That Was the Week That Was (#312)

Humanity has a bad track record of selectively appealing to authority to justify our biases.  -  Andrea Castillo

R.I.P. Harry Reems

Harry Reems, the first male porn star, died of pancreatic cancer on Tuesday (March 19^th) at the age of 65.  For his role in Deep Throat, Reems was convicted in 1976 of “conspiracy to transport obscene material across state lines”, and though that sentence was overturned a year later the stress of the trial drove him to start drinking; he spent the late ‘80s as a homeless alcoholic before sobering up in 1989, then getting married and going into real estate a year later.  Unlike his co-star Linda Lovelace, however, he never regretted his choices or blamed porn for his troubles, and went by his stage name (his birth name was Herbert Streicher) until the end.

Bad Girls

I left out the very rarest, but worst type:  “[Houma, Louisiana] police arrested 15 men…alleging they solicited a prostitute through [Backpage]…one of [two] prostitutes…[was] issued a summons…[but] the other…was not arrested [because she] agreed to be a part of the sting…”  There is absolutely no lower life-form in the whoring ecosystem than a person who collaborates with cops to ensnare others in order to save his or her own worthless hide.

Dr. Schrödinger and His Amazing Pussycat

Andrea Castillo’s “When Science Looks Like Religion” explores the territory discussed in Monday’s comment thread:  When people blindly accept scientific findings which reinforce their irrational beliefs while rejecting equally-valid results which contradict those beliefs, the result is not science but religion.  The last part is doubly germane:  it describes Norwegian social scientists’ knee-jerk denial of all data which contradicts their cultic social constructionism.

Secret Squirrel

A new low in intra-family spying:

…Suspicious moms and dads are hiring trained drug detection dogs to sniff out their kids’ drug stash…the RK Agency…[charges] $350…[to] “discreetly perform a thorough inspection of your entire property”…Jeffrey Gardere, a child psychologist …[told] the Today Show… “I don’t know if you can [have a relationship with your kids] if you’re bringing in drug-sniffing dogs”…

Size Matters

According to this post from Dr. Annie Sprinkle, Tracy Elise of Phoenix Goddess Temple has been “deemed…’incompetent’ to go to trial…she will be sent to psych ward and forced to take psychiatric drugs for about 15 months until she’s ‘competent’…I feel that if…sex workers…criticise Tracy Elise…we are in a way colluding with the [police]…and…contributing to the problem, which is exactly what the ‘sex negative society’…wants us to do…”  I totally agree.

The Last Shall Be First

[Arizona] legislators…are attempting to pass legislation that forces transgender people to only use public restrooms…associated with the gender…on their birth certificate…in response to a [Phoenix] …bill…which prohibits gender identity discrimination in public accommodations…

Lupercalia

Dr. Brooke Magnanti on the lessons we can learn from Pompeii:

…women in Ancient Rome [married] sometimes as young as 14…[but] were permitted to own land and houses and have jobs.  Women of the upper classes were educated to a high standard…It’s well known that Pompeii…boasted a large sex industry…and…open attitudes about sexuality and prostitution didn’t hold back other women from achieving…

And if you just can’t get enough of Brooke, here’s a short but wide-ranging interview with her in The Age.

A Broker in Pillage

Once again, the British government displays its dedication to literally robbing sex workers of their life savings:

A Chinese brothel madam and her husband have been ordered to pay back £125,000 within six months or she will face another jail sentence and he will join her…Rong Chen…and her husband Jason Hinton…only [have] £125,000 of realisable assets…[namely] their marital home in…Worcestershire, which…will have to be sold or remortgaged…

Note the weird euphemism “pay back”, implying that the money is refunded to customers; in reality it is split between the police, court and Inland Revenue.

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

If politicians’ minds weren’t befuddled by prohibitionist idiocy, they wouldn’t be so confused by wholly predictable outcomes like this:

…Jakarta…has tried…to offer sex workers ways to escape the sex industry…[for] example…sex workers…[given] a dressmaking course…did not return to their villages…but rather…to their old lives in Jakarta…the income from sewing was just too far below sex work…A high ranking health official…[said] it would be better to legalize prostitution; closing Kramat Tunggak would result in the dispersion of prostitution sites to several unidentified locations — making health checkups impossible…Surabaya…is still trying to phase out Dolly, East Java’s famed prostitution site…

But as this second article from the same newspaper explains, closing Dolly would be an economic disaster:

…Dolly…consists of at least 300 brothels…employing thousands of prostitutes…[plus] numerous supporting businesses — clinics, mini markets, sexual enhancement medicine vendors, parking lots, banks, rented houses, Internet cafes, small restaurants…University of Indonesia economist Lana Soelistianingsih said that…economic transactions triggered by prostitution [alone] could contribute around Rp 1.5 trillion to Surabaya’s gross domestic product…

Oscillation

Family Research Council…fellow Pat Fagan…claims that Eisenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that overturned a Massachusetts law banning the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people, may rank “as the single most destructive decision in the history of the Court”…because it effectively meant that “single people have the right to engage in sexual intercourse…Society never gave young people that right, functioning societies don’t do that, they stop it, they punish it, they corral people, they shame people, they do whatever”…

Real People (TW3 #21)

…Amsterdam’s oldest prostitutes have retired after more than 50 years each in the business.  Louise and Martine Fokkens, 70, have decided they are too old…Louise…says arthritis now makes some sexual positions “too painful”…and Martine…admits she finds it hard to attract punters – though one elderly man still has his weekly sadomasochism session…The pair were the subject last year of a documentary Meet The Fokkens and they have written a book called The Ladies Of Amsterdam…

First They Came for the Hookers…

As I pointed out recently, Nevada isn’t remotely pro-whore:  “Two [Nevada] state Senators introduced bills…[to] regulate strip clubs…Mark Manendo…wants to charge …a $10 per customer fee…[to fund] programs related to domestic violence…Barbara Cegavske…would ban anyone less than 21-years-old from performing…”

The Public Eye

Caty Simon of Tits and Sass interviews well-known activist Audacia Ray on the Red Umbrella Project, speaking to the media, condom criminalization, the Long Island Killer and why sex workers need to ally with harm reduction and anti-drug war activists.

Monkey Business

Baboons have been observed keeping dogs as pets:

Birth of a Movement (TW3 #39)

French sex workers continue to push back against increased criminalization:

10 years ago, the Internal Security Act (LSI) penalized public solicitation, including so-called “passive solicitation”…[this] has reinforced the isolation of sex workers, relegating them to more remote places where they are…more prone to violence…since the introduction of the LSI, “the conduct of the police deteriorated sharply.  Their attitude is less respectful and humiliation increased…their protective function…has virtually disappeared and [they are]…most often perceived as strictly punitive”…Médecins du Monde demand the immediate repeal of the offense of soliciting…[and] rejects any proposal to penalize customers…

Women’s Rights Minister Najat Belkacem responded in a typically clueless manner; though she promised repeal of the law, she also made the absurd claim that “90% of [sex workers] are victims of human trafficking” and refused to back down on her scheme to impose the Swedish model.

King of the Hill

Portland, Oregon’s bid for the “largest trafficking hub” title isn’t a new one, but now they’re claiming that this is “proven” not only by highways, but by rivers:

…Portland [has]…one of the largest sex industries of any U.S. city…human trafficking…is a growing problem in Oregon due in part to the traffic permitted by Interstates 5 and I-84 [and] the Willamette and Columbia rivers…the problem [is] one that’s inextricably linked to gangs…“When people think of prostitution, their first instinct is a girl walking on the street,” [police spokesman Pete] Simpson says.  “They’re not thinking about the fact that she’s being traded as a commodity, sold as a product”…The change [in strategy] humanizes the victims…

Simpson robs women of agency, then claims he’s “humanizing” whores who were already human before he turned them into things to be acted upon.  It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Accredited Whores

Charlotte Shane’s review of An Intimate Life: Sex, Love, and My Journey As A Surrogate Partner, the memoirs of sex surrogate Cheryl Greene (of The Sessions fame), covers much the same ground as my column, and that’s a good thing; the more of us there are speaking out against these artificial lines drawn between types of sex work, the more people will finally get it.

Like a Horse and Carriage

I’m glad to see that others are recognizing that “marriage equality” applies just as well to polygamy as it does to same-sex marriage, and are making good arguments for it:

I’m in favor of leaving marriage to the religious institutions, and registering households in whatever configuration people want to live.  If a same-gender couple, or a heterosexual couple, or an elderly couple who can’t have children, or any couple want to be responsible to and for each other, let them.  If three people want to be responsible to and for each other, let them.  If a gay man and his female best friend want to be responsible to and for each other, let them.  Let’s stop worrying about who is screwing who, and just make it easier for people to be responsible in their relationships.

Still More Mentoring

SWOP-NOLA posted these “Client Screening Tips and Helpful Links from a New Orleans Provider”; I already mentioned a few of these, but she provides many more I didn’t know about.

The Joy of Juxtaposition

One would never know that these claims have been repeatedly debunked:

The Georgia attorney general and other law enforcement officials kicked off a public awareness campaign…[which] bears the slogan “Georgia’s not buying it” and includes a [commercial] featuring professional athletes…”We’ll continue to go after the pimps and rescue the victims, but we know that the only way to truly eradicate this evil is by ending the demand,” Attorney General Sam Olens said…It is a problem throughout Georgia, in both urban areas and in small towns and rural areas…

Georgia is indeed “buying it”, wholesale.  I’m sure millions in federal grants and an excuse to further erode civil rights have nothing to do with all this.

Skin To Skin

An Australian sex therapist argues that disability insurance should cover the hiring of sex workers:

Sexual expression is a fundamental part of being human…Decades of research have uncovered the many benefits of sex, which include physical health, quality of life, psychological well-being and sexual self-esteem.  Unfortunately, because of social taboos and hypocrisy…barriers are created to stop people from fully realising these benefits…Some people with disabilities have limited opportunities for sexual relationships because they lack privacy and are dependent on others…

Comfort Zone

The video of the Albany Law School symposium is now available!  If you don’t have the time or inclination to watch the whole thing (4 hours), my part runs from minute 170 to 185.

An Ounce of Prevention (TW3 #310)

Earlier this month, doctors announced that a baby had been cured of…HIV…Now…it appears that 14 adults have…been successfully treated…70 people…[received] combination antiretroviral therapy (cART)…much sooner than…normal…[because] all [were] diagnosed…early…they…stuck to the [regimen] for an average of three years…[but then] stopped…for various reasons…Normally, HIV will return when patients stop taking their ARVs.  But this time…14…patients…were functionally cured…

Hard Numbers (TW3 #311)

Apparently, the proposed legislative reform in South Australia isn’t quite decriminalization (though it’s a lot closer to it than anything we’ll see in the US anytime soon):  “…it makes special provisions for sex work such as special licensing, laws about safe sex and possibly restrictions on location…once a ‘reform’ law has been passed the chances of getting better legislation in the near future drop to zero.  So many people feel it’s better to stay with a bad situation and hope to get good reform rather than settle for an unsatisfactory ‘improvement’…”

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Banishment

Pain can be alleviated by morphine but the pain of social ostracism cannot be taken away.  -  Derek Jarman

To a very high degree, modern society is losing its taste for overt violence.  As Steven Pinker has pointed out, by any measurable standard we are living in the least violent era in human history, and the level keeps dropping all the time; there is less war, less violent crime, and less collective brutality than ever before.  But while modern people are more likely to fight with lawsuits than with knives and states are more likely to impoverish or incarcerate than to execute, there is still plenty of hate, concentrated on an ever-dwindling population of “safe” targets.  In the West, maltreatment of sexual minorities has always been popular, and though society has placed race, gender, religion, ethnicity and even homosexuality off-limits, open hatred of most sexual minorities is still deemed acceptable both for individuals and for governments.  The diminishing popularity of open barbarism such as beating, branding, maiming or burning alive led to a shift toward incarceration, but overcrowded prisons and skyrocketing costs make permanent caging of the non-violent unfeasible even when it isn’t actually impossible, so what are sadistic moralists to do?  Increasingly, the answer is the next best thing to imprisonment: exile.

For most of history, the preferred method for dealing with undesirables was to remove them by pushing them to the fringes of society, banishing them from a jurisdiction altogether, or ejecting them from material existence entirely (often by imaginative and grisly means designed to instill fear into the rest of the populace).  Then in the 19^th century, all of these were largely supplanted by the one-size-fits-all approach, incarceration; though it was advertised (and still is) as a means of “correcting” errant individuals, it actually serves only two purposes: sequestration and vengeance.  But the United States has carried that inhumane experiment almost as far as is economically and socially possible, and even die-hard adherents of the “lock ‘em all up” mentality are beginning to admit that the system is a human rights disaster; since execution is now widely considered distasteful except for the most heinous murders, it isn’t surprising that banishment is coming back into fashion for “sex criminals”.

Though everyone has sexual impulses, a large fraction of humanity (most especially Judeo-Christian humanity) prefers to pretend that it doesn’t.  When an “upright, wholesome” man or a “pure, chaste” woman sees a “pervert” or whore, he or she is unpleasantly reminded of his or her own sexual needs and thoughts; the urge to remove “sex offenders” from public view is thus a very strong one.  It’s easy for the typical “law-abiding citizen” to pretend he would never steal or kill, so even if a violent criminal remains in the public eye it provokes little discomfort among the righteous; sex “crimes”, however, are a different matter entirely, and require more active and ritualistic “othering” and expulsion.  That’s why the physical location of a brothel or escort’s incall is almost invariably mentioned with pretended horror: “within walking distance of [an] Elementary School” or “a building close to [a] Monastery” or “just a few hundred yards from the courthouse.”  Given the density of schools, churches and government buildings in any typical city it would be unusual if a whore’s workplace was not close to some such edifice, but these statements serve an incantatory purpose rather than an informational one: they are formulae intended to assure the reader or listener that commercial sex is weird and that the speaker or writer wholly disapproves of it.

Once one understands this, “sex offender” residency restrictions make a lot more psychological sense, despite their complete legal insupportability and practical absurdity; obviously, nobody believes that “sex offenders” are incapable of moving from their declared residences, nor that they are so stupid they would prefer to commit “sex crimes” in their own neighborhoods rather than someplace else where they’re less likely to be identified.  The purpose of such laws is to prevent ritual contamination from pariahs, and to remind the citizenry that politicians are courageous defenders of the public morals.  How else can we explain petty evil like this:

[Los Angeles] officials are building a small park in Harbor Gateway…[to force] 33 registered sex offenders to move out of a nearby apartment building.  State law prohibits sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a park or school.  By building the park, officials said, they would effectively force the sex offenders to leave the neighborhood…Los Angeles plans to build a total of three pocket parks with the intent of driving out registered sex offenders; two will be in Wilmington.  At one-fifth of an acre, [it] will barely have room for two jungle gyms, some benches and a brick wall…The action marks the latest campaign…to drive sex offenders farther into the fringes of society.  The state law already bans offenders from living in huge swaths of urban areas, pushing them into industrial districts and remote towns and into neighborhoods…that lack schools and parks…

Clustering of “sex offenders” is the inevitable result of these draconian residence policies, and Los Angeles isn’t the only place where politicians are now legislating to “solve” a problem they created themselves:

Shiloni Transformation Ministry has taken a stand against…the Anti-Clustering Law being made statewide in Alabama.  This law was passed in 2010 for the City of Birmingham…as a “test run” for the entire state to adopt this very damaging piece of legislation…[which] effectively disabled our ministry from being able to take in former sex offenders out of prison…HB 85 does state that there is a provision…for half-way houses that are “state approved”…[but] there is no state approval agency or standard set in place…Bill Grier…of Shiloni…[said] “The State of Alabama has…opposed the assistance of any and all convicted sex offenders…This…supports recidivism because they have no structured environment to…enable them to move forward”…the State of Colorado Department of Corrections Study in 2003…found that residency restrictions had no effect on recidivism of sex offenders, but a positive…environment, such as a halfway house or…supportive family, increases an offender’s likelihood of living a productive, successful life once their sentences have been served.

Grotesquely-unjust government policies nearly always have to get worse before they get better, and “sex criminal” banishment laws have now reached the tipping point; they are so clearly monstrous that even people who are not themselves directly affected are beginning to oppose them, as in the example above.  It’s going to be a long time before the victims of these registries are freed from rampant persecution, but perhaps sex workers may be somewhat luckier:

A proposal to banish sex workers from Atlanta has stalled amid growing opposition that includes LGBT activists and gay residents…The…City Council’s Public Safety Committee dropped the proposal…instead looking to convene a Working Group on Prostitution to gather recommendations on how to best deter prostitution.  That’s quite a departure from the Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution proposal, which was on a fast track to approval earlier this month…

The vast majority of so-called “sex offenders” are people who were accused of perfectly ordinary human behaviors criminalized by our twisted society; the remainder are far more likely to reoffend if they’re denied normal social interaction.  Neither they nor streetwalkers nor anyone else who hasn’t committed mass murder deserve to be driven out of communities as lepers once were; it’s time to consign such atavistims to the same rubbish-heap of obsolete legal penalties where the pillory, the lash and the headsman’s axe are buried.

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That Was the Week That Was (#138)

It’s…extremely patronizing…to say someone’s conscious choice of work is degrading.  -  Jon Millward

License To Rape

A [Mt. Pleasant] Texas police officer pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14-years-old…Eric Jason Campbell, 41, has been sentenced to 50 years in prison.  He will also be required to register as a sex offender when he is released…

Saving Them From Themselves

A Massachusetts DA helpfully explains why it’s a good thing his office persecutes teenagers for “sexting”:

…”We do not have any exceptions…for kids who are really in love, for girls who wanted to do it and for guys who promised they wouldn’t share it…” [Robert] Kinzer said.  ”A nude photo of [a minor’s] exposed genitalia is child pornography…When they start sharing photos like this, we are going to start charging people with the manufacturing, dissemination and possession of child pornography, and they’re going to…face [prosecution]…You’re going to lose jobs and relationships, and you’ll spend the rest of your life as a registered sex offender”…

Tyranny By Consensus

Since LA County officials have not leaped at the opportunity to waste millions of dollars policing porn shoots to enforce his private condom crusade, Michael Weinstein is now trying to force the city to establish its own redundant health department, which Weinstein presumably believes would be more easily pressured into dancing to his tune:

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation announced…a new ballot measure …[for] an all-new City of L.A. Public Health Department…AHF has urged Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Los Angeles County’s Public Health director, to shut down non-condom porn shoots…[but] Fielding…hasn’t…despite AHF-led letter and phone campaigns.  And it is well known that officials at the county Public Health Department are opposed to their agency enforcing Measure B…

Big Sister

In this column I wrote, “Prostitution and stripping are already illegal, and it seems that porn will be next, followed by censorship of print media and the internet.”  Yes, I do get tired of being right all the time:

The government is considering…internet filters, such as those used to block China off…to stop Icelanders downloading or viewing pornography on the internet…Ogmundur Jonasson, Iceland’s interior minister, is drafting legislation to stop the access of online pornographic images and videos…”violent pornography…has…very harmful effects on young people and can have a clear link to incidences of violent crime,” he said.

In reality, the evidence suggests exactly the opposite, but since Iceland already has the highest rape rate in Europe I guess they figure a few more raped women are just extra eggs for the totalitarian neofeminist omelette.  The story quotes the ubiquitous Gail Dines, who also used the occasion to get her name in print in the UK as well.

Presents, Presents, Presents!

This week I received a copy of Sex at Dawn  (which people have been trying to get me to read for years) from Eddie JC.  Thank you, Eddie!

That’s the Ticket!

One would think that the Comic Relief organization could tell the difference between actual statistics and the absurd claims of a “pathological liar” comedy routine, but apparently not:  “75% of women working in prostitution started before they were 18, and most of them feel trapped and would leave if only they could find a way.  The UK is a major destination country for trafficked young people…”

The Course of a Disease

“…Dublin City Council…rejected calls to support the Turn Off The Red-light campaign.  Amendments passed removed the proposal to criminalise the purchase of sex, and changed the report on Swedish evidence to hearsay.”  The national crusade still rolls on, but this local rejection of the Swedish rot shows that not everyone in Ireland is asleep at the wheel.

FarmVille

…On March 4, a new game on Facebook, inspired by the book Half the Sky…will be introduced, with a focus on raising awareness of issues like female genital mutilation and child prostitution…The central character, an Indian woman named Radhika, faces various challenges with the assistance of players, who can help out with donations of virtual goods, for example.  The players can then make equivalent real-world donations to seven nonprofit organizations woven into the game…As her empowerment grows, Radhika moves across the globe to Kenya, Vietnam and Afghanistan…Players who reach the final level learn about sex trafficking in the United States and can donate to an organization in New York called GEMS…

Because it’s really important to simplify complex issues and make them fun so that wise, benevolent white people will be tempted to manage the lives of helpless, childlike brown ones.

Little Boxes

A bill that could send women to prison for going topless in public appears set for approval by the North Carolina legislature…[it] would amend the state’s indecent exposure law to expand the legal definition of “private parts” to…include “the nipple, or any portion of the areola, [of] the female breast.”  Depending on whether such exposure is judged to be “for the purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire,” the woman could be charged with a felony, punishable by up to six months in prison…More mundane exposure would be a misdemeanor, meriting up to 30 days in jail.  “Incidental” exposure by breastfeeding mothers would remain exempt…Rayne Brown…[said] her constituents are concerned about topless rallies promoting women’s equality…

Shift in the Wind

Another fun promotional video from the Sex Worker Freedom Festival last July:

Childish Things (TW3 #33)

Dr. Paul Maginn has published another appeal for sanity, stating that “various parts of the world appear to be suffering from a mix of moral panic and ideological myopia” on the issue of sex work.  Though brief, the article debunks lies about “sex trafficking”, “dirty whores”, “end demand” and “negative secondary effects”, and includes quotes from Drs. Laura Agustín and Brooke Magnanti.

Obfuscation Via Dysphemisms

Oklahoma “authorities” seem even more enchanted with the notion of “human trafficking” than most Americans:

…Clarence F. Holden, 25, of Fort Smith [Arkansas] faces felony counts of human trafficking and procuring for prostitution…Officers arrested Holden and two other people…after the Vice Unit responded to an Internet post…for “a massage with a ‘happy ending’ ” for $150…Destiny Hope Niles, 24, also of Fort Smith – told police Holden keeps her money, car keys and credit card and threatened her physically…

Consider that even though this sort of petty manipulation is what passes for “trafficking” to American cops, they still can’t come up with anything like the hysterical claims.

The Public Eye

“4 Things You Should Know About Women Who Strip” by Jennifer Ward doesn’t break any new ground for readers of this blog, but as far as I’m concerned we can’t have enough articles explaining that sex workers and our clients are “a lot more diverse than people assume them to be.”  In the same vein, three porn actors answered questions at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri:  “Lance Hart…Tori Black and James Deen answered questions as a part of a Sex Week panel event…the purpose of the panel was to foster dialogue about aspects of the porn industry that are not typically discussed, such as sexual health…”

Something Rotten in Sweden (TW3 #44)

Though this article perpetuates the increasingly-common lie that the Swedish model is “decriminalization”, it at least tells the truth about the damage to sex workers caused by “end demand” campaigns:

…the “End Demand Illinois” campaign…asks that johns…become the law’s targets…[and] is working to make johns, pimps and traffickers more accountable, but it’s also sought to…stop treating prostitution as a felony.  Right now, if a sex worker is hit with two misdemeanor charges related to prostitution in Illinois, the second charge is upgraded to a felony…Last fall The Chicago Reporter…found that prostitution-related felonies are being levied almost exclusively against sex workers…Rachel Lovell, a researcher at Case Western University…co-authored a paper that criticized End Demand Illinois.  It argued that stiffer penalties against johns actually end up hurting female sex workers.  “The philosophy and the overarching theme of the End Demand movement is that all women in prostitution are victims,” Lovell said…it’s important to distinguish between the different ways one can be a sex worker…“To say if we increase penalties for men they will just stop buying…[is] too simplistic…”

All the Difference

Indian sex workers have powerfully resisted “sex trafficking” hysteria, and have convinced many “authorities” that they are not passive victims.  Unfortunately, the rescue industry will lose money and power if it has nobody to “rescue”, and so has increasingly turned its attentions toward abducting sex workers’ children, defending the practice with propaganda films:

…Not Today…[is] a feature-length film that sheds light on the modern-day sex trafficking industry that consumes the Dalit class in India…”The world needs to understand that slavery still exists, that even today young children are bought and sold like cattle, that little girls are forced into the dark illicit sex trade, that young boys and girls are coerced to beg in the streets and bring their proceeds back to line the pockets of thugs who abuse them at night,” said the film’s executive producer, Matthew Cork…

Drama Queens (TW3 #48)

Though I’d love to see a methodologically-sound study of 10,000 whores, 10,000 porn actors is a good start.  Click on the picture (and again to enlarge), then read Jon Millward’s article and Brooke Magnanti’s interview with him.

Get Out of the 19th Century Often? (TW3 #136)

A proposed prostitution ban met with opposition at an Atlanta City Council work session…Community leaders, church pastors and advocates against sex trafficking said the ban was harshly targeting victims of the sex trade…Chad Brock of the ACLU said they might consider challenging the ordinance if it becomes law…”Instead of pairing you up with the social services you need, they’re telling you to go away,” Brock said. “We don’t believe that’s going to help any sex worker rehabilitating themselves”…

Unclean Situation

As expected, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has issued a less mealy-mouthed follow-up to his previous pseudo-apology to the victims of the Magdalene laundries, but as blogger Bock the Robber asked,

Where is the apology from the nuns who ran these slave labour camps?  Where is the apology from the NSPCC (now the ISPCC), employers of the feared and unsupervised cruelty men who consigned so many children and young women to this slavery…Where is the apology from the Legion of Mary, whose members…[facilitated] the incarceration of people they disapproved of?  Where is the apology from the Roman Catholic church on behalf of all those parish priests who ripped children from the heart of their families because of some warped and perverted view of sexuality?…What an extraordinary society it was that deputised an assortment of self-serving busybodies…and continues to give…such power to clerics and self-appointed meddlers…

On the same day, the Telegraph carried a moving article by Samantha Long about her birth-mother, who was an inmate of one of the laundries.

Skin To Skin

This article about sex work with the disabled covers some good ground, but unfortunately also gives a platform to those who think real people’s needs should be subordinate to “messages” and sacrificed to the impossible quest for an unreachable Utopia:

…The sexual needs of people with disabilities are under the spotlight like never before after the release of…The Sessions…last month, ex-staff from a care home…[said] they had allowed sex workers into the home at the request of disabled residents…and…Becky Adams…plans to open the first brothel…for disabled clients in the UK…[but others see] the use of sex workers as a potentially harmful development.  “It’s like the world telling you that disabled people are so unsexy that the only way they can have sex is to pay for it…What disabled people need is full and equal rights. An inclusive society, which doesn’t create barriers”…

Caring Professionals

On the same day my column appeared, Robin Hustle published the similarly-themed (though broader) “What Prostitutes, Nurses and Nannies Have in Common”.  The Jezebel commentariat is predictably split between the narcissistic, the wholly clueless, and nurses who are Terribly Offended^TM at being compared to whores.

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Wednesday Links

Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.  -  Genesis 3:19

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the solemn liturgical season of Lent; because Church doctrine formerly forbade the eating of meat (and other indulgences) during the season, “Fat Tuesday” was a sort of last goodbye to meat and other pleasures for the next six weeks.  Even the word carnival (whose meaning has shifted a great deal in English, especially American English) was originally derived from the Old Italian carne levare, “taking meat away”.  And though I’m no longer Catholic, I think the modern world has suffered for the lack of holidays like Ash Wednesday and the Day of the Dead, which were intended to remind us of our own mortality; certainly little tin gods and “safety”-hysterics alike could benefit from such rituals at least semi-annually.  In keeping with that thought, today’s first video (which I discovered on EconJeff‘s website) is a reminder that even one of the great necessities of life can kill you.

Everything down to that video was provided by this week’s top contributor, Jesse Walker; those between the videos were contributed by Popehat (“Twitter felony” and “pulp generator”), Radley Balko (“forbidden fun” and “insane judge”), Dean Clark (“cops at play”), Amy Alkon (“imaginary weapons” and “TSA generator”), Nun Ya (“cop gropes woman” and “illiterate librarian”), Grace  (“handicapped parking”), Aspasia (“spiders”), and Franklin Harris (“Mr. Rogers”).

• Tyrannical valentines.
• Cops pretending to be dead kids.
• It’s nice to see democracy beat fascism once in a while.
• Only Republican maps have the magical power to force people to do evil.

• Arizona politician wants to criminalize parody Twitter accounts, while one in Georgia claims that “No one has a right to make fun of anyone.”
• Entire Miami police squad fired after video shows cops shopping, dining and snogging while ignoring 911 calls.
• High school student suspended for picture of a weapon, and a second-grader for a wholly imaginary one.
• Cop follows pregnant woman, restrains and gropes her, then tries to talk his way into her house.
• Workers paint “handicapped parking” markings around woman’s car, then have it towed.
• Judge declared insane and therefore fit to return to the bench.
• How an illiterate librarian foiled the book-burners.
• The pogrom of August 1^st, 1988.
• Welcome to our world.
• It’s raining spiders in Brazil.
• The TSA statement generator.
• Mr. Rogers meets The Incredible Hulk.
• The customizable pulp magazine cover generator.

From the Archives

• If ignorance about sex is grounds for a court order forbidding it, neofeminists and religious fundamentalists need to start worrying.
• In New Zealand, even prohibiting streetwalkers from working in certain areas requires a new law.
• Most people have the sense not to act out abduction fantasies in public.
• Attractive female cops destroy the lives of high-school boys via trickery.
• Sex cannot be an addiction; those who disagree are selling something.
• African countries which are more civilized about sex work than the US.
• Police violence against whores, and follow-ups to those examples.
• Femen protests are less annoying if you just look at the pictures.
• No matter which direction the cash flows, it’s whores who suffer.
• My little sister’s peerless recipe for chicken and andouille gumbo.
• The tale of an escort who falls in love with a most unusual client.
• The prostitute who didn’t want Charles Dickens to “rescue” her.
• Meet Bethany St. James, Jill Brenneman and a sex worker mom.
• A study identifies the genes that cause gendered behavior.
• Must every strong urge now be described as an addiction?
• A prohibitionist “survivor” attempts to infiltrate my blog.
• Josie Arlington, one of the great madams of Storyville.
• A California woman claims porn can’t be copyrighted.
• Streetwalker accused of “knowingly” spreading HIV.
• Yet another debunking of the “gypsy whores” myth.
• Former madam tries to cash in on prohibitionist lies.
• Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?
• How well-chosen pictures increase blog traffic.
• There’s more than one way to skin a lawhead.
• A priest who campaigns for sex worker rights.
• Whores are no different from everybody else.
• Walking stereotype’s lawsuit is dismissed.
• Wannabe pimp falls for Super Bowl hype.
• Sex, love and money in Cambodia.
• Another “dog bites man” thing.
• All prohibitionism is the same.
• What Would Orrin Hatch Do?
• Potential HIV vaccines.
• Deadly butt injections.

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That Was the Week That Was (#136)

Whorephobia…can manifest in various forms, including…rejection of a fellow…human being…projection of one’s own life experiences onto another…and in severe cases, frothing at the mouth…and feverishly campaigning for extreme punishment and prohibition of Whores and Whore-adjacent peoples, places, and objects.  -  Aspasia Bonasera

No Other Option

Another good article about sex work with disabled clients, this one a first-person account from reader Laura Lee.  Due to the movie The Sessions this has become a very “hot” topic, which is good because it deals a strong blow to the “victimized prostitute” narrative.  For more on the subject, here’s Becky Adams:

Japanese Prostitution

Customers…now have another option…at [Tokyo]…cuddle club Soineya…For $11 per minute, patrons…can ask for the oshiri makura (butt pillow) service and rest their heads on the behinds of its female staff…Customers must first pay an admission fee — starting at 3,000 yen (around $34) — and then have the option to purchase premium services, such as foot massages…[or] laying in a female employee’s lap…

Don’t Buy It

Interestingly, “sex trafficking” fetishists waited until Super Bowl Sunday to trot out their claims this year, probably to avoid the high-profile debunking which will soon be inevitable; the story was updated less than 38 hours after its initial appearance to include a reference to an article for which I was consulted last year and the opinion of Rachel Lloyd, a “sex trafficking” promoter who has criticized the rampant exaggerations and the “gypsy whores” myth.  The main attraction is yet another soi-disant “survivor” spouting the typical tinned narrative (brutal pimp, 50 clients a day, etc), and there’s a bonus appearance by SOAP.  The most interesting bit is this snapshot of “Chinese Whispers” in action:  the story claims that “133 underage arrests for prostitution were made in Dallas during the 2011 Super Bowl,” when in actuality a very-typical 133 adult arrests of all types (not prostitution alone) were made in the 2½ weeks before the Super Bowl.  The number of actual “pimps” arrested?  One, an idiot who got the idea from the hype.

Get Out of the 19^th Century Often?

Atlanta’s police chief…George Turner has asked city council to approve a…banishment law…the first conviction would result in the accused prostitute being ordered not to return to the area they were arrested…upon second conviction, the accused prostitute would be banished from city limits forever…Larry Miller…said he supports anything that would put a dent in the prostitution plague…

Human beings are now a “plague” to be “banished” from an autocrat’s realm.

Chupacabra

Dr. Brooke Magnanti on the “pimp” myth:

…I have never met a person even remotely like the stereotypical pimp, and yet I “know” they exist, largely because I have been told so over and over again.  I’ve met streetwalkers, both drug-addicted and not; escorts and call girls, same; not one ever had what popular imagination would classify as a “pimp,” but then I keep getting told I’m not representative, so maybe the literally hundreds of…sex workers I’ve met are just “not representative” too?…Independent sex workers who organise their own affairs…Roommates who share a flat…escort agencies with a dozen or so girls…Massage parlour owners.  Women whose house is used by other sex workers…People who set up message boards and internet forums…All of these are…called “pimps” by the anti-sex lobby.  A guy in a crushed velvet suit on a street corner, keeping his girls high and working the neighbourhood?  Not so many of those…

A Working System

Look past the fashionable “sex slave” rhetoric to what’s actually going on here:

…Chee Mei Wong…[allegedly] ran the Diamonds brothel in …Sydney…between…2008 and 2010…[and] employed six women…who…were told they would have to work until they paid off the cost of their airfare, visa and course fees [around $5000]…Despite…having paid off their debt after a “short period of time” it is alleged Ms Wong threatened she would have their visas revoked if they left.  But Ms Wong’s barrister Bruce Quinn said she…only worked at the brothel as…receptionist…[and] the matter was simply an “industrial dispute” and a “sham” created so the women could stay in Australia…

These sorts of conflicting claims are not unusual in contract disputes, and unfortunately many people are quick to accuse others of wrongdoing in order to divert government attention from themselves.  The important thing is that nobody here was criminalized for her profession, and the same situation could have arisen in any industry employing migrants.

My Readers Write

Aspasia published a bang-on and hilarious parody of medicalized pop-psychology entitled “Join Me in the Fight Against Whorephobia” which you simply MUST read in its entirety to appreciate.  I also recommend this thoughtful essay in which Obsidian proposes that the same shortage of eligible women which is at the root of so much violence in the Middle East may also influence the differences between homicide rates in American cities:

…the Big Apple saw a 50-year record low of just over 400 murders in a city of over 8 million; while for Chicago, the murder rate topped 500, with a population of roughly 2.5 million.  Much has been said about the differences…in…their approaches toward fighting crime…Chicago has a proportionately larger police force than does NYC…[but] there are more Women to Men in NYC, than in Chicago…it’s been long known that whenever there are more males to females anywhere, trouble ensues.  Indeed, we are beginning to see this manifest itself in earnest in places like China and India, where the male to female sex ratio is so off the chain that extreme exhibitions of behavior are being seen on the part of the males…

See No Evil

…U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple sentenced Christjan Bee of Monett, Missouri, to three years in prison for “possessing an obscene image of the sexual abuse of children…[namely] a collection of electronic comics, entitled ‘incest comics,’…[containing] multiple images of minors engaging in graphic sexual intercourse with adults and other minors”…In other words, he is going to prison for drawings; no actual children were involved at any point.

A Moral Cancer (Metaupdates)

You may have seen the latest “meat kills!” pseudo-study; of course, the media didn’t bother to report that the “researchers” and sponsors were all vegetarians who didn’t bother to control for little things like diabetes and age.

Above the Law

Well, this is different:

[Vincent Burroughs of] Oregon…has filed a lawsuit against an IRS agent…claiming he was coerced into [a sexual] relationship…Dora…Abrahamson contacted Burroughs about an audit…flirted with [him] over the telephone…offered him massages and sent him a photo of herself in her underwear…”She said that she could impose no penalty, or a 40 percent penalty, and that if he would give her what she wanted, she would give him what he needed”…

Traffic Jam

Mexican officials broke up a bizarre cult that allegedly ran a sex-slavery ring…The “Defensores de Cristo”…allegedly recruited women to have sex with a Spanish man who claimed he was the reincarnation of Christ…Followers were subjected to forced labor or sexual services, including prostitution…prosecutors were still trying to work out which of the detainees may be considered victims, and which were abusers…

Cult messiahs invariably have sex with female followers, and how is contributing sexual labor any different from contributing money or other labor as members of established religions do?  But due to “trafficking” hysteria, it becomes “sex slavery” even though the “authorities” themselves admit that any assignment of “victim” and “abuser” status will be arbitrary.

Yellow Fever

The high standards of American journalism have reached Pakistan:

Meet Doctor Maria Zulfiqar Khan…In her recent programme, she conducted a self-styled raid on a massage center in Lahore…and harassed the women…police [accompanied] her, but she played being in charge…we see women helplessly trying to hide their faces…[and Khan]…going through handbag of a lady…picking up a condom…and shouting…”what is this? what is this?”…Khan also plays being an interrogator…and…at one point, not agreeing to the answers…says sarcastically, “yeah right, tell that to the cops when they take you”…At the end of the programme…she visits [the] house of one of the girls…and…tells her audience “this man made [his] daughter a prostitute, what an animal he is”…

Under Duress

For those who suspect I’m biased, here’s legal scholar Michelle Alexander:

…police have a special inclination toward confabulation…[and] an incentive to lie…[they] shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so…Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner…[decried] a police culture that treats lying as the norm…Gustin L. Reichbach of the [New York] Supreme Court…condemned a widespread culture of lying…in…drug enforcement units…the Bronx district attorney’s office was so alarmed by police lying that it decided to stop prosecuting people who were…arrested for trespassing at…housing projects…Numerous scandals involving police officers lying or planting drugs…have been linked to federally funded drug task forces eager to keep the cash rolling in…

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (TW3 #34)

The Indian Supreme Court’s waffling on decriminalization has emboldened prohibitionist legislators, who tried to quietly criminalize prostitution by defining all sex work as “exploitation” and therefore illegal under existing law.  The National Network of Sex Workers has appealed to the President of India to veto this sleazy back-door scheme, but if he does not you can bet a court challenge will not be long in coming since Indian sex workers, unlike most in the United States, are unified to fight for their rights.

Monkey Business

A minor war has broken out…in the village of Kiad [Saudi Arabia,] where large groups of hungry baboons from nearby valleys are attacking residences in search of food and drink…Adel Medini [said]…“The baboons are targeting empty houses and are well aware of what they are doing…They proceed according to studied plans. That’s why their attacks do not fail…a resident…[returns] to find his home in disarray.  Some people…thought that thieves had…ransacked their houses…”

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (TW3 #39)

Remember the scientists who proved one could find neural activity in a dead fish?  Well, here’s a video of a thought forming in the brain of a larval zebrafish:

So Close and Yet So Far

I really wish people who support legal prostitution would talk to actual sex workers or even just do a little research before writing articles which perpetuate ugly myths such as “It’s no longer just a drug-addled woman forced onto lonely street corners” (it never was), and “sex workers are likely reticent to draw attention to their illicit life by divulging STDs and surely no one checks customers for STDs”.  The latter is an especially damaging myth because you can guess his proposed “solution” to this nonexistent problem: compulsory disease checks for registered whores (but not amateurs, who are free to spread disease at will).

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake

The Kansas…Supreme Court ruled that exotic dancers are employees of the club where they work, not independent entertainment contractors…[at] Club Orleans [in] Topeka…dancers were required to pay non-negotiable “rent” for use of the stage and dressing rooms, as well as extra fees for the disc jockeys and bouncers…House rules governed what the dancers could do in their shows and the prices they had to charge for specific types of dances…The women were required to sign in with the bouncer at the beginning of a shift and weren’t allowed to leave…until the end of the shift…

The Devil’s Toys

In this book review, Harvey Silverglate made the same point I did yesterday:

In Unlearning Liberty, [Greg] Lukianoff…[presents many] examples of campus censorship …65% of liberal arts campuses have speech codes that violate…free speech norms…Lukianoff…persuasively argues that…contemporary campuses can be seen essentially as incubators for a future society governed by censorship of iconoclastic ideas and kangaroo courts that enforce those prohibitions…some…now sitting on the federal bench do not blanch when innocent citizens are convicted of violating statutes and regulations that no normal person could possibly understand [because] students…get accustomed to the administrative tyranny…and…don’t have much adjusting to do when they gain, and abuse, real power of their own…

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Savage Breast

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.  -  William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (I,i)

A month ago I published a list of all the questions I’ve previously answered, and this month I’m doing something similar again with music.  Every time I publish one of my “hooker songs” columns, readers make suggestions for the next one; that’s great, and I’ve used many of those suggestions in later columns.  But as in the case of the questions, I’ve been doing it for so long now that newer readers are starting to suggest ones I’ve already done.  So today, I present a hyperlinked catalog of all the songs I’ve presented so far; I’ll duplicate it later on a static page, and then every time I do a new song column I can link it for the benefit of those who are just coming in.  I’m not sure how many more of them I’ll be able to do, but I suspect it will be at least a few.  Just for the sake of completeness, I’ve included a second section with all the songs for which I’ve featured videos, even if they aren’t whore-related; and to make it more visually appealing, I’ve also embedded a few videos of songs that I featured before I started embedding videos.

Call Me  (Blondie)
Candy’s Room  (Bruce Springsteen)
Cross-Eyed Mary  (Jethro Tull)
Down the Road Tonight  (Bruce Hornsby and the Range)
Dulcinea  (Leigh/Darion; sung by Simon Gilbert dubbing Peter O’Toole)
867-5309  (Tommy Tutone)
Everything’s Alright  (Webber/Rice; performed by Yvonne Elliman, Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson)
Family Man  (Oldfield/Cross; performed by Hall and Oates)
Fancy  (Bobbie Gentry)

Farewell To Storyville  (Clarence Williams; performed by Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong)
Fire Down Below  (Bob Seger)
Hey, Big Spender  (Dorothy Fields; performed by Sweet Charity cast)
Hot Child in the City  (Nick Gilder)
The House of the Rising Sun  (Traditional; performed by Dolly Parton)
I’m Tired  (Mel Brooks; performed by Madeline Kahn)
It’s All the Same  (Leigh/Darion; performed by Sophia Loren)
Jacky  (Jacques Brel; translated and performed by Mort Shuman)
Killer Queen  (Queen)
La Grange  (ZZ Top)
Lady Marmalade  (Crewe/Nolan; performed by LaBelle)

Love for Sale  (Cole Porter; performed by Ella Fitzgerald)
The Magdalene Laundries  (Joni Mitchell)
Maggie May  (Traditional; performed by The Beatles)
Mexican Blackbird  (ZZ Top)
Midtown Asian Sex Spa  (B.B. Wye)
Minnie the Moocher  (Cab Calloway)
New Orleans Ladies  (LeRoux)
Next  (Jacques Brel; translated by Blau/Shuman; performed by Walter Willison)
Private Dancer  (Mark Knopfler; performed by Tina Turner)
Raised on Robbery  (Joni Mitchell)

Roxanne  (The Police)
Santa Baby   (Javits/Springer; performed by Eartha Kitt)
The Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp  (Dallas Frazier; performed by O.C. Smith)
Strange Thing Mystifying  (Webber/Rice; performed by Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson)
Sweet Cream Ladies  (The Box Tops)
Sweet Georgia Brown  (Bernie/Pinkard/Casey; performed by Ella Fitzgerald)
The Taxicab  (Jacques Brel; translated and performed by Mort Shuman)
Texas Has a Whorehouse in It  (Carol Hall; performed by Dom Deluise)
Trick of the Light  (The Who)
A Woman’s Story  (Tempo/Stevens/Spector; performed by Cher)
X Offender  (Blondie)

Other Songs

All For the Best  (Stephen Schwartz; performed by Victor Garber/David Haskell)
Cult of Personality  (Living Color)
Disney Princess Leia
Dumb Ways to Die
Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury  (Rachel Bloom)
The Grinch Song  (Hague/Geisel; sung by Thurl Ravenscroft)
Holly Jolly Christmas  (Johnny Marks; sung by Burl Ives)
The Lees of Old Virginia  (Sherman Edwards; performed by Ronald Holgate)
Me Ole Bamboo  (Sherman/Sherman; performed by Dick Van Dyke)
Munchkinland  (Arlen/Yarburg; performed by Judy Garland and cast)
Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom (Parry Grip)
Prince Ali  (Menken/Ashman; sung by Robin Williams)
Pure Imagination  (Bricusse/Newley; performed by Gene Wilder)
Put One Foot in Front of the Other (Laws/Bass; sung by Mickey Rooney)
Take Off With Us  (Lebowsky/Tobias; performed by All That Jazz cast)
This is Halloween  (Danny Elfman; sung by Nightmare Before Christmas cast)
We Don’t Need a Man  (Rachel Bloom)
What a Wonderful World  (Thiele/Weiss; performed by CDZA)
The Yellow Rose of Texas  (Traditional; performed by Mitch Miller)

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That Was the Week That Was (#134)

If we are going to call attacks on reproductive and sexual rights a “war on women,” then let’s talk about a war on women that has actual prisoners and a body count.  -  Melissa Gira Grant

The Biggest Whores

Res ipsa loquitur:

Minnesota’s Supreme Court last week barred attorney Thomas P. Lowe from practicing law for at least the next 15 months after it was revealed that he was billing a client for sex.  Lowe…was approached in August 2011 by an acquaintance who asked him to represent her in a divorce.  Their…relationship soon evolved into a sexual one, but…Lowe…[billed] the woman for [all] the time they spent [together, including] having sex…[after] Lowe…[dumped her] the woman… attempted to commit suicide and was hospitalized…Lowe was previously on probation for purchasing cocaine from a client…

The second lawyer isn’t nearly as bad, though still terribly unprofessional:

A public defender…is facing charges after allegedly exchanging texts with an undercover cop who he thought was a prostitute, and then trying to exchange sex for legal representation.  Christopher Hollander…allegedly sent a text message to a phone formerly used by a prostitute [but now in possession of a cop who] Hollander met…in a hotel room…The two discussed the phony prostitute’s alleged legal trouble.  When the officer asked “How much is it going to cost me” for the legal services, Hollander started to caress her hand…then allegedly began trying to kiss and hug the officer, and told her he had two condoms…

Lawyers, if you want to propose exchange of services just say so; real hookers appreciate honesty, not some clumsy attempt at seduction.

Good Fantasy, Bad Reality

Ed Bagley has accepted a bargain in which he pleaded guilty to having sex with his supposed “victim” while she was underage, in return for prosecutors dropping all other charges (despite their insistence that he “swear” that the other accusations are true).  The one is bad enough; it can carry a 20-year sentence, and several of the other “conspirators” (as the state labels them) will also get very hefty sentences.

Something Rotten in Sweden (December Updates)

Remember, prostitution has never been illegal in Canada; these men were arrested for the “crime” of talking about it in public, which demonstrates the importance of taking this kind of power totally out of cops’ hands:  “Ottawa police swept the city’s downtown core…in an effort to find, charge and re-educate men looking for prostitutes…They arrested 15 men, 13 of whom escaped charges and will attend ‘john school’…a partnership with the Salvation Army…”  Please note the Orwellian term “re-educate”.

The Cold, Grey Light of Dawn

Looks like the Philippines is moving toward British-type legalization (erroneously called “decriminalization”):  “The Department of Social Welfare and Development…has endorsed a bill…which would decriminalize prostitution but punish those who control and profit from…[it, repealing] clauses…which punish ‘women who, for money, engage in sexual intercourse, or lascivious conduct’…”

It Looks Good On Paper

Another bit of feel-good legislation which capitalizes on hype but will actually help virtually nobody, due to its basis in fantasy:  “A bill filed in the Oklahoma Legislature…would erase the prostitution records of human trafficking victims…[who] average…12 to 14 years old…”

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic

This article has so much to recommend it:  Dr. Brooke Magnanti debunks “porn addiction”, describing the “studies” which claim to support it as “poorly conducted surveys on a level of market research, not science.”  In the process, she also quotes Dr. Marty Klein and lampoons both Cosmopolitan and Naomi “Stopped Clock” Wolf, all in less than a thousand well-chosen words.

Girls, Girls, Girls!

Of all the media one would expect to be least likely to side with puritans against a business persecuted for supposedly “corrupting public morals”, a rock music radio station has got to be pretty high on the list.  Though the article itself is dry enough, the wording and scare quotes in the headline and lede amply demonstrate the editor’s attitude:  “Lawsuit Claims Dancing in a Topless Bar ‘Improves the Self Esteem’ of the Stripper – seeks to have San Antonio’s strict new strip club law thrown out, also claims stripping is a ‘socially fulfilling experience’.”  It gets much worse; the station appears to have some close association with Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue…author of the titular song celebrating strippers.

A Whore in Church

The most interesting part of this article about sex workers in Malawi wearing hijab to attract Muslim customers is not the mere fact of it (which would simply be an example of the clipboard effect), but rather the fallacious notion (expressed both in text and comments) that a whore cannot be Muslim (or “truly” Christian either).  Also worthy of note is the author’s reversal of the usual feminist complaint that not covering up leads to “objectification”; this only goes to show that the real issue such women have is not some imaginary harm to women, but rather heterosexuality itself.

Above the Law

[Las Vegas] police officer John Norman is going to prison for two years…after pleading guilty to…coercing women to expose their breasts after stopping them on the road…Once Norman is released from prison, he will have to register as a sex offender…

The Crumbling Dam (TW3 #13)

Once again, Canadian government prohibitionists are trying to convince the courts that dangerous, repressive laws which deny sex workers’ agency are actually intended to “protect” them:

Hundreds of shadowy body rub parlours operated by exploitative pimps…are operating on the outskirts of Toronto, the Ontario Crown warns in a court document…[urging] the Supreme Court of Canada to let police keep the powers they have to protect female sex workers, who are often cowed into submissive silence…However, a group of prostitutes who have successfully challenged the ban through two levels of court accuse…Crown lawyers of scaremongering.  In the decision under appeal, the Ontario Court of Appeal invalidated the…prohibition on keeping a brothel…[and] granted prostitutes the right to…hire staff to protect them…the…court is scheduled to hear the…challenge in June…

Naked Truth

Melissa Gira Grant’s “The War on Sex Workers” appears in this month’s print edition of Reason; though regular readers will already be familiar with much of the ground she covers, it never hurts to revisit it.  More importantly, for an unrepentant sex worker to have the opportunity to discuss the neofeminist war on whores in a national magazine (albeit a libertarian one) is a sign that this issue is beginning to move into the mainstream.

Imagination Pinned Down

This article entitled “Sex, Lies and Audiotapes” is 12 years old, but is an excellent look at how “fantastic tales of sexual abuse” are instilled into the minds of the vulnerable, and why radical feminists were largely to blame for “sex abuse” hysteria and the Satanic Panic; it is thus still topical as background for the new guise of those moral panics, “sex trafficking”.

Shift in the Wind

Though it may be difficult to recognize for sex workers in the US, British Isles and any place else strongly affected by “trafficking” hysteria, 2012 actually saw net gains for sex workers; Cheryl Overs reviews the high points (without neglecting to mention the low ones) in “A Good Year for Red Umbrellas”.

Texas Tall Tales

Texans aren’t the only ones who can tell tall tales about new technology being used by “human traffickers” to “entrap innocent girls”:

…Mobile phone recharge shops have been reportedly taking advantage of innocent girls who approach them for recharge coupons and give their numbers.  The employees/owners of the shop or their friends call the girls…develop friendships and later misuse them…ruining the girls’ lives…human [traffickers in]…Kundapur…are said to be running a mobile recharge outlet…the accused lure the girls with jobs and then use them for their own ends.  Later, the girls are allegedly blackmailed and trapped, and their escape route is closed…apart from flesh trade, a drugs network is also interwoven in the racket…

Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

As expected, a UK judge has ruled that the case of Mark Kennedy, the cop who was allowed to trick women into sex in order to spy on them, will be heard in a Star Chamber proceeding.  What was unexpected was that he would say what Kennedy did was OK because James Bond does it:

James Bond is the most famous fictional example of a member of the intelligence services who used relationships with women to obtain information…[such] fictional accounts…lend credence to the view that the intelligence and police services have for many years deployed both men and women officers to form personal relationships of an intimate sexual nature…in order to obtain information or access.

As Heresy Corner points out, “James Bond isn’t just ‘fiction’, it’s escapist fantasy…[which] doesn’t ‘lend credence’ to anything…and Mark Kennedy’s ‘targets’ weren’t exotic Russian agents with a handbag full of nuclear secrets and the sexual etiquette of a praying mantis…nor were they dangerous international terrorists intent on blowing up airports or shopping malls.  They were…largely peaceful activists engaged primarily in democratic dissent, however misguided or naive…”

Buried Truth

Remember Lisa Biron, the anti-gay lawyer who “transported a teen girl…to Ontario …and coerced her into engaging in sexual acts with another person”?  It turns out the girl was 14, there were two men, and Biron also had sex with her.  Oh, and one more thing:  the girl was her own daughter.  She was convicted of child porn charges on the 11^th.

South of the Border (TW3 #49)

The creation of “sex trafficking rings” from people who used to be called “illegal aliens” continues, complete with childish “code names”, bombastic rhetoric, exaggerated numbers and infantilization of sex workers:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced the results of a lengthy investigation called Operation Dark Night.  It looked into a sex trafficking ring stretching from Florida to Georgia to North and South Carolina…women…were forced into prostitution and traded like slaves in various cities for about a week at a time…11 victims were rescued and 40 customers called Johns were also taken into custody.  Investigators say the women were forced to perform up to 30 sex acts per day…

Like most “trafficking” articles, this one contains the Profession of Faith:  “…‘its a bigger issue than many people thought,’ said Joan Garcia-Melendez…‘Human trafficking is a very hidden crime’…Authorities say this is a wakeup call as to how widespread sex trafficking has become…”  But what will happen to those poor “victims” who were “rescued”?  The BBC says what the American story won’t: “Those who were illegal in the country would be deported.”

Q & A (January 2013)

I mentioned that “the only time [verification services] fail is…when some idiot fails to stick to the plan, gets caught in a sting and then ransoms his worthless hide by giving the busybodies his login info so they can pop several girls before the service gets wise.”  One of my readers supplied more details:  there were several instances, all in the Appleton/Oshkosh area of Wisconsin, and P411 removed those entire cities from the site as a precaution and directly warned all the ladies who might be targeted.  Apparently cops in Little Rock, Arkansas have also attempted the same thing, though less successfully.

Perverse Incentives

Susie Bright on how perverse prosecutorial incentives spawn abominations:

Twice in my career I’ve been asked to serve as an expert witness on the defense team of an obscenity trial…the defendants were low-hanging fruit…targeted because of their…vulnerability…The Justice Department [bags] obscenity law trophies by going after the poor, the suicidal, the insane, the cognitively impaired— because that’s the way they rack up numbers and status.  That’s the way they fuel their careers…not by taking on constitutional issues, or injustice, or fat cats who believe they’re above the law…They find someone who’s drooling, or depressed, or friendless— and then throw the book at them.  It doesn’t take long because the “defendant-target” is overmatched…

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The Joy of Juxtaposition

A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices.  -  Johan Huizinga

Besides the fact that it’s just a great word, juxtaposition is an incredibly useful tool for demolishing moronic arguments and ridiculous articles.  Many times, all I have had to do to demonstrate the absurdity of a fallacious comment is to repeat it almost exactly with a few words changed, and let my readers’ brains do the rest.  But I recently discovered a case in which a journalist had done most of the job for me; all I had to do was copy and paste.  The story below in block quotes was published by TV station WXIA in Atlanta, Georgia on January 5^th; the interpolated sections in italics are from a story which appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper only five days earlier (and which I’ve already quoted in TW3 #131).

As many as 60,000 college students taking part in the Passion 2013 Conference are discovering the harsh reality that slave labor and sex trafficking are real problems…”It’s true, girls are being bought and sold against their will…Sex trafficking and slavery are realities right here in our city.”  Atlanta is considered one of the major hubs for child trafficking.  It’s estimated that 500 underage girls are working the streets of Atlanta on any given night…

The City of Atlanta was under siege by human traffickers.  Some 1,000 Asian women and girls ages 13 to 25 were being “forced to prostitute themselves” in the city, a 2005 internal police email said…Had agency leaders questioned the estimate, they would have found it defied common sense.  If it were true, one in eight of the city’s Asians would have been sex slaves…

The young people at Passion want to do their part to end it.  They’ll donate money this week to open two new…safe houses in the U.S., train thousands of law enforcement officers and rescue 10 women from the sex industry in Atlanta…

…The Atlanta Police Department won a $450,000 three-year grant, and the city chipped in an additional $150,000…police identified 216 potential victims…But this count was later revealed to be grossly inaccurate. Auditors for the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General could find documentation for only four victims…The Bureau of Justice Assistance made a mistake that added 93 victims to the count. Atlanta had actually reported 123 victims. The city could not explain the 119 that auditors couldn’t track. Police said the figures were reported by a city employee who retired before the Justice Department inquiry…

The group held a candlelight vigil for victims of sex trafficking and slave labor on Thursday night outside the Georgia World Congress Center.

“We are told by the State Department that every year 15,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. But then, where are they?” said Elzbieta Gozdziak, research director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University… “Why are the numbers so small?  Is it because the scope of the problem is not as big as they say?”…Those numbers are proof that the fight against human trafficking has gone wrong, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said…”Either the government is doing an unconscionably poor job of finding victims or there are not that many total victims in the first place,” Grassley wrote.

The egregiously-falsified numbers for Atlanta derive from a bogus study done in 2010 by the Schapiro Group, a marketing firm in the business of creating fake statistics to “prove” whatever the client wants “proven”; the project was bankrolled by the “Women’s Funding Network”, a front for Swanee Hunt’s “Demand Abolition” group, and was widely trumpeted until it was nationally debunked in a Village Voice article, “Women’s Funding Network Sex Trafficking Study Is Junk Science”; since then all available online copies of the “study” have conveniently vanished, so if any of you know how I can locate one for my archives please let me know.

In any case, it’s not surprising that self-identified “Christian youth” believe this nonsense; many of them probably believe far sillier things without any proof whatsoever.  But when the “true believers” are public officials, and the money they’re flushing down the “trafficking” toilet was stolen from your pocket rather than their own allowances, I think it’s fair to expect a bit less credulity.

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That Was the Week That Was (#131)

The actual number of people trafficked is so much less than the targets [governments] are supposed to meet, so they end up running around and accusing people of being victims of traffickers and sticking them in cages to try to satisfy this US hysteria.  -  Liz Hilton, EMPOWER Foundation

Japanese Prostitution

The highly dishonorable Prime Liar of Japan is at it again: “…Shinzo Abe…may revise Japan’s 1993 apology  for forcing thousands of women to be sex slaves in the service of Japanese soldiers during World War II…an assertive, unapologetic Japan could antagonize much of Asia, especially South Korea…”

In a Similar Vein…

This woman takes the term “cougar” much too literally:

Police in Florida arrested an “extremely intoxicated” woman after she allegedly beat her boyfriend over bad oral sex…Jennie Scott, 50, assaulted her 32-year-old boyfriend, Jilberto Deleon…following a joint-oral sex encounter that ended…after Deleon “finished first and stopped pleasuring her”…In November, Raquel Gonzalez, also of Manatee County, was charged…after beating her boyfriend following a sexual encounter during which he climaxed and she did not…

Convenient and Inconvenient Victims

Another example of how prohibition harms all women: it allows “authorities” to claim prostitutes can’t be raped, then to accuse rape victims of prostitution:  “…Trinamool Congress MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar came the nearest to calling the Park Street rape victim a sex worker when she described the February 5 incident not as a rape but as a ‘misunderstanding between a lady and her client’…”

Against Their Will

Take especial note of the un-ironic use of the word “rescue” in this context:

At least 11 woman inmates…[who] were trafficked to Mumbai…[then] rescued and brought to [a destitute] home [escaped on New Year’s Eve]…West Bengal Minister for Women and Child Development…Sabitri Mitra denied any lapse of security at the home…”Inmates…have a tendency to escape…They have been trying to escape ever since they were brought here…”

We Told You So

As I predicted they would, members of the mainstream media are slowly beginning to wake up:

The situation was dire, police warned.  The City of Atlanta was under siege by human traffickers.  Some 1,000 Asian women and girls ages 13 to 25 were being “forced to prostitute themselves” in the city…To free them, police forged ahead with a $600,000 task force.  Had agency leaders questioned the estimate, they would have found it defied common sense.  If it were true, one in eight of the city’s Asians would have been sex slaves…it’s little wonder that the program had such poor results that it drew scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice.  An initial report said Atlanta police had found more than 200 victims, but auditors could only confirm four…

Instead of quoting Polaris Project, Melissa Farley and the other usual suspects, this reporter went to “trafficking” skeptics Ronald Weitzer, Elzbieta Gozdziak, Charles Grassley and Meredith Dank.  And while he still buys into the cops’ convoluted paradigm (for example, “Girls confuse investigators by calling pimps their boyfriends” instead of recognizing that the so-called “pimps” are their boyfriends), he also recognizes that Atlanta is the norm, not an exception: “Los Angeles…identified 49 victims and…Washington, D.C., found 51.  Auditors confirmed none of them…”

Presents, Presents, Presents!

I received two more Christmas presents this week; Krulac sent me Flute of Sand, and another  reader sent me Crisis and Leviathan.  Alas, the seller neglected to include a card or packing slip with the latter, so I have no idea who sent it; if it was anyone reading this, please let me know via email or in the comments.  Thanks very much to both of you!

First They Came for the Hookers…

If prohibitionists really want to “rescue” sex workers, why do they keep trying to stop us from getting other jobs?  “Reality star Olivia Black has been fired from the cast of the History Channel’s Pawn Stars after…her…past on the soft-core site SuicideGirls.com was revealed in the National Enquirer…”

Imagination Pinned Down

In the process of reviewing a new book on hallucinations by the brilliant Dr. Oliver Sacks, Michael Roth shows just how easily false memories are formed:

As a young professor, I traveled to Vienna…and…[visited] Freud’s old apartment and office, which had been converted to a museum.  One rang a doorbell to be admitted, and I was shocked when the museum attendant greeted me by name…in German, calling me “Professor Doktor Roth” — or so I thought.  My wife was right beside me, and she later told me that nothing of the kind had happened.  The museum employee had merely told me the price of admission…I realized that what I’d heard so clearly was probably an auditory hallucination.  I so very much wanted to be recognized in the house of Freud that I’d perceived something that wasn’t there at all…our brains call up simulated realities that are almost indistinguishable from normal perceptions…[and construct] a world that nobody else can see, hear or touch…

Ex-porn actress Monica Foster outs sex workers on her website, yet she recently placed this escort ad.

Wholesale Hypocrisy (TW3 #25)

Prosecutors never hesitate to appeal when there’s political coin to be made at others’ expense:  “The New Mexico Supreme Court has agreed to take up [the] case [of] ‘Southwest Companions,’ linked to former University of New Mexico president F. Chris Garcia and retired Fairleigh Dickinson University physics professor David C. Flory…prosecutors [appealed after]…District Judge Stan Whitaker found that an online message board is not a house of prostitution under state law…”

The Course of a Disease (TW3 #26)

Unsurprisingly, the woman who thinks other women must be “protected” from free will also believes free speech to be “dangerous”:  “France’s women’s rights minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem… [demands] that Twitter help the French government criminalize ideas it dislikes…by [installing] ‘alerts and security measures’ to prevent tweets which French officials deem hateful…”

The Widening Gyre

New York’s new video helpfully explains that the law doesn’t say what it says, but does require cabbies to magically divine whether a woman is “helpless”:

…Taxi officials yesterday released an anti-sex-trafficking video — mandatory viewing for all cabbies — that explains when it is and is not OK to transport a working girl.  Picking up street walkers is fine, but driving helpless women around for pimps is not…The nine-minute video was created after the City Council approved an anti-sex-trafficking bill…and…prostitutes worried that the measure meant that cabbies would be too scared to pick them up…“Suspecting or knowing that someone is a prostitute does not give you the right to refuse that person a ride,” the video says…

Shift in the Wind

This is incredibly good news:

“Save us from saviours” is the piercing refrain of a growing human rights movement demanding that sex workers be recognised as more than victims to be rescued…”Sex workers are discriminated against and their human rights unrecognised around the world, even where sex work isn’t illegal,” says Nadia van der Linde, co-ordinator of the Red Umbrella Fund, the first global grant-making mechanism set up to give sex workers more control of projects that directly concern them…The fund, which was launched in April 2012…will announce this month who will receive its first grants…Embracing a philosophy of “nothing for us without us”, the innovative fund is governed by sex workers, who sit alongside donor representatives on the committees that oversee and manage its work…

Hooker Humor (TW3 #31)

Miranda Kane, the escort turned stand-up comedienne, has written a new piece on “Selling Comedy vs. Selling Sex” which compares preparation, advertising, reviews and much more:  “I get asked a lot about my security.  In 7 years of escorting, I was never threatened, robbed, or found myself in any danger.  In 7 months of comedy, I had two iphones nicked from my bag when I was on stage, venues and promoters not paying my pitiful fee, and several parking tickets…”

That Old Black Magic

Spain’s Interior Ministry says police have arrested 17 people on suspicion of smuggling Nigerian women into Spain and forcing them into prostitution using threats including claims they would cast Voodoo spells on them if they didn’t comply…around 10 women had been brought into the country illegally using a small boat…

Little Boxes (TW3 #40)

Rebecca Bernardo…posted a video on YouTube…[in which]…she…announces…”Hi, my name is Rebecca.  I’m here to auction off my virginity”…she made the offer because she was desperate to help her ailing mother.  She heard about Catarina Migliorini, a Brazilian woman who reportedly sold her virginity for $780,000…Migliorini has reportedly yet to finalize the deal and receive the money…[but] has received widespread publicity and modeling contracts — including a spread in Brazil’s version of Playboy…”I made up my mind right after my 18^th birthday…when my mother suffered a stroke”…[which] left her…bed-ridden, unable to feed herself or go to the bathroom alone.  Bernardo said she looked for jobs…but…the pay was minimal…A Brazilian TV network offered to pay for her mother’s medical expenses if Bernardo called off the auction.  While she initially accepted…during a television interview, she later rejected it because the network would not pay for a house in a different town where she could “start a new life”…

CNN doubts the girl because she’d rather do a few hours of work than sign an exclusive (and probably sleazy) agreement with a TV network, which goes to show how perverse and dishonest CNN is on the subject of sex.

With Friends Like These…

Radio Netherlands recently published an article called “China Can’t Duck the Issue of Prostitution” which correctly and concisely demolished every model of prostitution law except decriminalization, including the Dutch model; it even recognizes that a prostitute is no different from an economically dependent wife.  However, the argument then bizarrely self-destructs in the conclusion:

…Free and consensual sexual relationships are obviously the ideal, but in reality there are many paid and involuntary sexual relationships between the sexes…if people choose to have an immoral lifestyle, they should not be punished by the law, regardless of how morally wrong they might be…The only effective means to curb…prostitution is…to make [it] socially unacceptable…

The Public Eye (TW3 #49)

As Kristen di Angelo expressed it, “This is just how it is… but it shouldn’t be”.  One of the women who appeared in the film American Courtesans went to the police after being terrified by an abusive stalker; they told her they could do nothing, but instead subjected her to a sting in which five cops in riot gear trashed her home and robbed her.  Because obviously an escort who primarily works with the disabled is a dangerous criminal, but a possibly-deranged stalker is just a good citizen doing his civic duty.

Backwards into the Future (TW3 #52)

Though the Burmese government’s anti-sex work policies mimic those of Washington, Burmese journalists are not content to parrot those policies as their American counterparts do:

…Over 10,000 prostitutes…work in Rangoon, mainly in informal settings such as karaoke bars, nightclubs and guesthouses…they are among the most vulnerable citizens in Burma, facing widespread discrimination and abuse, often at the hands of authorities…Those who refuse or are unable to bribe the police face arrest and incarceration, sometimes in so-called “rehabilitation centres” intended to reform immoral behaviour…rape and sexual assault are a daily occurrence…police often use condoms as evidence of prostitution, even though the government formally banned the practice in 2011.  Unsurprisingly, Burma has one of the highest HIV rates in Asia, with as many as one in three sex workers infected.  Campaigners on HIV prevention have long called for harm reduction strategies to replace prohibitionist measures…But…some key actors are lagging behind.  The US government, which recently earmarked $170 million in development aid to Burma, continues to enforce its so-called “anti-prostitution” pledge…It means that any organisations that refuse to condemn sex work – even though they often have the best access to vulnerable persons – are systematically excluded…

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Links and Changes

The most improper job of any man, even saints…is bossing around other men.  Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.  -  J.R.R. Tolkien

I’ve decided to make a few changes in the new year, and figured this was as good a venue as any to explain them; that’s why the Links column appears before “That Was the Week That Was” this time.  Actually, it will be that way next week as well, then it won’t be for a few weeks, then it will be again for a few more before finally settling into its normal Sunday slot in March.  The reason for this is complicated, but it’s mostly based in my sense of aesthetics and organization.  So far, TW3 columns have been numbered by the week of 2012 on which they reported (and after #7, in which they fell).  But if I continued the sequence beyond #52, what would the numbers actually mean?  Of course they’d represent the actual number of such columns I had done, but in a couple of years that wouldn’t be very useful (quick, which week of which year is column #381?)  So I resolved to change the system.  When I first established the Links columns last summer I decided to number them by the weeks since the beginning of the blog, 131 as of this week.  But take a look at that number; by pure coincidence it also works as a designator for week and year (2013 week 1, see?)  So I couldn’t resist using the pattern while it lasts; for the next nine weeks my TW3 columns will bear the numbers previously associated with the Links columns, and the latter will have names so as to avoid repetition.  140 and above break the pattern, so starting in week 10 of this year I’ll change the system again to its permanent configuration, return the absolute week-numbers to the Links columns and never have to mess with it again.

Since I’m a believer in fair exchange, I couldn’t let TW3 steal the Links columns’ number system without giving it something in return, and that is the “this week in blog history” feature.  Actually, it makes much more sense here; TW3 is usually overlong and needs editing to bring it under 2000 words, while Links columns tend to be under 500 words and could use the padding.  Transferring the feature will thus make my life a little easier and again, please my sense of aesthetics.  Furthermore, I’ve decided to shuffle the metaupdates in with the updates in TW3; from now on all items will appear in chronological order of their parent articles, with only new titles out of that sequence at the top.

Speaking of fair exchange, our (only) video today is a 64-second primer on what libertarianism actually means; I’m rather tired of people who imagine that they oppose its principles foolishly attempting to define it by particular (and usually extreme) positions taken by some people who label themselves libertarians, rather than by its true defining principle: the right of each individual to self-ownership.  The “definition by cherry-picked planks” approach is as absurd as claiming that there were no progressives before the mid-20^th century because all progressives support nationalized medicine.  Next time someone tries this, I’m simply going to link back to this column and to “The Philosophy of Liberty”  from my resource box, and leave it at that.  But just to demonstrate I haven’t lost my sense of humor about it, I’ve also featured one of those “What people think” posters on the topic.  This week’s top link contributor was Grace (who supplied everything down to the video), but four others provided two of the links after the video each:  Jack Shafer (first and sixth), Mike Siegel (second and third),  Radley Balko (fourth and fifth), and Michael Whiteacre (seventh and “book burning”).  The eighth arrived via Walter Olson, the ninth via Franklin Harris, “doormat” via Lenore Skenazy, “Godwin’s Law” via Antonio Lorusso and “Spirograph” via EconJeff.

• Single-molecule motor sits on a single-atom bearing.
• I love it when tyrants start feeding on each other.
• Review of state surveillance in 2012.
• At the Mountains of Madness.

• If Athanasius Kircher were alive today he’d be writing about ancient astronauts, homeopathy, conspiracy theories and “sex trafficking”.
• Politician proposes that US government wipe out its debt by minting a trillion-dollar coin and depositing it in the treasury.
• Law professor argues that elected officials should be unencumbered by inconvenient rules designed to rein them in.
• In Macon, Georgia, a known thief, extortionist, sadist and murderer has never been arrested or tried; guess why.
• Neat demonstration of the perils of confusing correlation with causation.
• How Obama decides whether to murder you or just lock you up forever.
• How astronauts could have reached every world out to Jupiter by 1990.
• The “fiscal cliff” deal: $1 in spending cuts for every $41 in tax increases.
• A manufactured non-solution to a manufactured crisis.
• Doormat company makes fun of stupid label warnings.
• Sometimes Nazi analogies are entirely appropriate.
• Book burning, 21^st-century style.
• Remember Spirograph?  It’s back!
• Spacemen will bring us socialism from the stars!
• An excellent argument against “-isms” and dualistic thinking.
• “Washington is wealthy and getting wealthier, despite history’s slowest recovery in most of the country.”

From the Archives

• The first feeble rays of light are beginning to creep into the brains of those who have always accepted prohibitionism.
• New Orleans took steps against prohibitionism in December of 2010, but undid them in the next few months.
• French politicians aim to create a “more tolerant, inclusive society” by being intolerant and exclusive.
• Pearl-clutching Brits are shocked to discover young women doing exactly what they’ve always done.
• “Doublethink” explains the concept from Orwell’s 1984 and provides real-life examples.
• Here are my previous columns for New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, and Twelfth Night.
• For feminists who think only women have unrealistic body-image issues.
• A prediction of the future and collapse of “sex trafficking” hysteria.
• Houston cops and journalists steal Christmas toys from children.
• Los Angeles tries to fight AHF one last time before rolling over.
• New York schemes to turn cab drivers into “sex traffickers”.
• Wonder Woman gives herself a breast self-examination.
• My complicated relationship with January second.
• Short profiles of student sex workers.

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