I hurt people . . . and then I make their cocaine fucking appear. - Constable James Ebdon
This was not a good week for me; on Tuesday night my slave hard drive (the one where all my data is saved) crashed, which meant I had to recreate yesterday’s and today’s columns (which were already mostly done) from memory. And though Outlook was supposed to be saving my mail and backup file on two separate drives, it seems it wasn’t. So now a data retrieval expert has my drive and will be letting me know sometime today if he can get my stuff back, so I don’t lose all my mail and a lot of other good stuff. No one person really dominated the links this week; our top contributor, Mike Siegel, only edged out two others by providing the first video (a simple but extremely effective horror short). The second video is a Taiwanese parody of the New York “stop and frisk” training video, and the links between the two were supplied by Grace, Gideon, Jesse Walker, Radley Balko (two links), Michael Whiteacre (two links), and Jillian Keenan (in that order); plus Mistress Matisse (“sex kittens”) and Emil Kirkegaard (“because he can”).
The greatest special-effects artist of all time has passed away at the age of 92. His movies are among my all-time favorites, and no digital creature has ever entertained me as much as Ray’s masterful puppetry still does. And even though he’s been retired for 32 years, I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that the world will be just a little less magical without him.
Formalised money-sex exchanges get the attention and conflict…lots of other exchanges are ignored, a line is drawn between commercial and non-commercial sex. But that line is imaginary. Many people who expect to be compensated for their company will never call themselves sex workers or escorts…
A Colorado woman was convicted of prostitution for answering a personal ad; after trying to talk her into having sex in a parking lot, a disguised cop “shoved a fistful of cash in front of her face and issued a command: ‘TAKE IT!’…Moments later, the car was surrounded [by] ‘Guns and guys in black with masks on’…the prosecution focused on the word ‘roses’ in the Craigslist ad…” Maybe if this sort of thing starts to happen more often, amateurs will start to wake up to the fact that anti-whore laws harm everyone.
[For] five years…[William Coleman has been] force-fed…Starving himself…is the only way he has to…protest his conviction. Not eating is his only available free speech act…He and his lawyer have gone to court to stop the force-feedings, but a judge ruled against him in March…Coleman is…[not at] Guantánamo…where a mass hunger strike of 100 prisoners has brought…force-feeding to American newspapers, if not American consciences…but…in Connecticut…Guantánamo is not an anomaly. Prisoners…are routinely and systematically force-fed every day…force-feedings…are considered torture by most of the world’s medical and governing bodies…yet most media outlets continue to portray feeding tube use as a “complex ethical debate.” It’s not. Competent prisoners go on hunger strike because they have something to say and no other way to say it. Prison officials choose not to hear — and silence them with tubes…
American’s mathematical illiteracy goes clear up to the White House, whose spokesman recently claimed that almost 4% of school-age American girls have become “child sex slaves” since the beginning of the panic a decade ago. Also of note: since the government was unable to shut down Backpage via unconstitutional censorship demands, it is now claiming that it intentionally gave up trying.
Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group) have announced…a new journal devoted to the study of pornography. Porn Studies, to be edited by Professor Feona Attwood of Middlesex University and Dr Clarissa Smith of the University of Sunderland, will be the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal to critically explore those cultural products and services designated as pornographic and their cultural, economic, historical, institutional, legal and social contexts…
…Thousands of sex workers in Sonagachi have lost their lifelong savings…in Ponzi schemes…”about [30 million rupees] has been lost”…[said] Bharati [of Durbar Mahila Samanaya Committee]…Till 2004-05…sex workers [only] deposited their earnings and took loans…[at] Usha Bank…but…7-8 agents [who] were sacked by [the] Bank…continued to operate in the red light area. ”Sex workers were easily trapped because the agents were well known to them or were their relatives…” [said a bank officer]…Bharati says, “We…repeatedly issued warnings…But you can’t stop anyone…hell bent to invest her hard earned money in schemes promising much higher returns.” The Durbar has recently launched a massive awareness programme…
…Dongguan…has a population of about 7 million and a reputation as the Chinese capital of sex…Between 500,000 and 800,000 people – some 10 per cent of Dongguan’s migrant population – are in some way employed in the world’s oldest profession…[including] 300,000 sex workers…[but] authorities are now…trying to push prostitution off Dongguan’s streets with a crackdown…
A company within Sweden’s home care services…mistreated migrant workers by making false promises about work conditions…Hassan…said that his official job offer stated that he would be employed full-time by…TPS Vårdteam…with a monthly wage of 26,500 kronor ($4,000)…”In the beginning I didn’t get any work at all…Then I had to work seven days a week….[for] only…8,000 kronor per month”…the company had not paid in any taxes at all for Hassan…
Tulsa police have…charged 23 individuals under a state law that permits a felony to be filed when a person suspected of prostitution is arrested within 1,000 feet of a church or school. ”It’s just a nightmare,” said defense attorney, Charles Kania…a “scarlet letter on their foreheads that follows them forever”…The felony charges are part of a stepped-up effort by police to get tough on prostitution…Sgt. Todd Evans said…”Most of Tulsa is within a thousand feet of a church or school”…[and] police have sometimes opted to book individuals under another statute that makes it a felony to utilize a computer to violate any state law…
…Active Blessing Uganda…[promised that children] would get an education and live a better life…instead [they were] denied basic rights and exploited…76 children, aged between four and 16 years, have been rescued from the alleged human traffickers…the children are malnourished…do domestic work…in return for food and when they fall sick…are not cared for…the parents [were]…always prevented…from visiting…
…Being poor in the Philippines…means…no matter how much you believe things to be wrong you must believe it to be right when the rich, your master (amo)…[says] so…That…[is] why it was not difficult for the feminist (abolitionists) to appropriate our voices and to start…speaking for themselves in our name…For years, we could only stand , mouths gagged, as we watched our new “amos” build their careers speaking for other underprivileged and “mindless” women in their list who they claim do not have the ability to speak for themselves…We…do not understand the arrogance by which they have anointed themselves our saviors…what we want is save ourselves from them instead…we really do not care about “patriarchy”, “commodification” and other words they spew. Those matters don’t bring food on our table nor pay for our rent. All we are interested in is work undisturbed…It is time to tell the world that only sex workers [can] speak for sex workers…
Last month saw the publication of the EU’s first Trafficking in Human Beings report, which…is (properly) littered with disclaimers…Unfortunately…the press release…[went] for the handy soundbite…so we’ve been deluged with headlines like “Human trafficking increased by 18%“ when…the report doesn’t show it did any such thing…if all the statistics were accepted as readily as the “18% increase” has been, it would be a little bit inconvenient for some…Contrary to what we’re constantly told by the anti-trafficking movement, the most recent figures make it hard to discern any link between trafficking and the legal status of sex work. The Dutch rate is very high, but the Cyprus rate is higher – and Cyprus has much stricter laws than the Netherlands…Romania, where sex work itself is illegal, is nearly as high. Hungary (legal), Portugal (legal) and Lithuania (illegal) are tied for last. Austria and Germany are also relatively low – in fact, Germany and Sweden are tied, at 0.8 per 100,000. And the German rate has remained more or less constant over the three years surveyed, while Sweden’s has quadrupled…But sex workers’ rights advocates shouldn’t leap on those figures, either, because truthfully the whole report is pretty hopelessly undermined by its methodological weaknesses…
Sometime…[in] April, an Ohio transgender woman was…stabbed repeatedly and then tied to a concrete block and cast into a pond. She was left with no clothes below the waist, perhaps to shame her…But…insensitive stories by the local press…[wrote] about [her] as if she were a bizarre spectacle, not a victimized human being…the Cleveland Plain Dealer…used a mugshot of [Cemia] Acoff instead of the other readily available photos…the [headline which now reads]…“Oddly dressed body found in Olmsted Township identified,” originally said “oddly dressed man,” (you can see it in the url; it was changed after readers and activists protested)…the story [also] refers to her as Carl Acoff (her birth name) and uses a male pronoun...[a follow-up] story…details what she was wearing…lists old petty “crimes”…[and refers to the] hormones [she was carrying as] “dangerous drugs”…
…The anti-sex trafficking cause is already thick with moral panic, misinformation, and ill-informed, PR-boosting celebrity activists, and you’re cluttering the already-diminished discourse with further nonsense….[which spawns] attitudes and policies that actively harmsex workers. You are ignoring the freely-available perspectives and requests of real-life sex workers because they interfere with your romantic notion of the Prostituted Woman as a forlorn, passive victim who needs to be saved. If you engage with sex workers before you form a view on what’s oppressing them, you might find that criminalisation and stigma are higher-priority concerns than mythical drug-dealing pimps wielding persuasive charm and Beyoncé’s hotpants…
…an undercover police officer…[repeatedly paid for sex] over five months…in a fight against prostitution and human trafficking. Officers say such methods led to…[their raiding] two businesses [and] arresting…four alleged prostitutes and two alleged pimps. But the methods…were criticized…by legal…experts and women’s advocates as excessive, unnecessary and misapplied…prostitutes can be arrested and charged in Indiana as soon as an agreement to pay for a sex act is made…Plus…if the women indeed had been…working…against their will, the sex acts they performed on the officer only contributed to their humiliation, exploitation and degradation…Aaron Dietz, head of the…Task Force…which conducted the nine-month sting, said…the sophisticated nature of the prostitution ring required officers to take more extreme measures…Dietz and others wanted to emphasize that it was not a pleasurable experience for the officer, but entirely necessary. “No one…really wants to go into these…It’s something that’s ethically and morally very trying, so I’d do anything to keep guys out of there.”
You’d do anything? Then how about advocating for decriminalization, you fucking filthy liar?
Several [congresscritters claim]…that climate change…could…drive poor women to “transactional sex”…The resolution, from Rep. Barbara Lee…and a dozen other Democrats, says…”[F]ood insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health”…
“Vulnerable to sex work” may be an even more agency-annihilating phrase than “prostituted woman”.
…a number of [recent] conversations around sex work, autonomy and feminism…trotted out the tired idea that sex work degrades and harms all women…I have a number of [sex worker] friends and acquaintances…and I’m tired of seeing their lives denigrated because of how they choose to make money…Demonising sex workers under the guise of “helping” them is simply a way of expressing puritanical snobbery…[and] relies more on myths and prejudices than any real knowledge…
Western Australia’s war on whores continues: ”The City of Vincent is considering a high-tech surveillance system that captures…licence plate information to help track kerb crawlers…mayor Alannah MacTiernan said…statistics proved more needed to be done to stamp out street prostitution and protect residents…she…also wants to name and shame people convicted of soliciting…” Obviously, there is no actual crime in Vincent.
…Sex work…is one of the few areas…that allows the worker a wide variety of choices in how…where…and when they work. It…provides a relatively good [cash]…return…for those…with few choices or…who need to make money quickly and anonymously…This…is…why sex work survives and flourishes no matter how [persecuted it is]…
This article starts by claiming that “Police have a growing fear about the spread of human trafficking” due to “the growth of gambling in Maryland”. But the text (which reads more like a Salvation Army screed than a news item) is about the cops “rescuing” a hooker by deceiving her, arresting her and abducting her children so she can be “saved from selling her body.” After reading that, I feel I need to wash my eyeballs.
Harsh public registration laws often punish youth sex offenders for life and do little to protect public safety, Human Rights Watch said in…Raised on the Registry: The Irreparable Harm of Placing Children on Sex Offender Registries in the US…the laws…[make] them targets for harassment, humiliation, and even violence…[and] severely restrict where, and with whom [they] may live, work, attend school, or even spend time…Human Rights Watch interviewed 281 youth sex offenders, whose median age at offense was 15, across 20 states, as well as hundreds of offenders’ family members, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, law enforcement officials, experts on the topic, and victims of child-on-child sexual assault…Numerous studies estimate the recidivism rate among children who commit sexual offenses to be between 4 and 10 percent, compared with a 13 percent rate for adult sex offenders and a national rate of 45 percent for all crimes…
“Monica Contreras went to family court with her 2-year-old daughter in August 2011….on a routine divorce case”, but as she was leaving the Las Vegas courtroom Ron Fox, a bailiff-like cop called a “marshal”, ordered her into an anteroom (supposedly for a “drug search”) and groped her. She went back into the courtroom and complained to the presiding official, Patricia Donninger, who literally ignored her; Fox then had her arrested for “false allegations made against a police officer.” Nothing was done until the video below was discovered and publicized by KLAS-TV; Fox was fired but is suing to get his job back, and Donninger is being investigated.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, a cop named Aravanh Lakmany was sentenced to only two years in jail after pleading guilty to “extortion by threat and three counts of solicitation of prostitutes,” thus escaping a much longer sentence and sex offender registration for raping three whores.
Chicago Shakespeare Theater presents Roadkill, an immersive, theatrical event spotlighting the global issue of sex trafficking. Based on real-life experiences, the American premiere of Cora Bissett’s chilling production…[allows] audience members…to witness firsthand the brutal realities behind the newspaper headlines…
…the United States may have been giving special treatment to major powers China, Russia, and India…[and] let even Uzbekistan off the hook…because of the repressive nation’s cooperation in getting supplies to American troops in Afghanistan…Iraq and Thailand too have seen their potential ranking downgrades delayed while Vietnam has won a premature ranking boost…due to strategic considerations…legislators and ex-state officials charged at a U.S. congressional hearing…
This story is noteworthy in that the quoted cop, while still buying the “gypsy whores” myth, only exaggerates the coercion rate by a factor of about 5 instead of the typical 45 or 50:
…beneath the pageantry, sport and spectacle, Kentucky Derby time is also the darkest hour for victims of human trafficking. “We have high rates,” said Gretchen Hunt…[of] the Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs…the phenomenon…accompanies other major sporting events in the United States, an influx of men willing to pay for sex. Sgt. Andre Bottoms, of the Louisville…Police…estimates about ten percent of hundreds of prostitutes in Louisville this week are being forced or coerced…
Caty Simon of Tits and Sass continues a string of good interviews, this time with veteran activist Carol Leigh (AKA Scarlot Harlot), originator of the term “sex worker”. Carol speaks about the growth of activism, trafficking hysteria, neofeminism and whore art.
For the past five years, Lyon has enforced bylaws prohibiting the parking of prostitutes’ trucks in much of the city, forcing them into the Gerland industrial district. The city has now issued orders to prohibit this as well, but the girls stayed…Karen, their spokeswoman, reaffirmed that they would not leave despite “unprecedented” police operations: “We are forced to stay. There was nowhere to go. When you try to move to other parts of Greater Lyon…you are immediately driven out by the police.” Since March 19, the…police have patrolled the area three to four times a week…to enforce the bylaw…and…discourage the clients…the mayor says she is not seeking “the eradication of prostitution” in Gerland…[but claims she has had] a “flood” of complaint letters from local businesses…the police are also continuing to use the offense of passive soliciting to “identify trafficking networks and pimps”…[despite the fact that] the Senate repealed the offense on March 29…
This article on Edinburgh’s saunas (tolerated brothels) is fairly respectful; the only people quoted are sex workers (including advocate Laura Lee) and a punter, the dysphemisms are kept to a bare minimum, sex work is recognized as work and the threat posed by Rhoda Grant’s attempt to impose the Swedish model is mentioned.
Sex workers…demanded representation in all policy making bodies…dealing with them. “People who make laws don’t know anything about our issues, concerns and why we do this work. So, policy making bodies must have our representatives,” said a participant from Ajmer…[they] also…rooted for self regulatory boards like Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) in Kolkata and Ashodhaya in Mysore to check violence in sex work and trafficking…
…a sex-education book…in Berlin elementary schools has some parents up in arms…Wo kommst du her? ["Where Do You Come From?"]…is recommended for ages 5 and up [and] shows a couple…in various stages of arousal. In one illustration, Lisa puts a condom on Lars’ erect penis…The text also veers toward the explicit. “When it’s so good that it can’t get any better, Lisa and Lars have an orgasm,” it reads. And…”The vagina and penis feel nice and tingly and warm”…Parents began to complain…but the school did nothing…until it was reported in the local press…
People like to read reviews online before buying a car or reserving a hotel room. But one website, http://www.eccie.net…allows users to review the services of local prostitutes…the idea that you can review prostitutes has a lot of people concerned…Jenny Ford…[of] ACH Child and Family Services…says people posting on sites like this often use kinky sex and prostitution as a cover up for sex trafficking…State Senator Leticia Van De Putte…[has] filed…a bill that go [sic] after the people using them…
Those of you who followed the #whenantisattack hashtag on Twitter back on March 3rd know the sort of abuse sex workers have to put up with; because of her prominence Dr. Brooke Magnanti gets more (and more severe) than most of us, and after a particularly nasty barrage last Saturday she wrote this essay on why it’s so very important that even angry perverts not be censored by “hate speech” laws.
A missing 18-year-old Aurora [Colorado] woman [named Raven Cassidy Furlong]…was found…[after] police received a tip that she was sighted in Venice Beach…at tryouts for American Ninja Warrior…Furlong was taken to the police station [but released] once they ascertained she was in California of her own free will…Her family believes she was coerced into saying she’s OK. “We know what Raven gave was a canned speech…They’ve been coerced to believe their families are bad, this is common in human trafficking,” [said] Shelley Shaffer, Director of the National Women’s Coalition Against Violence & Exploitation…
I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t need to be “coerced” into wanting to escape from parents who infantilized me and were willing to use armed thugs to force me to live with them.
Three “gay and effeminate” teens have died after being starved, tortured and killed at a camp that promised to turn them into “men”…Raymond Buys, 15 [died]…in April 2011…just 10 weeks [after he entered] the Echo Wild Game Rangers training course in South Africa in perfect health…Buys was severely malnourished, dehydrated, his arm was broken in two places and there were burns and wounds all over his body…Alex De Koker, 49, and employee Michael Erasmus, 20, are on trial for charges of murder, child abuse and neglect…[tentmate] Gerhard Oostuizen, 19, claims Buys was chained to his bed every night…refused permission to visit the toilet…forced to eat his own faeces…beaten with planks, hosepipes and sticks…[and tased while] tied…to a chair naked with his head covered in a pillowcase…Eric Calitz, 18, and Nicolaas Van Der Walt, 19, had both died after being enrolled at the…camp four years earlier…Calitz…died of…seizure, dehydration and [cerebral hemorrhage, and] Van Der Walt…appeared to have been choked with a seatbelt. In 2009, De Koker was handed a suspended sentence over Calitz but escaped charges for…Van Der Walt, and the camp was allowed to continue…
While working as a high-class escort for nine years, Rebecca Dakin saw hundreds of married men turn to her to fulfill sexual needs not being met by their wives. In 2009, she…became an infidelity counselor, using her experience…to teach women about how to satisfy their husbands…Dakin says that the number one reason men look outside of their relationships for sex is because they’re not getting enough of it at home…other reasons…include…feeling bored by the sex they receive…or feeling hesitant to share their intimate desires and fantasies with their spouse…
The pathetic losers who believe young girls can perform complex calculations in their heads are at it again, informing us that if Barbie were both alive and life-sized she wouldn’t have room for intestines. That’s ironic, because it’s obvious that doofuses who obsess about plastic dolls have no room in their heads for comprehending that the smaller any animal is, the more slender its proportions tend to be, and that kids don’t actually notice this kind of stuff in any case.
It’s surprising that this article on Bay Area sex workers (including Kitty Stryker and Siouxsie Q) who cater to the tech sector appeared on CNN, of all places; the phrase “human trafficking” occurs only once, in a very short passage about a vice cop. Maybe a few people over there are starting to wake up (or just seeing the writing on the wall). The same holds true in the next item:
…Mazar…is…Afghanistan’s unofficial capital of prostitution…[this is] partly [due]…to the city’s culture, which is considerably more forgiving of vice than is the rest of the country. Alcohol, though still illegal, can be found without too much trouble. Women…can be seen socializing with men in…public parks, a rare sight even in Kabul…In recent years, the city’s economy has flourished as its proximity to Central Asia and its relative peace and stability have transformed it into a trading hub…The sex trade has [always] existed in one form or another…even under the ultraconservative rule of the Taliban. But officials here say the rapid spread of mobile technology has made the business easier to manage and harder to detect…Women…host clients in a series of apartments…The point of contact is typically a man who orchestrates the meet-ups by cellphone. This has made the business tough to infiltrate for those police officials eager to crack down…[sex workers] are almost always impoverished and typically divorced or widowed, struggling to support a family…they risk death if they are discovered…
Even the police state seems unable to explain what legitimate public interest is served by jailing a 69-year-old quadriplegic polio victim who breathes through a ventilator for the “crime” of having sexual feelings. In 2011 he was “convicted” of helping sex workers find safe clients by running a screening service, and apparently the terms of his probation demand he not be sexual in any way; unsurprisingly, he has been caught violating that condition twice so far.
…As part of a legal settlement, Tennessee-based Stop Child Trafficking Now…will agree to follow a list of requirements if it returns to Missouri…some of the stipulations include [detailing] how donated funds will be spent in the Kansas City area…[and] an accurate depiction of the organization’s accomplishments. A 41 Action News investigation…followed the money trail and fact-checked some of SCTNow’s bold claims made on its website…hundreds of thousands of dollars [went] to fund private “special operatives” teams to gather undercover intelligence about child sex trafficking…[but] when pressed for more details, SCTNow could not point to a single case in the country where information lead to an arrest or prosecution…
Where’s the outcry from picket-fence gay activists? {sound of crickets} I reckon they don’t want to be soil their newfound respectability by speaking up for drag hookers any more.
…outlawing activities accomplishes only one thing…It tells citizens that government has decided something is Wrong…Sending A Message is the principle …behind the Swedish state’s…law against buying sex, and…behind all the [others]…who want the law for their countries. Everyone wants to be seen to be Taking a Stand against immoral behaviour. Try bringing evidence into the conversation and you will quickly learn how irrelevant it is; you can find Swedish promoters themselves saying things like We know it doesn’t work but we want to be in the forefront of Gender Justice…Any other claim about what prohibitionist laws achieve when they outlaw social activities like sex, drinking and drugs is not supported by evidence. That’s because, after the law is passed and the message is sent, individuals deal with prohibition deviously…So buyers and sellers of drugs, alcohol and sex become creative, some of them maintaining a disapproving stance in public at the same time…
A new study, designed and carried out by the network of female sex workers in Latin America and Caribbean (REDTRASEX), has documented legislation that affects sex work – as well as detailing what this means in practice…independent sex work is not prohibited in any of the countries studied. What is criminalized…is proxenetism (or ‘pimping’) and…“immoral” behaviours or disturbances to the peace or public order are applied in relation to sex work. Furthermore…confusing sex workers…with trafficked persons…silences the legitimate voices of sex workers and actually blocks discussions on how to end human trafficking. This creates a framework of legitimacy for police repression and state violence…[and] results in a culture of secrecy around sex work, increasing stigma and the vulnerability of sex workers…
Despite a total lack of evidence (“[trafficking] convictions [declined] 13 percent”), Chicken Licken and other overly-excitable barnyard fowl ordered EU member states “to get a move on with adopting tough new rules against human trafficking or face sanctions as a first report on the problem showed ‘modern-day slavery’ worsening”. Obviously math isn’t the typical politician’s strong suit, but one would think even they could comprehend that the larger estimates might have something to do with the fact that they “[broadened] the definition of the crime” two years ago; now they’re claiming “the trafficking business is second-only in illegal activity to the weapons trade”, up from the equally-bogus assertion that it was third. Anyone want to take bets on whether it will rise to first before the hysteria collapses?
…we’ve been hearing it for years. Gay marriage is a slippery slope! A gateway drug! If we legalize it, then what’s next? Legalized polygamy? We can only hope…let’s not forget that the fight doesn’t end with same-sex marriage…Legalized polygamy in the United States is…constitutional, feminist, and sex-positive…we really can make our own choices. We just might choose things people don’t like…Arguments about whether a woman’s consensual sexual and romantic choices are “healthy” should have no bearing on the legal process…It’s condescending, not supportive, to minimize them as mere “victims” without considering the possibility that some of them have simply made a different choice…
…Who are the organizers of this campaign trying to communicate with? My suspicion is…people who already have a soft analysis of prostitution gleaned from watching 20/20…or true crime TV shows about sex trafficking busts…who is going to step up and be “in favor” of “modern day slavery” or “sex trafficking?” …I really want to know what it’s going to take for people to actually think about how complicated the sex trade is, and that it’s not all the same, and that ads that make us all the victims of overwhelming violence don’t do anything to actually improve our circumstances…
…Fox 2000…[is] adapting Go the Fuck to Sleep for the big screen…the bedtime-story parody, written by Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortés, has become something of a viral hit…It is unclear how the filmmakers plan to turn what is essentially a nursery rhyme with one punchline…into an entire feature- length film…
I hope this proves lucrative for Ricardo and also opens more doors for him.
This essay first appeared on Cliterati on March 10th; I have modified it slightly for time references and to fit the format of this blog.
In the early days of second-wave feminism, sex workers were widely recognized as having fought for women’s rights for centuries; 1970s whores marched and protested right alongside of housewives and lesbians, and for a while it looked like the cause of sex worker rights would become a mainstream one. But just as it had happened in first-wave feminism, a cabal of white, middle-class, sexually-repressed women commandeered the movement for themselves and elbowed sex workers out; once the AIDS scare began in the early 1980s their victory was complete, and sex worker rights languished as a marginal cause for a generation while gay rights advocates managed to build a powerful coalition which has not only won legal protections for gay people, but dramatically reduced bigotry toward them (especially among the young).
Finally, the sex worker rights movement began to pick up again around the turn of the 21st century; prostitution was decriminalized in some places and liberalized in others, and sex worker unions and other alliances have gained rapidly in power and prominence. Unfortunately, the prohibitionists are not stupid; they noticed that there had been a sea change in public opinion against interfering in private sexual arrangements between consenting adults, and so created the “sex trafficking” hysteria as a means of rallying the public behind criminalization again. As the “Nation Strategy” of Swanee Hunt’s Demand Abolition organization states, “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.” In other words, “since people now recognize it’s wrong for the government to stick its nose into private bedrooms, we have to pretend this is really about something else.”
But nobody stays asleep forever, and over the past couple of years I’ve begun to see strong signs of a public awakening on this issue despite the lullabies and sleeping-draughts assiduously administered by prohibitionists both inside and outside of government. Canadian public support for criminalization has rapidly eroded in the wake of the Himel decision, and several UN agencies have come out in favor of decriminalization for both health and human rights reasons (specifically repudiating restrictive forms of “legalization” such as those in Sweden, Nevada and the Netherlands). After last summer’s “Sex Worker Freedom Festival” in Kolkata (an answer to the exclusion of sex workers from the International AIDS Conference in Washington), an article in the Guardian called Indian sex workers “a shining example of women’s empowerment”, The Lancet published a pro-decriminalization statement, and several British politicians have strongly criticized the incredible waste of money which resulted from the “trafficking” hysteria around the London Olympics.
…Magnanti is forced to live in secrecy, her number taken to the top of any 999 summons list because of the innumerable threats she has received…Her family’s privacy has been invaded to find the “causes” of her choice and her personal appearance derided, not least within what might otherwise be called the sisterhood…[this abuse] would seem crazed were it not for MSP Rhoda Grant, who is sponsoring an “end demand for sex trafficking” bill in the Scottish parliament, declaring violence against sex workers a price worth paying to secure her proposals. As Magnanti tweeted: ”Let that sink in. Politician thinks it’s OK if people die b/c of her bill. No one bats an eyelid.”
Is it not time we came to terms with prostitution? Instead, the prostitute herself…becomes the target for culture’s anxieties about sex…whore-bashing…is somehow deemed acceptable…said bashing includes a cohort of feminist critics who…[argue that]…sex workers cannot know their own minds, or be in control of their bodies, and thus consent…Hatred of prostitutes has implications for all women who desire to determine their sexual existences. These obviously stigmatised targets allow a kind of thin-end-of-the-wedge, sanctioned misogyny…
Meanwhile, across the pond, Molly Crabapple wrote about the indefensible behavior of New York police:
…The NYPD will arrest you for carrying condoms, but that depends entirely on who you are. If you’re a middle-class white girl like me, you’re probably safe. But say you’re a sex worker or a queer kid kicked out of your home. Say you’re a trans woman out for dinner with your boyfriend…Maybe some quota-filling cop thinks you look like a whore. Then you’re not safe at all. Like most laughably cruel tricks of the justice system, you probably wouldn’t know that you could be arrested for carrying condoms until it happened to you…the polite middle classes trivialize arrest…They don’t realize that the constant threat of arrest is traumatic, unless it happens to them or their kids.
…How does something so egregious keep happening? Because sex workers don’t matter…to power…Horrors are acceptable when they’re not happening to the dominant class…LGBT civil rights and sex worker advocacy groups are fighting against the use of condoms as evidence. Mainstream feminism is not. A movement that rightly and vociferously fought pharmacists who refused to fill birth control prescriptions has remained largely silent about women being jailed for carrying another contraceptive. Mainstream feminism might remember that the war on women always starts with the war on whores…Until 1996, Ireland locked up unmarried moms and rape victims in Magdalene Laundries, where nuns worked them to death to cleanse their imaginary sins. The nuns built those Magdalene Laundries to imprison sex workers. Tens of thousands of women died within their walls, of every walk of life except the very wealthiest…
Sex worker advocates have been talking and writing about this (not only in New York but in many places all over the world) for years, but Molly’s article is being widely linked and “tweeted” as though it were saying something new. Please don’t take that as a complaint, because it most certainly isn’t; in fact, it’s the exact opposite. I’m extremely grateful to those outside the sex worker rights movement who are beginning to call attention to our situation and to repeat and amplify our arguments to a much wider audience; with their help, I’m hopeful that sex worker rights will once again become a mainstream feminist, health, human rights and civil liberties issue as it was starting to become in my childhood, and that the majority of the next generation of young people will view persecution of sex workers with the same distaste as most of the current one sees persecution of gay people, and most of my own generation sees race prejudice.
We are simply sisters, mothers, neighbors and friends. We shop where you shop, we vote where you vote and we pay taxes like the rest of you. - Kristen DiAngelo
Amanda Brooks published her own set of tips for clients; I think it’s worthwhile for a gentleman to read as many of these as he comes across, because every woman is different and may include something others didn’t think important.
Egyptian prosecutors ordered the detention of 17 women and a Lebanese man…[for]…commercial phone sex…security forces raided [their] office…and confiscated phones and computer devices…Investigations showed “gang members” recruited female university students through job ads in newspapers and then agreed with them to perform acts “that run contrary to morality”…
Sweden says its “model” has reduced prostitution and deters clients: “[A] newspaper…published an advert about a fictional 19-year-old [sex worker]…Over the weekend, the phone had 130 missed calls and seven texts. After a week, the number had grown to 287 calls and 57 texts…[a] local police [spokesman claimed]…the callers were more curious than interested in buying sex…” What a pathetic rationalization! Here’s the real attitude of Swedes toward the law:
Police say they’ve seen no evidence to back up [a New Zealand] MP’s claims that girls as young as 13 are working as prostitutes in south Auckland…Asenati Lole-Taylor says there is “growing prevalence” of underage girls selling sex…and she’s backing a bill to ban all street prostitution and confine sex work to brothels…[she also claims] she has witnessed police dealing with young prostitutes …That was news to police Area Commander…Chris de Wattignar. “It’s not something that police have seen ourselves. We also work with a number of agencies and community partners in the Otara town centre and that’s certainly not the information we have”…
The US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has [issued] regulations on…Bitcoin…there’s been zero regulation…[so far, because that] would essentially admit that it’s legitimate…The nature of Bitcoin makes it untraceable so unless firms are coaxed into cooperation, it’s hard to imagine the regulations being enforced.
Though the main Wikipedia entry for “Prostitution” is an unusable (and uncorrectable) mess due to aggressive sabotage by neofeminists, there is a new article on “Migrant Sex Work” which is comprehensive, fact-based and non-judgmental and includes citations from many good writers like Laura Agustín, Elizabeth Bernstein, Pardis Mahdavi, Nick Mai and Rhacel Parrenas. Here’s hoping the author is able to keep control of it.
Charlotte Shane’s “’Getting Away’ With Hating It: Consent in the Context of Sex Work” is a brilliant exploration of how the weakness of the concept of “enthusiastic consent” (now being pushed by the “rape culture” folks) is demonstrated by sex work. This is definitely a must-read, especially for my male readers, as it looks at an area of female sexual psychology most men seem to have difficulty understanding. Even the comment thread is worth your time, especially the reactions to a Good Men Project writer who apparently thinks it’s only OK to pay a whore if she doesn’t need the job and is only doing it as a hobby or something.
The Australian Woman’s Weekly published “When Sex is Your Day Job”, an interview with five sex workers (including Rachel Wotton) about prejudice, sex work myths, discrimination and sex as a human right. What a difference from the United States!
A 19-year-old Tunisian activist who was threatened with death by stoning after posting topless pictures of herself online has reportedly been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. The woman, known only as Amina, posted the photographs…to the Femen-Tunisian Facebook page…Amina’s aunt claimed…”She had decided to kill herself and so posted nude pictures of herself online.” [Femen leader Inna] Shevchenko described the move as “a typical way of reacting to a woman’s demand to be free – they say she’s gone crazy or is being too emotional”…
A…Mexican politician who…[appeared] in a…lingerie video is taking legal action against political rivals who claim she was [an] “escort girl.” Giselle Arellano says the…accusations resulted in her failing to win the nomination of Mexico’s conservative National Action Party (PAN)…She wants the election annulled on the grounds that she was “slandered” by her rivals…Arellano…resides in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she has done stints as a model and also runs a small company that offers “concierge services” to visitors. She was running for a seat in the Zacatecas State Legislature that is reserved for Mexicans who emigrate abroad…
Besides conventional services, Black Rose Services plans bachelor parties and group excursions to strip clubs and only takes clients by referral.
Microsoft recently sponsored a “hackathon” based on the theme “combating human trafficking”, and a story on the ever-credulous NPR reports that one of the entries is a smartphone app that middle-class teenage girls who are suddenly “trafficked” by surprise (presumably by “pimps” leaping out at them from bushes) can use to surreptitiously “connect with resources, like a hotline number or a chat room where they can get help. ‘One of the requirements of this project was to make it covert, so it’s not easily detectable…and [that] it’s for girls ages 11 to 21.’ So the app, which they call Blossom, is disguised to look like it’s just about fun for teens…” Because captives would certainly be allowed to keep their phones, and university-age adult women are interested in the same sorts of games as 11-year-olds.
Saskatoon’s new adult services licensing bylaw…gives police new…powers to keep a closer watch on a large part of the sex industry…Anyone advertising sexual services…is now required to get a licence from the city…This is…taking part of the sex trade out of the shadows to protect vulnerable women, police and city officials say…”Prostitution is not against the law. If a person is working at a hotel and communicating in a private place, then they are not committing a criminal offence”…
And that obviously wouldn’t do, so they had to find a way to make it into one. For our own good, of course.
…On Eagles Wings Ministries plans to [build]…a haven for girls involved in the sex-trafficking trade…Gaston County provides a location that’s close enough to Charlotte to help girls there, but far enough away to keep traffickers at bay…North Carolina has become a hotspot for human trafficking…[due to] major highways and interstates, transient populations and large rural areas…
Two of the authors of books from this column (Rob Arthur of You Will Die and Laura Agustín of Sex at the Margins) were interviewed on the subject of what inspired them to write those books; I think you’ll find their answers illuminating.
Last month Lora LePoudre, who goes by the escort pseudonym Hilary Holiday, was arrested by the Eden Prairie Police department in Minnesota following an anonymous tip off by a neighbor and a subsequent sting operation…Neighbors in her family-friendly condo complex [said] they were thankful police had arrested her…
As you may remember, there was no “complaint” except from Hilary herself; the reporter also cherry-picks neighbors, spews inanities like “family-friendly” and misquotes Kristen DiAngelo as saying escorts are “very different” from other sex workers, when actually she said there was a difference between free and coerced prostitution.
…The head of the Essonne department…Jerome Guedj…called for allowing sex surrogates…as part of regular social services…[noting] that [they]…are permitted in some other European countries…But…[removed] the term…just ahead of the vote…after coming under criticism for opening the door to legalized prostitution…a national ethics council…ruled that authorizing sex surrogates would essentially “merchandise the human body”…
I hired a sex worker for my late 93-year-old father. He had dementia and lived in a nursing home when he said to me, “You’ll need to find me a woman”…I took his request seriously [because]…I’m a disability support worker and I’ve seen how an individual’s sexuality needs to be considered…Touching Base put me in contact with…the person they thought most suitable: ’Emma’…After time with Emma, my father’s well-being and consequently his behaviour improved…He wasn’t as agitated. He didn’t obsess over things like he used to. He was serene, happy and relaxed…
There is considerable sympathy among Dutch MPs for moves to get tougher on people who visit prostitutes and don’t report suspected exploitation or abuse…The senate…is currently considering legislation that would force prostitutes to sign up to an official register. Clients who fail to check if a girl is registered, could face prosecution…[some] want to go further and say clients should be prosecuted for failing to report to the authorities if they suspect a woman may be being abused or forced to work as a prostitute…
Oregon is really ramping up the hysteria; between two different stories on the same legislative/cop antics we are told that “trafficking happens in small towns” to 9-year-olds, that “80 children are victims of sex trafficking each year” in Portland, that prosecutors want to use “racketeering laws” to prosecute whoever a girl names as her “pimp” after being jailed indefinitely (for her own good, of course), and that “men looking to buy sex from minors describe the victims they want to order.” All this on the word of unnamed women who present no evidence; you know, kind of like witch trials.
The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door… - Fredric Brown
As I’ve said many times, I prefer short stories to novels; even when I shared my list of favorite books a year ago, six of thirteen were short story collections. As I said then, “This is because for me, a large part of the pleasure of a book is the mood it sets, and if that mood is disturbed I can’t enjoy it nearly as much. Short stories are quickly consumed, and even novellas or short novels can be read in one extended sitting…When I started whoring the long-established preference for short fiction grew even stronger, because I knew that at any moment I might be interrupted by a phone call from a client and have to run off.” But despite this preference (or perhaps because of it), choosing a list of favorite short stories was even more difficult than choosing my favorite books. Last May Eve I provided my list of the ten scariest short stories, and I’ve excluded those from this list along with all stories which are included in any of my favorite books (which means everything by Doyle, Lovecraft and Poe). I also excluded fairy tales because, though I love them dearly, they’re really a different genre (and one I will visit in a future column).
Because most of these are quite well-known and highly regarded, and none of them were published after I was born, I was able to secure PDFs of all but two. There was a PDF of #7 as well, but it was so poorly formatted that the ends of most lines were cut off on the right side; I therefore decided not to provide it, but if someone can locate a proper copy I will. You will note the majority of these are quite short; three of them qualify as short-shorts, and only two are novelettes. But since y’all know my own fiction is primarily in the short-short format, that shouldn’t surprise you. All of these are either fantasy, science fiction, horror or suspense except for #3, which is essentially psychological horror (as is #5). They all have something else in common: all are unique and highly memorable. They are listed here in chronological order.
This gothic tale is often listed as one of the earliest works of science fiction, because its premise relies on human experimentation by a mad scientist. Hawthorne was far more interested in the dark portions of the human soul than in speculation about the nature of the physical universe, but his short stories often explore this by means of some fantastic situation. Those who recognized this month’s fictional interlude as a tribute to this story are probably unsurprised to see it here.
Though he is best known in the English-speaking world for his lengthy novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy also wrote many fine short stories including this fine example of the subgenre the French refer to as contes cruels, stories which are not necessarily supernatural but demonstrate the cruelty of fate and usually conclude with a shocking or horrifying twist. John Collier and Roald Dahl (see below) also produced many tales of this type.
A steamboat captain travels up a river in Africa to investigate his company’s trade agent at an outpost in the interior, and discovers that the “Dark Continent” is not nearly as dark as the recesses of the human heart. Many of you may have studied the story in literature class, and though it has been adapted several times the most famous was Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, which transposed the events to Vietnam War-era Cambodia.
Saki was the pen name of H.H. Munro, a brilliant British author whose career was cut short by a German sniper at the Battle of the Ancre in 1916. His best work is equal parts horror and humor, and this one – the story of a sickly orphan who creates his own secret pagan cult in his guardian’s shed – is its perfect exemplar.
This chilling (no pun intended) tale of a young boy’s descent into madness manages to create a horrifying atmosphere without any of the conventional elements of horror. In addition to the PDF, I thought y’all might enjoy this short film made for TV in 1966; the same director later remade it as an episode of Night Gallery, narrated by Orson Welles.
Many of John Collier’s stories are strange and haunting, but this one more than most. It’s the tale of a boy whose father, one of those annoying people who makes a fetish of rationalism (think Maureen O’Hara in Miracle on 34th Street), becomes jealous of his new imaginary friend and decides to disprove that friend’s existence once and for all.
Some of you may recall that I have referred to this science-fiction warning of the perils of the nanny state once before, in a column which shares its name.
Many people who know Dahl from his children’s works such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Witches may not have realized he also had a talent for marvelously wicked adult stories; he even had his own syndicated TV series, Tales of the Unexpected. Even before that a number of his stories were adapted for television, most notably on Alfred Hitchcock Presents; Hitch’s production of this one starred Peter Lorre as the title character who bets Steve McQueen a new car that he can’t light his cigarette lighter ten times in a row without fail.
This was Heinlein’s favorite of all his short stories, and mine as well; I can never read it without tearing up. Some critics have dismissed it as a “mistake”, an overly-sentimental fantasy in sharp contrast to his usual hard science fiction. But this is not Heinlein’s only fantasy, nor his only whimsical story, nor his only sentimental one; furthermore, its themes connect it to many of his longer works such as The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, I Will Fear No Evil and The Number of the Beast.
Clarke is not among my favorite writers; IMHO he’s usually too dry, too self-limited and too obsessed with enormous timescales, and he created his female characters in much the same way Michelangelo did (i.e., by sticking tits onto male figures). But there are a few times he really surpassed himself, and in my estimation this is the best of them.
Don’t make the mistake of dismissing this as the science fiction equivalent of a LOLcat, though at first glance it may appear to be. Yes, it’s cute; yes, the hero is a kitten behaving in a terribly precious way. But stick with it, and you’ll find there’s actually a tale of courage, love, duty and sacrifice under that cuddly and apparently superficial veneer.
As I mentioned in “My Favorite Authors”, Brown was the absolute master of the short-short story, and though he wrote many excellent longer tales (including the one that was adapted into the Star Trek episode “Arena”) he is today best remembered for his little gems like this terribly sad conte cruel.
Ray Russell was the greatest 20th-century writer in the Gothic style; when I first read his most famous story, “Sardonicus”, I had to check the copyright page to convince myself that it was not first published over a century earlier. “Sagittarius” is the second part of a loose trilogy with the aforementioned story (the third part is “Sanguinarius”). But I’ve always liked “Sagittarius” best for its clever interweaving of the stories of Jack the Ripper, Gilles de Rais, Mr. Hyde and the Grand Guignol Theater; unfortunately I can’t supply a PDF copy, but I own it in Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown, which is well worth the pittance you’ll pay for it.
Now Nature hangs her mantle green
On every blooming tree,
And spreads her sheets o’daisies white
Out o’er the grassy lea. - Robert Burns
The apparent path of the sun crossed the celestial equator northbound at 11:02 UTC today, making today the first day of astronomical spring for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, and astronomical autumn for those in the Southern. So if you were wondering why this posted an hour late today, now you have your reason; I couldn’t resist posting at the moment of the equinox. Spring is my second favorite of seasons, surpassed in my estimation only by autumn; as I age I watch them go buy more and more quickly, flashing by in a rapid succession of days and weeks until they give way all too soon to the extremes of summer or winter…which in turn flash by and give way to the seasons I love, each in its turn, one after another as they have since long before the arrival of Man (and as they will no doubt continue until long after his departure).
The old Germanic name for the holiday, Ostara, is of course the origin for Easter; other Christian festivals adapted from pagan ones share the day but not the name, but in this case it’s the name but not the day! This is because the Christian rationale for the holiday is tied to the Jewish Passover, and so is calculated in the same way (from the first full moon of spring); in fact, in most European languages the words for Easter and Passover are the same. I’m glad we retained the older name in English; Ostara was a spring goddess whose name descends from that of the ancient Proto-Indo-European dawn goddess Hausos, of whom the Greek Eos, the Roman Aurora and the Vedic Ushas are all later forms (spring is, after all, the dawn of the year). There’s a beauty in that continuity: the timeless celebration of the return of life after winter, with the name of a goddess who has been worshipped in one form or another since many of the most widely-spoken languages in the world were one.
If we [can’t] get the prohibition on sex work repealed, we [will] never end up hanging on to our abortion rights…it’s the same piece of property. - Margo St. James
Dutch “authorities” narrow the bottleneck again and will no doubt be surprised when illegal prostitution increases: “The city of Amsterdam…will raise the legal age of prostitutes from 18 to 21 and…close brothels during the early morning hours…Amsterdam says it wants to decrease the number of sex workers…to fight crime generated by prostitution…”
A sex worker who was…held hostage for two…days broke her legs and back when she jumped out a sixth-floor window…Benjamin Gaston and Johnny Jackson have been charged with kidnapping and raping the…woman…Gaston…stole her cellphone, money and identification…hit her and held a pillow over her face, telling her, “You’re…working for me and making me money.” The next day, [she] was taken to another apartment…where there were six or seven additional men waiting to have sex with her, including Jackson…The woman tried to escape…by using her jacket as a rope…[but] fell to the ground…
…The number of coins in circulation grows very slowly–there are about 10.8 million…now, and that will increase to 21 million by 2140…growth…[can’t] keep up with demand and so the value of the currency [grows]…The U.S. dollar value of a Bitcoin is up from…$4.87 [a year ago]…to $31.09 today. It has appreciated by over 100% from the end of 2012 alone, when the quoted price was $13.48…And it’s also going mainstream, reports in the Guardian and Forbes suggest…
The Forbes article reports that “Silicon Valley Bank…and…Coinlab….will [soon] allow North America-based…users to directly convert money from dollars to bitcoin, without having to pay the hefty transaction fees associated with transferring money abroad…”
Spanish police were puzzled when thirty Romanian whores they “rescued from exploitation by a network of pimps” immediately returned to work; “none of [them] asked for protection or availed themselves of assistance…to return to their country” despite police claims of beatings and debt bondage. Meanwhile, Filipino “authorities” continued their weird crusade against “cybersex”: “…police raided…[an] alleged…cybersex den…[and] rescued 12 [young men]…“They referred to themselves as ‘chatters’ because they chat online…as they perform sexual acts in front of the web cam,” said…officer…Romano Cardiño…”
Dennis Green admits he offered another man $20…for sex…[but his] defense…could have a far-reaching impact…legalizing prostitution in Ohio…Scott Nazzarine, Green’s public defender…believes there’s no way what Green did can be deemed a crime in today’s society. He compares it to other acts that at one time were illegal – premarital sex, the sale of sex toys, abortion, contraception…but now are legal, protected rights…“It’s about privacy rights and constitutional rights and the government’s intrusion into them…Any justification for prostitution laws is just a pretext for morality”…
Nazzarine is of course totally right and the judges know it, but I don’t think this is the case that will do the job because there’s still too much hypocrisy afoot. Still, this won’t be the last one, and eventually individual rights must triumph just as they have in other sexual matters.
The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women is the only large “anti-trafficking” organization which fights the use of bogus statistics and conflation of sex work with exploitation; it’s calling for papers for its Anti-Trafficking Review on the topic “Following the Money: Spending on Anti-Trafficking” …“Lacking is analysis of…anti-trafficking funds – where they come from, who they go to, what they are meant to do, what they actually achieve, and indeed whether they are needed.” Two of the suggested topics are analysis of the motives behind “anti-trafficking” funding and questioning ties to law enforcement.
A baby…who got immediate treatment now has no detectable [HIV] in her blood…within 30 hours of birth…she…got a cocktail of three drugs at a dose normally reserved for more advanced cases…There is still virus in [her] body. But…it doesn’t seem to be able to spread from one cell to another…[or damage her] immune system…
Emi Koyama exposes journalists who knew the falsity of the “average age of debut in prostitution is 13” myth for three years, yet kept repeating it anyhow: “While I was glad to see that The Oregonian now officially acknowledges that there is no basis for this…everything…Janie Har…wrote…was already in my three-year old blog post…[written after] I first read the claim…in [Oregonian reporter Elizabeth] Hovde’s column…” Emi details her July 2010 correspondence with Hovde, in which the reporter acknowledged her analysis but made excuses rather than issuing a retraction. Then finally, last Saturday,
…The Oregonian acknowledges that the claim is baseless! (But why is it rated “half-truth”…and why did they not mention any other study that contradict 12-14 claim?) I have a feeling that Janie Har read my blog post…she mentions the same Shared Hope report and points out the same problems…If she did read my blog, why did she not speak with me or give me credit…The Oregonian had the opportunity to stop perpetuating the myth for almost three years, and yet failed to do so as recently as this January. While Janie Har’s column is to be commended, The Oregonian and Hovde need to take responsibility for their part in the falsehood…
While I was in New York last week, Secret Lives and A Natural History of Rape arrived as gifts from reader “M”. Thank you very much, both for the books and the good wishes!
Melissa Gira Grant continues a strong run of good articles with “Unpacking the Sex Trafficking Panic” in Contemporary Sexuality, the newsletter of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT). When sex-worker-penned items criticizing a popular narrative appear under the imprimatur of a relatively-conservative organization, it’s clear the tide has begun to turn. Also, here’s a good interview with veteran activist Tracy Quan by Caty Simon on Tits and Sass; I promise, I’m not just linking it because it mentions me.
In this interview with Bitch magazine, Margo St. James discusses the beginning of the sex worker rights movement, how the neofeminists turned mainstream feminism against us, “sex trafficking” hysteria and the future of sex worker activism.
“Dear Prudence” gives what I think is a reasonable response to an unconsciously-bigoted man wondering if he should “out” a sex worker friend to his other friends. Unfortunately, the graphics give the impression that the woman goes around looking like a Hollywood streetwalker when in reality, the uptight questioner’s issue is that she looks just like any other woman.
An escort who appeared on a video claiming that Sen. Robert Menendez…paid her for sex has told Dominican authorities that she was instead paid to make up the claims and has never met or seen the senator…a local lawyer had approached her and a fellow escort and asked them to help frame Menendez…That lawyer has in turn identified a second Dominican lawyer who he said gave the woman a script and paid her to read the claims aloud…
The “Facebook pimps” myth just keeps growing and growing, which really isn’t a surprise since it combines three of the moral panics du jour: “sex trafficking”, gangs and the evil, evil internet. This sort of thing has been happening for as long as there have been exploitative men and naive, sheltered girls with romantic delusions; it’s not a “trend”, not limited to Facebook and not an international conspiracy. CNN also fails to understand that three cases in a country of 300 million do not an epidemic make, and that 18 isn’t “underage”.
The Supreme Court…[dismissed] a challenge to a…federal law that allows…interception of electronic communications…[on the grounds] that the lawyers, journalists and human rights organizations that brought the suit cannot prove they have been caught up in the surveillance and thus may not challenge [it]…the 5 to 4 ruling did not touch on…constitutionality…and challengers said it will be almost impossible now to get that issue before a court…
An even more thorough refutation of the moronic prohibitionist claim that sex is somehow different from every other human activity:
“The assumption that liberal prostitution laws lead to an increase in human trafficking is refuted. On the contrary…since…liberalisation, there has been more police activity but…significantly less suspects, convicts and victims. That’s…an indicator that…disentanglement of prostitution from criminal environments is increasingly successful.” – Volker Beck, MP…“In the year 2000…[German officials] registered…926 victims. In the year 2011, there were 640. This equates to a decrease of just under 31 per cent. If one compares the figures…in 2003 [a year after the prostitution law was passed] and 2011, one sees a certifiable decline of just above 48 per cent”…The…German government thus refutes the claim by Neumayer, Cho and Dreher that legalised prostitution increases human trafficking…
In the fight against sex trafficking, the Church needs to address the root causes – the ideas…that break the linkage sex has to love, responsibility and children, [said] Lisa Thompson…of…the Salvation Army…Thompson asked [her audience] not [to] divorce…sex trafficking from…prostitution [because]…all prostitution dehumanizes women…”God did not create any woman for the purpose…that she be a cum receptacle. God did not create the female to be a human being that [johns] are basically masturbating into…sex was never intended to be a job, so let’s not use the language of ‘sex work’”…
That Thompson had to deny that sex work is work is a very good sign indeed.
I have long held that professional sex workers need to develop a code of ethics just as other professions have, not only for moral reasons but in order to push back against “authorities” who think they are more qualified than we are to set standards for work they’ve never done. So I was pleased to hear that the Australian Sex-Positive Sex Industry Association (ASPaSIA) is working on just such a code, and I’ll report on it at full length once it’s finalized later this month.
Labour TD, Eamonn Maloney, said he did not accept the [claims] in the report on the [Magdalene] laundries…“They…made lots of money,” he said…adding that most commercial laundries in the 1940s and 1950s closed because of competition from the Magdalenes. “Not only has the church as yet to apologise for their role in operating these prisons, they do also have a role…in compensating people,” he said…The Government has so far refused to say what contribution, if any, it will seek from the orders…
Sex worker rights are human rights, and there can never be too many voices speaking up for them, nor too many occasions on which to speak.
- Maggie McNeill
Three times a year, there are days set aside by the sex worker community to make a concerted effort to call public attention to governments’ systematic denial of our rights, implemented by often-brutal police and supported by prohibitionists who want to see our trade eradicated no matter how many of us are hurt or even killed by the process. Though many of them deny this and insist they really want to “help” us, their chosen tactics (which include stalking, infantilization, pathologization, impoverishment, abduction, confinement, deportation and brainwashing, to name just a few) reveal the truth to anyone whose thinking is not clouded by dogma. So even though activists like myself call attention to this marginalization and maltreatment every day, it’s good to have several annual occasions on which our unified voices can ring out together to pierce the haze of ignorance, disinformation and disinterest. Those occasions are: the Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers (December 17th, the anniversary of the 2003 sentencing of the Green River Killer); Whores’ Day (June 2nd, the anniversary of the 1975 protest in which over 100 French prostitutes occupied the Church of St. Nizier in Lyon); and today, Sex Worker Rights Day (the anniversary of a 2001 festival in Kolkata attended by over 25,000 Indian sex workers despite efforts from prohibitionist groups who tried to prevent it by pressuring the government to revoke their permit). The symbol of sex worker rights used for all these days (and sex worker protests in general), the red umbrella, originated in yet another 2001 protest event, this one in Venice, Italy; it was adopted as the official emblem of the sex worker rights movement by the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE) in 2005.
In addition to all of these days I’ve added my own; every Friday the 13th I ask all of my readers who are not themselves sex workers to speak up for us, to show the prohibitionists and scoffers that we have many allies outside of our own movement. Now, I’m well aware that this is often difficult; many who truly feel that sex work should be decriminalized, and sex workers freed from persecution, nonetheless fear speaking out because they are afraid of being stigmatized as prostitutes (if female) or clients (if male). Several readers who have bought or sold sex asked me to suggest pro-decriminalization arguments that do not betray personal interest, and last Friday the 13th I provided some suggestions; since I’ve been asked the question again lately, I’d like to take this opportunity to repeat those suggestions.
Though women have traditionally taken the brunt of civil rights abuses resulting from prostitution law, this has changed in the last few years; “end demand” rhetoric has resulted in men being persecuted just as intensely as women (though not more intensely, despite the claims of those who support such campaigns). Furthermore, anti-prostitution laws (especially when re-branded as “anti-sex trafficking efforts”) are used as excuses for mass arrests of both men and women, confiscation of their property, collection and retention of their DNA and intrusive surveillance. This is why you should care about the rights of sex workers even if you aren’t one, don’t know any and have no intention of ever hiring one: laws which oppress marginalized minority groups are only the thin end of a wedge which is invariably driven deeper, blow by blow, until it is forcibly stopped.
RT @boatfloating: Two economists are walking down a street and see a $20-bill on the sidewalk. "Don't pick it up, you'll get arrested." htt… 3 hours ago
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