just chose it because that’s what they wanted to do…I respect people doing what they have to do in order to try to live and be happy…

I sent a message to Miss Hewitt offering to answer any questions she might have, but haven’t heard back yet.  The comment thread is a story in its own right; it’s full of holier-than-thou comments from the pompous windbags who apparently infest the massage profession nowadays, as discussed in “Full of Themselves”.

Metaupdates

An Ounce of Prevention in That Was the Week That Was (#11) (March 17^th, 2012)

More on Michael Weinstein’s campaign against an anti-HIV drug:

…Thanks to Weinstein’s “leadership” [AHF has] gone from a sizeable healthcare foundation with a good reputation to…a…joke…

A leading AIDS group is battling with FDA over whether the agency should approve the first drug for preventing HIV infection in gay men, and the fight has gotten nasty…the AIDS Healthcare Foundation called for Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to resign over that and other issues, perhaps including egos…Truvada cut the HIV infection in men who have sex with men by 44 percent compared to a placebo…So far, the drug has not been found to work in women…Weinstein worries that the promise of a “magic pill” could reverse progress the AIDS community has made in encouraging condom use over decades…

Mr. Weinstein is actually the only one who’s been branding Truvada as a magic pill, and he’s been citing half truths [and] his own botched survey…Nobody else…has been calling this anything other than…a drug with a promising potential that needs to be truly and thoroughly studied…Maybe it’s time for the AHF to consider whether or not the $366,046 a year they are paying Weinstein is money well spent.  Charles Lyons II at Glaser makes exactly $1023 less than Weinstein for running an organization twice the size and scope.  And he’s not wasting his group’s time and efforts trying to derail patient care…

The Leading Players in the Field, Not in That Was the Week That Was (#14) (April 6^th, 2012)

Dr. Laura Agustín published two excellent articles on Gloria Steinem’s recent attempt to appoint herself an expert on “prostitution and sex trafficking” in India; her April 6^th column discusses Steinem’s many errors, clichés, distortions, biases and moralistic assumptions, including her bizarre description of sex as “body invasion” (apparently a melodramatic twist on Robin Morgan’s ridiculous definition of rape).  And on April 9^th, Agustín describes an absurd tabloid-style news article glorifying Steinem and other White Saviors descending upon India to “rescue” sex workers “with money and might”.

One Year Ago Today

“The Pro-Rape Coalition” demonstrates why those who call themselves “anti-porn” are in reality pro-rape.

Read Full Post »

That Was the Week That Was (#14)

Any law which violates the indefeasible rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.  -  Maximilien Robespierre

Some of you may have noticed that my columns are posting earlier as of this week; I realized that if I posted them at 10:01 UTC every day, all my readers would be able to see (or at least be notified) of them on the proper date (even though it ranges from late evening in New Zealand to one minute past midnight in Hawaii).  That probably won’t matter to most of you, but it corrects a deficiency that’s been annoying me for some time.

I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now

The brave police of Manatee, Florida have announced their heroic capture of a dangerous criminal …a street woman so desperate she offered sex in exchange for two McDonald’s dollar-menu cheeseburgers.  I’m sure my Floridian readers will sleep more soundly tonight knowing this menace was removed from the streets.

Updates

Crime Against Society (February 26^th, 2011)

Though Louisiana’s oppressive “Crime Against Nature By Solicitation” law was reduced to a misdemeanor last year (thus removing the requirement for sex offender registration), Doe vs. Jindal continued because the state refused to release those previously condemned.  On March 29^th the judge decided in favor of the sex workers:

…U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman said state lawmakers had no “rational basis” for requiring people to register as sex offenders if they were convicted of a “crime against nature by solicitation”… “The defendants fail to credibly serve up even one unique legitimating governmental interest that can rationally explain the registration requirement imposed on those convicted of Crime Against Nature by Solicitation,” Feldman wrote.  ”The Court is left with no other conclusion but that the relationship between the classification is so shallow as to render the distinction wholly arbitrary”…

This is a victory not only for the approximately 400 people released from the tyrannical regime of “sex offender” registration, but for all those fighting to get armed busybodies out of people’s personal lives.

The Soft Weapon (March 24^th, 2011)

I exposed the Schapiro Group’s lies twice before the Village Voice did last March, but their voice is much louder than mine, and apparently quite a few heard it because a new petition on Change.org has called for criminal investigation of both the Schapiro Group and the “Women’s Funding Network” (one of billionaire prohibitionist Swanee Hunt’s fronts):

Recently the Village Voice exposed the Schapiro Group…and the Women’s Funding Network…for knowingly deceiving both congress and the public using false data manufactured through fraudulent research…[when] legitimate organizations that serve exploited…minors…are not able to report that they have reached numbers of youth comparable to the inflated numbers of victims…it jeopardizes their credibility and funding…[also] increased funding for law enforcement efforts to combat a vastly inflated threat…is channeled instead into police actions directed not at traffickers, but rather against consenting adult sex workers…We reject the concept that criminalizing members of any population is an effective way to rescue them…Therefore, we, the undersigned, call on the United States Dept. of Justice to investigate the Schapiro Group and the Women’s Funding Network for conspiracy to commit fraud against their donors, the public and the US government…

Needless to say, I urge you all to sign!

Sales Pitch (May 22^nd, 2011)

Here’s another study which proves that the “Swedish Model” doesn’t work; this one is from human trafficking expert Ann Jordan, who called the law “a failed experiment in social engineering” and pointed out that “the Swedish government has been unable to prove that the law has reduced the number of sex buyers or sellers or stopped trafficking.”

The Leading Players in the Field, Not (June 15^th, 2011)

This was forwarded to me by an academic correspondent; I think it speaks for itself.

Umpteen Thousand People Can’t Be Wrong (November 12^th, 2011)

The New York Times continues its crusade against sex workers, this time via a slanted article which refers to a 17-year-old as a “child” and blames Backpage (rather than the unexamined conditions at home which caused her to run away twice) for her becoming an underage prostitute.  Apparently the Times is hoping that Village Voice loses its nerve and backs down on the Backpage adult ads, because it would be forced to reverse course and oppose the fanatics (rather than getting in bed with them) if they succeed in enacting laws that make websites (like that run by the Times) responsible for user-generated content.

Held Together With Lies (April 2^nd, 2012)

The UN has released its latest “estimate” of “human trafficking victims”, and though it’s less than 9% of the popular figure popularized by fanatics, it’s still both unsubstantiated and inflated by at least two orders of magnitude:

The U.N. crime-fighting office said Tuesday that 2.4 million people across the globe are victims of human trafficking at any one time, and 80 percent of them are being exploited as sexual slaves.  Yuri Fedotov, the head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime…said $32 billion is being earned every year by unscrupulous criminals running human trafficking networks, and two out of every three victims are women…According to Fedotov’s Vienna-based office, only one out of 100 victims of trafficking is ever rescued…

In other words, Fedotov can only support 1% of his claim, or 24,000 people in the entire world.  That’s a lot more believable, but it wouldn’t generate the necessary panic so fanatics multiply it by over 1000x, then refuse to produce even the most tenuous evidence in support of the exaggerated claim.

An Example To the West (April 3^rd, 2012)

This article by researcher Matthias Lehmann on the harm criminalization does to Korean sex workers largely covers familiar ground, but also mentions that the prohibitionist Korean laws enacted in 2004 were strongly influenced by the “Swedish Model” and linked this strong criticism of the laws by two Swedish legislators.  Lehmann points out that “sex workers…remain criminalised unless they claim to be victims”, dividing women into “’good women who are worthy of help’ and ‘bad ones who need to be punished’, thus continuing the stigmatisation of women who sell sex.”  Unsurprisingly, this is the version of Swedish legislation now infiltrating the US as well.  The article quotes many of the same sources and developments I’ve reported previously, but I found this announcement very intriguing:

Sex workers often rightly criticise researchers, politicians or the media for distorting the reality of the sex industry.  I am therefore working together with Woo Yun Jin, a Korean visual artist, to develop a graphic novel entirely based on experiences shared with us by sex workers in Korea…[it] will be made available [later this year] in both English and Korean…we [hope this helps] people to better understand that sex workers are part of their communities and deserve the same rights just as everyone else.

Lehmann also provides links to “Research Project Korea” and a number of news articles and resources.

The Rape Question (April 4^th, 2012)

More information is better than less, but I’m concerned this could make rape trials even more of a “he said/she said” affair than they already are:

…An in-depth study comparing rape victims with nursing students at the University of Southern Denmark reveals that vaginal injuries are just as likely to result from consensual sex as rape.  [Researcher] Birgitte Schmidt Astrup [said] ‘…The nursing students experience just as frequent vaginal injuries as rape victims, and so these injuries cannot be used for much more than to establish that intercourse has taken place.’  She added that in cases of convictions based on evidence of vaginal injuries, there could now be discussions as to whether there have been miscarriages of justice…all [of the subjects] were examined less than 28 hours after sexual intercourse…vaginal injuries were found in 36 per cent of rape victims and in 34 per cent of the nursing students.  The…students’ results were not affected by whether they had engaged in rough or gentle sex, or whether they had used condoms or sex toys…

Feet of Clay (April 5^th, 2012)

The outcry against Nicholas Kristof and his anti-whore crusade continues to grow and generalize; this week I discovered a well-written article from a member of the Occupy movement denouncing Kristof’s transparent attempt to call attention away from his own lies and exaggerations by branding the much-hated Goldman-Sachs “financiers of sex trafficking”:

…It was with some horror…that…I observed several Occupy-affiliated Twitter accounts sharing a link to an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, entitled “Financiers and Sex Trafficking”…It’s easy to see how this could appear to fit in the widespread populist anger against the financial sector that powers Occupy Wall Street…[but] Backpage is mostly used by consenting adults, and Nicholas D. Kristof is a man with a history of trying to use the specters of trafficking and child prostitution as leverage for a campaign that seeks ultimately to further criminalize sex workers…his “rescue” work in developing countries has basically involved riding along with law enforcement and live-tweeting brothel raids, writing himself into the story as the white savior (consequences be damned).  In other words, he is a buffoon, a prime member of the Liberal Class that preserves the status quo by defining the acceptable limits of dissent…Meg…[of] SWOP Chicago…[explained that] “The anti-trafficking crusade is a top-down movement, led by (among others) two right-wing religious conservatives from the Bush Administration (Laura Lederer, Swanee Hunt)…if Occupy Wall Street jumps on the anti-trafficking bandwagon, they’re really just swallowing rhetoric designed by one of the nation’s best consulting firms to further the particular agenda of a few members of the top .0001%”…Trafficking and child prostitution have been invoked to justify criminalizing…sex work since at least the end of the last century…Demand Abolition’s own material [confirms] this…[its] Nation Strategy emphasizes that “Framing the Campaign’s key target as sexual slavery might garner more support and less resistance, while framing the Campaign as combating prostitution may be less likely to mobilize similar levels of support and to stimulate stronger opposition.”

…If Occupy wants to add justice for sex workers to its cause (and it should), then it can carry on doing what the movement has generally done very well:  Don’t pay much attention at all to the self-appointed pundit class at the likes of the New York Times.  Listen to actual workers, the people for whom these issues are an everyday reality, not a hot topic…

Metaupdates

Good News, Bad News in That Was the Week That Was (#10) (March 10^th, 2012)

It turn out that the push to impose the Swedish Model on Western Australia is largely a one-woman campaign enabled by a sleazy political deal:

…The government’s prostitution bill proposes to make sex work in residential areas illegal and requires brothel owners, managers and sex workers…to register…Labor is opposed to the legislation…[along with two prominent] Liberal MPs…[so] the government will need [the support of] independent MPs Janet Woollard and Adele Carles…[who] wants…three amendments…[which] would [shift] the criminal focus…to clients…Carles said she had visited Sweden…”They determined that prostitution is not a job.  Prostitution is violence against women”…

But while Carles is the typical neofeminist Swedish dupe , Woollard refuses to back the law unless it bans brothels entirely in five years.  Since that won’t happen, the law probably won’t pass, but I’ll report as the situation develops.

The Crumbling Dam in That Was the Week That Was (#13) (March 31^st, 2012)

Ron Weitzer’s article on the recent Canadian decision clarifies a detail I had missed:  “The court gave the government 12 months to appeal the decision allowing bawdy houses, 30 days to rewrite the ‘living off the avails’ law to restrict it to exploitation, and allowed the parties 60 days to appeal the decision to uphold the solicitation/communication law.”  Obviously the government will appeal to keep its brothel ban and these workers will appeal the upholding of the “communicating” law, but as I understand it the avails law is a dead duck in its present form, which is certainly good news.

One Year Ago Today

“Neither Cold Nor Hot” looks at Jezebel’s weird ambivalence about sex work.

Read Full Post »

Feet of Clay

You, O king, saw, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before you; and its form was frightening.  This image’s head was of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, Its legs of iron, its feet part of iron and part of clay.  -  Daniel 2:31-33

Because I don’t live in New York and am comparatively new (about two years) to the whole blogging scene, I had actually never heard of Nicholas Kristof until autumn of 2010 (which is only fair, since he apparently hadn’t heard of me until March 18^th).  As I’ve since discovered, he’s been trying to make a name for himself for years, but petty little men like Kristof can never climb on their own; they always do so by trying to bring down others, and if that takes lies so be it.  In the last few years he has used “sex trafficking” hysteria (and crusades against prostitutes, brothels and Backpage) to establish himself as a hero to legions of adoring  fans, and while those of us working to dispel the myths about the subject have seen him for what he is for quite some time, it’s only recently that more mainstream writers have begun to call attention to this idol’s feet of clay.

The process started the same day he “tweeted” about my column, March 18^th; on that day he published one of his typical lurid “sex slavery” accounts, claiming that Backpage was somehow responsible for the “pimping” of a 16-year-old girl he called “Alissa”.  As regular readers know, Kristof always plays fast-and-loose with the facts in such columns, but this time he went too far; while he usually uses anonymous women’s stories (often without permission) and then distorts and exaggerates them into unrecognizability (to “protect” the women, of course), this time he left enough facts to allow the story to be checked.  So Village Voice (owners of Backpage) did, and guess what?

Nicholas D. Kristof…wrote about an underage victim of human trafficking:  ”Alissa says pimps routinely peddled her on Backpage.”  A video that accompanied his online op-ed was headlined:  ”Age 16, She Was Sold on Backpage.com”  That is not true.  According to Alissa’s court testimony, she was 16 in 2003.  Backpage.com did not exist anywhere in America in 2003…she…came to the FBI’s attention in August, 2005 [and] was…relocated away from the corners and hotels she worked in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Atlantic City…In the summer of 2005 Backpage.com did not exist in Boston, New York, Philadelphia or Atlantic City.  Had Kristof followed any of The New York Times’ standards of journalism, he would have known this.  He could have read the court transcripts.  He could have read the testimony…He could have Googled the case and read the coverage in The Boston Globe…Neglecting to do any of the above, Kristof could still have asked us.  Despite extensive correspondence with our attorney, he never mentioned Alissa or sought confirmation about her purported link to Backpage.com at the age of 16.  Instead, he concocted a story to suit his agenda and then asked his readers to boycott Village Voice Media…

It’s possible that Alissa lied either in her testimony or to Kristof, or both; it would be typical of the “reframing of experiences” neofeminist prohibitionists teach to “survivors”.  But given Kristof’s track record, it’s just as likely he made it up without her help.  Jacob Sullum of Reason covered the story on the 21^st, and one of the commenters on that column provided a link to a May 2010 article in The Atlantic about the ordeal of Dr. Steven Hatfill, who was railroaded by the FBI for the September 2001 anthrax scare…and as it turns out, Kristof helped to lay the rails:

…Some journalists became convinced there was plenty pointing to Hatfill’s guilt.  Among those beating the drum early and loud…was Nicholas Kristof…[who initially] stopped short of naming Hatfill publicly, instead branding him with the sinister-sounding pseudonym “Mr. Z.”  Without identifying his sources, in a July column Kristof wrote:

If Mr. Z were an Arab national, he would have been imprisoned long ago.  But he is a true-blue American with close ties to the U.S. Defense Department, the C.I.A. and the American biodefense program…With many experts buzzing about Mr. Z behind his back, it’s time for the F.B.I. to make a move:  either it should go after him more aggressively, sifting thoroughly through his past and picking up loose threads, or it should seek to exculpate him and remove this cloud of suspicion.

One of those threads, Kristof reported, pointed to the possibility that Mr. Z was a genocidal racist who had carried out germ warfare to slaughter innocent black Africans.  Kristof addressed his column directly to the FBI:

Have you examined whether Mr. Z has connections to the biggest anthrax outbreak among humans ever recorded, the one that sickened more than 10,000 black farmers in Zimbabwe in 1978–80?  There is evidence that the anthrax was released by the white Rhodesian Army fighting against black guerrillas, and Mr. Z has claimed that he participated in the white army’s much-feared Selous Scouts.  Could rogue elements of the American military have backed the Rhodesian Army in anthrax and cholera attacks against blacks?

Kristof didn’t mention that the majority of soldiers in the Rhodesian army, and in Hatfill’s unit, were black; or that many well-respected scientists who examined the evidence concluded that the Rhodesian anthrax outbreak emerged naturally when cattle herds went unvaccinated during a turbulent civil war.  Kristof also failed to mention that Mr. Z had served in that war as a lowly private.  To have been involved in some sort of top-secret Rhodesian germ-weapons program “would’ve been like a Pakistani army private being brought in to work on a project at Los Alamos,” Hatfill says today.

Kristof wrote that Mr. Z had shown “evasion” in repeated FBI polygraph examinations.  He also claimed that following the anthrax attacks, Mr. Z had accessed an “isolated residence”…where…“Mr. Z gave Cipro to people who visited it.”  Other journalists would later describe this mysterious residence as a “remote cabin,” a kind of Ted Kaczynski–style hideout where a deranged scientist could easily have prepared anthrax for mailing.  In fact, the “cabin” was a three-bedroom weekend home…in rural Virginia owned by a longtime friend of Hatfill’s, George R. Borsari Jr., an avuncular Washington communications lawyer and retired Army lieutenant colonel.  Borsari says he found speculation that his place had been a haven for spies or bioterrorists laughable.  When an FBI agent asked Borsari if he would allow a search of the property, Borsari said no.  “I told him, ‘I’m not going to be a part of your publicity game,’” Borsari says.  No search was ever conducted, but by then the damage to Hatfill had been done…

Kristof’s grown more ambitious in the past decade; he used to be satisfied with libeling individuals, but now he targets entire corporations.  Nor is it only sex worker rights advocates and libertarians who question Kristof’s motives and methods; consider this March 21^st  article (also from The Atlantic) by Teju Cole, in which he compares Kristof to the disgraced “Invisible Children” crusaders:

…This weekend, I listened to a radio interview given by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof…best known for his…  accounts of his activism or that of other Westerners.  When I saw the Kony 2012 video, I found it tonally similar to Kristof’s approach…I do not accuse Kristof of racism nor do I believe he is in any way racist…But that, precisely, is what worries me…His good heart does not always allow him to think constellationally.  He does not connect the dots or see the patterns of power behind the isolated “disasters.”  All he sees…is need, and he sees no need to reason out the need for the need…I disagree with the approach taken by…the White Savior Industrial Complex…because there is much more to doing good work than “making a difference.”  There is the principle of first do no harm.  There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them…

I think Cole is being too kind in saying Kristof is good-hearted and not racist; in fact I agree with Dr. Laura Agustín that he’s very much a racist, because he believes his own race and culture’s way of doing things is the right way for everyone.  True charity does not come at the point of a gun, good causes need not be shored up with lies, and worthy idols do not have feet of clay.

One Year Ago Today

“April Updates” discusses the suppressed Rind-Tromovitch-Bauserman study, reports on the Egyptian women subjected to “virginity tests” and two New Orleans cops fired for harassing streetwalkers, criticizes the conviction of a Massachusetts sportswriter for “pimping” and marks the publication of Satoshi Kanazawa’s column about me.

Read Full Post »