Somewhere in the Middle

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on April 14^th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.

Intellectual laziness can manifest itself in many ways, of which one of the most common (and irrational) is black and white thinking.  Humans are highly variable creatures whose characteristics, behaviors, beliefs, preferences, tastes, etc are often very different from one another; between the two most extreme points on any scale there are an incalculable number of different positions, and in any population one is likely to find as many different opinions on any given subject as there are people.  But one would never know this from talking to the dualist; he insists on pretending that everyone is clustered near the endpoints, and willfully ignores every shade of grey in between.  But this view of human reality is not only limited, it’s wrong; on most subjects, only a small minority of individuals can be found in those extreme endpoints, and the great majority fall somewhere in the middle.

What makes this fallacious dichotomization even worse is that people who might not be inclined to think that way often fall into it as a response to someone else’s extreme viewpoint.  For example, when faced with the bogus claim that some drug (cannabis, for instance) is universally horrible, destructive and addictive, some supporters of drug decriminalization respond with equally-spurious claims that the drug is a physical or spiritual panacea.  The truth is not only in between those two points, but also varies with individuals; any given drug has both beneficial effects and harmful effects, and the proportion of one to the other can vary considerably between individuals.  Each individual must decide whether the drug is right for him, and in a free society he is allowed to make that decision for himself without fear of authoritarian violence.  And though there are ample moral reasons to support the principle of self-determination, there are practical reasons as well:  criminalizing consensual behavior adds artificial harmful effects to those inherent in it, and makes it much more difficult for anyone to make an informed choice because data about criminalized activities is often hidden or distorted.

Sex work provides good examples of this syndrome on both sides of the transaction, worker and client.  Under criminalization and even quasi-criminalization (i.e. legalization schemes which criminalize some actions such as solicitation, kerb crawling, brothel-keeping, etc) prostitution is pushed into the shadows due to fear of arrest or other police harassment, thus creating dangers not inherent in the work itself.  It also becomes impossible to collect comprehensive and reliable data on the subject, and as a result prohibitionists are free to make the sort of outlandish claims with which everyone is familiar (all sex workers have pimps, we were all abused as children and/or suffer from PTSD, the average age at debut is 13, most of us are coerced, etc, etc, ad nauseam).  Unfortunately, in reacting to these lies many sex workers espouse a false dichotomy; as I explained in my column of that name,

…they believe there are two and only two kinds of prostitutes, free-willed high-dollar independent escorts and pimped, coerced slaves.  This, of course, is pure poppycock…The only people who…have…absolutely free choice to do any kind of work are the Paris Hiltons of the world, those who have a guaranteed inheritance, income and secured future no matter what they choose to do with the present.  Every other person has no choice but to work in some fashion; the choice not to work at all simply doesn’t exist unless one considers starvation an option.  At that point, then, the choice boils down to what kind of work one is able and willing to do.

Some harlots absolutely adore their work; others like it but don’t love it; others tolerate it for the high income and flexibility; still others dislike it but prefer it to their other options; and some dislike or hate it but have no other options (due sometimes to literal coercion, but more often to conditions such as drug addiction or a criminal record).  The distribution may be fairly even along the spectrum, or it may be a classic bell curve; it’s difficult to be sure because of the issues discussed above.  But one thing is certain; the majority lie not on the ends, but somewhere in the middle.

Clients are, if anything, even harder to get data on than sex workers; after all, even in countries where prostitution is decriminalized most men have good reasons to be discreet (including wives and social stigma).  In the 19^th century nearly every man paid for sex from time to time, but as sexual mores progressively relaxed decade by decade in the 20^th, that fraction undoubtedly dropped because at least some men could obtain casual sex without direct payment.  In the 1940s Kinsey found that 69% of men had paid for sex at least once in their lives, and though it’s probably lower now (due, again, to the increased availability of “free” sex), it still gives us a reasonable baseline to work from.  But when we look at modern claims about this percentage, we find them all over the map.  A few studies still produce reasonable figures, but most go wildly in one direction or another due mostly to questions and categorization criteria specifically designed to give the “researcher” exactly what she’s looking for.  On the one extreme, early in 2011 the well-known prohibitionist Melissa Farley defined “paying for sex” so broadly she literally couldn’t find any men who hadn’t (and therefore had to redesign the parameters to produce a less-obviously-bogus result).  On the other, the General Social Survey claims only 14% have ever paid, a figure so ludicrously low the industry would collapse; reader Kevin Wilson (a research consultant) showed that when taken with other claims from the survey, this would mean the average American sex worker only has about 10 clients per year (a number I exceeded every week of my career).

Obviously, neither of these extreme claims can be true; logic dictates that the fraction of men paying for sex now could neither be higher than it was before the sexual revolution made casual sex socially acceptable, nor too low to support the observable economic reality.  The most credible studies I’ve seen indicate that though a slight majority of men have directly paid for sex at least once, most don’t repeat the experience; about 20% of all men do it occasionally and 6% regularly.  So once again, we see the same pattern; sex-worker-hiring is neither ubiquitous nor rare but, like most other human behaviors, somewhere in the middle.

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Guest Columnist: Kelly Michaels

In observance of Mother’s Day, I wanted to address one of the viler applications of the Madonna/whore fallacy, namely the practice of officially abducting the children of sex workers by branding them “unfit parents” on the strength of nothing but the fact that they are sex workers.  But I knew that nothing I could write would have the impact of my friend Kelly’s telling of her own story, to which the rest of today’s column is dedicated.

I became involved in the Sex Industry at the age of fifteen, living alone on Fort Lauderdale beach; it’s a haven of teenage prostitution and provided the means for me to take care of myself.  I was too young to have a job in Florida without my parents signing, and having no parents meant having no job.  For me it was an easy transition from men that fed me and gave me a place to sleep in exchange for sex, to men directly paying me for sex.  Even at that early age sex was a commodity that I controlled, and I viewed it as both an industry and a science.  But an arrest prompted me to leave that life to marry my husband.  I became a mother in 1993 and again in 1996 and 2001; I stayed home and raised those children for thirteen years.

Then in 2007 the housing market crashed; my husband lost his job and could not find another.  Christmas was approaching and we were about to lose our home, when after another fruitless day of job-hunting he asked me through tearful eyes to put in ads as an escort again.  I wasn’t alone; as the economy continued to decline, more and more women were turning to sex work to make ends meet, and not as reluctantly as you may think.  For me, sex work improved my self-esteem and financial position enough that divorce seemed possible for the first time; I had already tried to escape that marriage twice through domestic violence shelters, but they could never help me become economically sound.  And now I was thinking of divorce even more: my husband’s jealousy of my growing independence had incited his rage, and he was arrested twice for domestic violence.

The first time his parents quickly bailed him out, but by the second time they were angry at his lack of self control.  He thought quickly and told them that his rage had been incited by the “discovery” that I was working as a prostitute; this shocked them into sympathy.  No longer was he the villainous wife-beater; suddenly he was viewed only as a whore-beater, and that wasn’t nearly as bad.  He didn’t mention that it was his idea, or that he had answered client emails pretending to be me while I visited other clients.  His parents told him that the only way that they would bond him out this time was if he took our children and placed them on a plane to his brother (whom the children had never met) in another state.  He agreed, and on July 8, 2008 he and his family began a campaign to keep the dirty whore from being anywhere near the children.  And it worked:  at first the state took custody from both of us, he for domestic violence and me for prostitution, but he quickly signed a case plan and “cooperated”, while I plead not guilty and chose to go to trial; this made me the “hostile” parent.

For five long years I held faith in the justice system…Five years with no school pictures, teacher conferences or chaperoned field trips.  Five years of Mother’s Days with no breakfast in bed.  I really believed that when the case came to court and a Judge heard about the way that my husband had continued his abusive behavior, the ordeal would be over.  Surely the judge would look badly on my husband’s completely withholding visitation from me for six months despite a court order.  Surely when the court heard that in his two years of custody he had never taken them to a doctor or dentist, or provided them with the glasses the two younger ones needed, they would be returned to me.  Surely when they heard the sad stories that the children recount of living in their father’s home, they would be removed from there.  But it didn’t work out that way, because I was a sex worker.

I did not realize at first that the court officials were totally on his side; they expedited his case and delayed mine to ensure that his was finished first, thus earning him reunification with the children.  He also left the filing of the divorce papers to me, which delayed matters still further because I knew by that point I would need a good lawyer.  I stopped working as an escort and began working as a tantric instructor, but my lawyer told me I had zero chance of reunification doing any kind of sex work; I therefore opened a catering company which moved into a restaurant over the next year and a half.  The court had investigators crawling in and out of my restaurant and interviewing my employees, but never bothered to verify that my husband really had a job nor to ask why he hadn’t filed tax returns for over ten years.  When it came to trial, the head investigator reported that my restaurant was “questionable” because I subleased the kitchen of an existing pub; she also told the judge that if my work as a tantric instructor wasn’t prostitution, “It is something similar to prostitution.”  It didn’t matter that it had been more than a year since I had been involved in that, or that I admitted being previously involved; once a dirty whore, always a dirty whore.  Needless to say, the court awarded him full custody.  I haven’t finished fighting, though, and as he continues to neglect the children, I will continue to drag this case back to court to ask why I was never considered a “real option” in spite of the details of emotional abuse and neglect that continues in their father’s home.

Maggie was there all along, listening with a sympathetic ear and helping me to understand that the details of the case were not what mattered; she helped me understand that the stated purpose of family court (which of course is to “protect the children”) is not at all what they are truly interested in.  When it comes to sex workers, keeping the status quo and punishing the dirty whore was the objective, not only in my case but in many others.  The more I saw this theory proven, the more I wondered why more attention is not paid to the issue of families and custody within the sex worker rights movement; I personally found no organizations offering support for custody issues and vowed to change that.  I began to notice the reinforcement of the negative stereotype of sex workers on television, and began to contemplate the way that this programming influences decision makers like guardians ad litem, who have little to no education or experience with sex workers.  With that I began a Kickstarter project to produce a documentary film in which I will share my experience as a sex worker dealing with family court, and to dispel myths about sex work by looking at my life as I embark upon a typical tour.

This Mother’s Day, I propose that we take a closer look into sex work and the family court; let’s think not only about the rights of sex workers, but of the children that love them and are needlessly removed from their parents.  Porn Stars have the right to custody.  Strippers have the right to custody.  Why should escorts be treated any differently?  Sex work should not be considered in custody decisions when it does not affect the children directly, and we as a group need to stand up to demand unbiased treatment in custody decisions.  Please visit “Whoremom” at Kickstarter.com to support my effort to educate the public on the reality of being a whore-mom in the state of prohibition.

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Preventative Measures

Ian Ironwood of The Red Pill Room writes:

I lurk at your site frequently, and love the way you write.  My own blog deals with…marriage topics, and one of my most popular subjects is “girl game”.  In these posts I try to explain to my female readers some of the psychology behind why and how men like to have sex, and what they can do to cater to it.  Most of the time I’m actually explaining the usual “why men go see whores” meme in different ways, and I have had some good response to it.  I’ve covered the GFE, the Happy Ending, and a couple of other professional go-to moves, but I was wondering if you had any further ideas in that direction.  What were the common reasons men saw you when you practiced, and how could their wives have countered their decision to go to a pro by giving them what they wanted at home?

The three most common reasons married men see whores could be abbreviated as “She doesn’t”, “She won’t” and “She isn’t”.  The first is wholly in the woman’s court, the last wholly in the man’s, and the second somewhere in between.  “She doesn’t” means the wife just doesn’t provide enough sex, or that the sex she provides is so lackluster it isn’t satisfying to the husband.  “She won’t” means the wife won’t do something the husband really yearns for, whether that be a particular activity (such as oral sex) or a mode of behavior (such as role-play or just being enthusiastic).  “She isn’t” means the wife is simply no longer sufficient for the husband’s desire no matter what she does; either age or weight has made her unattractive to him, or he can’t see her as sexual after having kids due to a bad case of the Madonna/whore duality, or he has a strong need for variety.  ”She doesn’t” and most “She won’t” are completely under the wife’s control; giving one’s husband the kind of good, enthusiastic sex he craves will go a long way toward sapping his desire to see whores.  If the man’s desire is for something the woman actually can’t provide (such as an energetic PSE when she’s over 50 and no longer athletic), a frank discussion of alternatives which might do the trick is in order; if it’s something for which she has a visceral repulsion (such as cross-dressing), he may not even dare to mention it to her and then, obviously, it moves into “She isn’t”.

By definition, there is less a woman can do to circumvent “She isn’t” issues, unless they’re purely dependent on something like her weight.  That’s quite rare despite what you might think; I can’t recall very many cases of a man telling me that his wife was still very interested in sex, but that she was so fat or old or whatever that he couldn’t get interested.  Though some feminists like to rant about male shallowness in this regard, the truth is that in the overwhelming majority of cases it’s a wife’s attitude and behavior which turn her husband off rather than her physical appearance (though obviously, if she pointedly insists that she doesn’t care about her appearance it says a lot about her attitude, no?)  The need for variety is a tough one, but not insurmountable; if a wife comes up with ways to spice things up (or even just responds favorably to her husband’s ideas) his hindbrain can often be tricked into perceiving her as different, and therefore satisfying to his need for variety.  If that’s not enough, there are couple calls and wife swapping, which allow the husband to satisfy his craving for “strange” under controlled conditions rather than acting behind the wife’s back.  Of course, if it’s the illicit nature of trysts with hookers which turns him on, that’s going to present a problem; if he craves sneaking around behind his wife’s back, he’s not likely to be satisfied with activities she attends, arranges or even simply condones.  The same could be said of the Madonna/whore issue, which might require some kind of counseling to help him get over it.  Still, those represent a very small minority of cases; most of the time, an attentive and caring wife can keep her husband from straying by simply taking her own responsibilities seriously, and by helping him to do the same for his.

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Chauvinism

When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.  -  Charles Evans Hughes

Language changes over time; words come and go, and new words are used in place of older ones.  One word which was common in my youth but has since declined sharply in popularity is “chauvinism”, meaning “blind and fanatical devotion to something”.  A chauvinist is one who believes his own group, belief system or whatever is superior to all others and refuses to even consider the possibility that it is not so; usually, he is willing to use state violence to enforce his own views.  So although we’ve devised a plethora of neologisms over the past several decades, usually ending in “-ism” or “-phobia” and often cumbersome, awkward or improperly derived, we actually don’t need any of them because “chauvinism” covers the whole spectrum without having to add yet another term to the ever-growing list.  Furthermore, the word correctly places the stress where it belongs, on the bigot rather than on those toward whom his bigotry is directed, and thereby makes the behavior pattern far more obvious.

When one accepts at face value the excuses by which chauvinists justify their positions, the true connections between those actions may be obscured or even wholly invisible.  But once attention is focused on the chauvinism itself rather than on its targets, the connections suddenly appear.  Take, for example, the current moral panic over “human trafficking”, a term so nebulously defined that it is nearly impossible to make any valid factual statements about it at all. Looking at the various phenomena to which the label is applied – exploitative labor, arranged marriage, unorthodox immigration, usury, surrogate motherhood, sex work, even attempted rape – it’s difficult to understand how they’re connected other than the fact that most of them involve sex, travel or both.  Furthermore, sometimes things which clearly seem to fit the popular definition aren’t called “trafficking” at all, especially when a government or multi-national corporation is the “trafficker”.

But if one stops listening to the claims of those who spread the hysteria, and instead looks for common factors, it soon boils down to chauvinism: every single one of the things called “trafficking” is a transgression against conventional middle-class white Western ideas of morality and propriety.  Nobody is concerned about immigrants doing awful work that middle-class people don’t want, so this is rarely labeled “trafficking” even when it clearly fits the standard definition; but because sex work offends both conservative Christian and radical feminist notions about “proper” female behavior, it is labeled “trafficking” even when it clearly involves neither travel nor coercion.  Once we recognize that Euro-American chauvinism has become widespread enough to maintain a xenophobic panic, one can also predict that other forms of institutionalized bigotry around issues of sex and travel should be popular right now, and indeed that is the case:  In Europe we see persistent attempts to ban pornography and Muslim clothing, and in the US assaults on abortion rights and mass deportations.  Superficially, these things may seem to be unrelated, but in actuality they are all motivated by exactly the same thing:  the quest to purge from Western society everyone who is different from “us”.  Our persons, practices and ways of life are assumed to be superior to everyone else’s, so obviously every nonconformity is a contaminant to be removed, by violence if necessary.

There is one exception, but it proves the rule.  Gay rights was for a very long time an uphill battle, especially in the pathologically-prudish United States.  Yet in the past few years, opposition to the cause has quickly withered and died with astonishing speed…astonishing, that is, to anyone who fails to take chauvinism into account.  If one insists that the cause of opposition to gay rights is “homophobia”, in other words a particular aversion to homosexuals, the rapid turn of the tide makes no sense whatsoever.  But when one realizes that the same hatred is dispensed to anyone who is outside the norm, the reason for the change becomes clear:  same-sex marriage.  While gay people were chanting “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”, progress was achingly slow.  But once they started to stress how little different they were from heterosexuals – “Look, we even want to get married and form families like you do, see?” – opposition to granting them rights rapidly dissolved.  Once the majority came to see gay people as sufficiently “normal”, their chauvinism was no longer an issue; the same can be said for European Muslims who adopt Western dress.  The problem is not any specific form of bigotry against race, religion, sexuality or anything else; it’s a general bigotry against anyone who is viewed as the “other”.  And that is why the chief purpose of my own blog is to demonstrate how typical sex workers actually are; once the majority realizes that we are not dangerous “outsiders” determined to bring down their culture, they will stop treating us like an infection to be eradicated or quarantined.

(This essay first appeared on Cliterati on April 7^th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.)

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I May Sell You Some of Mine

You know three ‘n’ three is six
Three threes is nine
You give me some of yours,
I may sell you some of mine.  -  Billie Pierce, “I’m in the Racket”

It’s time for another collection of hooker songs!  If you have a suggestion for a future column, check the Musicography page to make sure I haven’t featured it already, and if I haven’t please share it in a comment below.  Our first selection today was suggested by Grim Ghost; though it is of the moralistic variety, it’s actually quite catchy so it gets a pass.  In the 1920s popular songs were often recorded by a number of artists, and this one is no exception; this recording is by Ruth Etting, best remembered today for “Shine On Harvest Moon”.

Glad Rag Doll (Jack Yellen and Dan Dougherty, music by Milton Ager)

Little painted lady,
With your lovely clothes,
Where are you bound for, may I ask?
What your diamonds cost you,
Ev’rybody knows,
All the world can see behind your mask.

All dolled up in glad rags,
Tomorrow may turn to sad rags,
They call you Glad Rag Doll!

Admired,
Desired,
By lovers who soon grow tired,
Poor little Glad Rag Doll!

You’re just a pretty toy
They like to play with,
You’re not the kind they choose
To grow old and gray with!

Don’t make this the end, dear,
It’s never too late to ‘mend, dear,
Poor little Glad Rag Doll!

Oh, you’re all dolled up in your glad rags,
And tomorrow, they may turn to sad rags,
They call you poor little Glad Rag Doll!

You’re admired,
And you’re desired,
By lots of lovers, but they soon grow tired,
Poor little Glad Rag Doll!

You’re just a pretty toy
They like to play with,
But you’re not the kind they choose
To, to grow old and gray with!

Don’t make this the end, dear,
It’s never, never too late to ‘mend, dear,
Poor little Glad Rag Doll!

When I was previewing this video on YouTube, I noticed another appropriate Ruth Etting selection among the suggestions.  It is ostensibly about a taxi dancer, but as we’ve seen previously with “Private Dancer” and “Hey, Big Spender”, that’s practically always code for a whore:

Ten Cents a Dance (Lorenz Hart, music by Richard Rogers)

I work at the palace ballroom,
But gee, that palace is cheap!
When I get back to my chilly hall-room,
I’m much too tired to sleep.

I’m one of those lady teachers,
A beautiful hostess, you know
The kind the palace features
At exactly a dime a throw.

(refrain 1) Ten cents a dance,
That’s what they pay me
Gosh, how they weigh me down.
Ten cents a dance,
Pansies and rough guys,
Tough guys who tear my gown!

(refrain 2) Seven to midnight I hear drums,
Loudly the saxophone blows,
Trumpets are breaking my ear drums,
Customers crush my toes!

(refrain 3) Sometimes I think I’ve found my hero,
But it’s a queer romance
All that you need is a ticket
Come on, big boy,
Ten cents a dance!

Fighters and sailors and bow-legged tailors
Can pay for a ticket and rent me
Butchers and barbers and rats from the harbors
Are sweethearts my good luck has sent me.

Though I’ve a chorus of elderly beaus,
Stockings are porous with holes in the toes.
I’m there till closing time,
Dance and be merry, it’s only a dime!

(refrain 1, 2, 3)

Another means of encoding harlotry is by singing about a related type of “fallen woman”; both Joni Mitchell and Mary Coughlan portrayed the narrators of their respective songs as girls condemned to the Magdalene laundries for merely being pretty, and though it is true that there were such cases the laundries were first established for prostitutes and largely populated by unwed mothers, promiscuous girls and even incest or rape victims.  Coughlan’s song was suggested by several readers after I featured Mitchell’s:

Magdalene Laundry (Mary Coughlan)

For 17 years I’ve been scrubbin’ this washboard,
Ever since the fellas started in after me.
My mother, poor soul, didn’t know what to do;
The canon said, “Child, there’s a place for you.”
Now I’m servin’ my time at the Magdalene laundry.
I’m toein’ the line at the Magdalene laundry.

There’s girls from the country, girls from the town,
Their bony white elbows goin’ up and down.
And the Reverend Mother, as she glides through the place,
A tight little smile on the side of her face,
She’s runnin’ the show at the Magdalene laundry.
I’ve got no place to go but the Magdalene laundry.

(refrain) Oh, Lord, won’t you let me, don’t you let me
Won’t you let me wash away the stains?
Oh, Lord, won’t you let me wash away the stains?

We’re washin’ altar linen, cassocks and stoles,
And we’re scrubbin’ long johns for the holy joes.
But we know where they’ve been when they’re not savin’ souls;
What the red wine spilt, the smooth hand pours.
We’re squeezin’ it out at the Magdalene laundry.
We’re scrubbin’ it down at the Magdalene laundry.

(refrain)

Sunday afternoon, the Lord’s at rest,
It’s off to the prom, watch the waves roll by.
We’re chewin’ on our toffees, hear the seagulls squawk,
“There go the maggies,” the children talk,
Through our faces they stare at the Magdalene laundry.
In our eyes see the glare of the Magdalene laundry.

(refrain)
(refrain)
(refrain)

While white songwriters and singers often portray the whore as a tragic figure, black musicians (especially those of the jazz era) generally portrayed her as smart, independent and tough, as in this one from Street Walker Blues:

State Street Blues (Thompson and Williams)

Goin’ down on State Street, that’s where I long to be
Goin’ down on State Street, that’s where I long to be
But those State Street gals make a fool out of me.

Goin’ down on State Street, stop at 3409
Goin’ down on State Street, stop at 3409
Get some bad whiskey and have a wild good time.

I don’t see how you State Street women sleep
I don’t see how you State Street women sleep
Walk the streets all night like Big Six on his beat.

These State Street hustlers sure do think they’re cute
These State Street hustlers sure do think they’re cute
‘Cause they get lucky and get a payback suit [?]

These State Street women sure do have some time
These State Street women sure do have some time
They clown all night, don’t give their man a dime.

These State Street hustlers sure better buy some shoes
These State Street hustlers sure better buy some shoes
‘Cause them old easy walkers won’t give their ankles the blues.

The “State Street” mentioned here is the famous Chicago thoroughfare; presumably the address was the (fictionalized) one of a speakeasy.  I’m not sure of the last phrase in the fourth verse; if anyone has a better suggestion please let me know.  Our last selection portrays Ray Charles’ narrator as the victim of a rather sophisticated cash and dash:

Greenbacks (Ray Charles)

As I was walking down the street last night,
A pretty little girl came into sight.
I bowed and smiled and asked her name,
She said, “Hold it bud, I don’t play that game.”
I reached in my pocket, and to her big surprise
There was Lincoln staring her dead in the eyes

(refrain) On a greenback, greenback dollar bill
Just a little piece of paper, coated with chlorophyll.

She looked at me with that familiar desire,
Her eyes lit up like they were on fire.
She said, “My name’s Flo, and you’re on the right track,
But look here, daddy, I wear furs on my back,
So if you want to have fun in this man’s land,
Let Lincoln and Jackson start shaking hands”

(refrain)

I didn’t know what I was getting into,
But I popped Lincoln and Jackson, too.
I didn’t mind seeing them fade out of sight,
I just knew I’d have some fun last night.
Whenever you in town and looking for a thrill,
If Lincoln can’t get it, Jackson sure will

(refrain)

(bridge)

We went to a nightspot where the lights were low,
Dined and danced, and I was ready to go.
I got out of my seat, and when Flo arose,
She said, “Hold it daddy, while I powder my nose.”
I sat back down with a smiling face,
While she went down to the powder place

With my greenback, greenback dollar bill
Just a little piece of paper, coated with chlorophyll.

The music stopped and the lights came on,
I looked around and saw I was all alone.
I didn’t know how long Flo had been gone,
But a nose powder sure didn’t take that long.
I left the place with tears in my eyes,
As I waved Lincoln and Jackson a last goodbye

(refrain)

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They Don’t Want to Know

We live in oppressive times.  We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder “censorship,” we call it “concern for commercial viability”.  -  David Mamet

It has been said that every man has sexual fantasies which would horrify the average woman.  And while I can’t deny that this is probably true, have you ever stopped to wonder how it could be true?  Back in the days before printing, and for the roughly 400 years after it that most women were illiterate, this ignorance was unsurprising; a typical woman would only know about such things if a man chose to tell her, and if he did she was probably a whore.  But after the sexual revolution, and especially since the invention of the internet, it seems as though Western women who were ignorant of the depth and breadth of men’s erotic thoughts should be a small and steadily-shrinking minority…and yet they’re not.  Many women don’t have a clue about the more extreme (by female standards) male fantasies; these are the chicks whose idea of “kinky” is having sex in the living room or, if they’re real party animals, putting whipped cream on their tits and letting a man (*gasp*) lick it off!  Others are fully aware of the variety of male fantasies, but convince themselves that only a small “pervert” minority think about them, and that most men’s interests are as non-threatening as theirs.  A smaller fraction are either relatively kinky themselves or at least sexually literate enough to be accepting, but still believe the majority of men are vanilla (those who believe only 15% of men have ever paid for sex fall into this category).  Just about the only ones who really get it are the whores and the few really adventurous and open-minded amateurs who have been around enough to learn.

But again, how could this possibly be true in the internet age?  I think it’s partly because women have their own dichotomy, similar to the Madonna/whore dichotomy but less talked about; we’ll call it the Adonis/pervert dichotomy.  Like its better-known sister, it is the fallacy that all members of the sex to whom it is applied are either sexually “pure” or “dirty”, and those who are “dirty” are social misfits to be shunned.  But while men afflicted with Madonna/whore thinking still consider whores to be suitable bed partners, women laboring under the Adonis/pervert delusion think of men with earthy sexual desires as “creeps” to be avoided; neofeminists could be considered victims of an extreme form of this paradigm in which most or even all men are perverts and therefore dangerous monsters.  As with all belief-systems, people mired in these fallacies about the opposite sex become emotionally invested in them and will generally reject information which threatens their mental status quo; furthermore, most of the popular media are bound and determined to perpetuate the ignorance of their readers.  Take, for example, the experience of writer Chad Kultgen:

…My books [are]…sexually frank to a degree that some people think borders on pornography…[so] I was surprised [when]…a popular women’s website…wanted me to write a thousand words on what a man really wants from a woman in the bedroom.  My first question for the editor was:  ”How honest do you want this to be?”  She told me to make the article 100 percent honest — no punches pulled, no holds barred.  I could be as vulgar as necessary in order to get down to the real dirty details.  With those marching orders, I sat down and cranked out an article that outlined what I think most people already know.  Guys are filthy.  We like really dirty things — far beyond anal sex, swallowing, and threesomes with our significant others’ best friends, although those were all certainly included in the laundry list of “what guys really want in the bedroom.”  The point of the article was, essentially, that guys want a sexual partner who is open to anything and enthusiastic about everything.  The language was vulgar…to reflect the way guys actually think about these things.

So I turned in the article, feeling confident that I delivered exactly what they asked for and excited to see the reaction — because, in tone and content, there was nothing like it on their site.  A week passed.  Then I got an email from the editor…[containing] an edited version of my article and a writer’s agreement that needed to be signed…I assumed the edit would be toned down a little, but not too much, based on the editor’s assurances that the site wanted a piece that was honest.  My assumption was incorrect.  Every instance of vulgar language was removed…any reference to a sexual act beyond missionary, doggy style, or girl-on-top was removed.  Any reference to anal sex…was changed to “the back door.”  Beyond the [removals]…there was another component…that astonished me.  Someone had…inserted new writing — including puns like “Arma-get-it-on”…throughout the text…Needless to say, I wrote the editor back thanking her for her time and respectfully declining to sign the writer’s agreement on the grounds that the article in its edited form was not only stylistically incongruent with anything I would ever write before suffering from a stroke or undergoing a lobotomy, but also because its content was so dishonest.  In fact, it had become the exact opposite of what was asked of me in the first place…Is it that people…don’t actually want the truth when it comes to sex?  I can’t imagine that’s it…I think it’s that the media outlets who circulate these things, by their very nature, can’t deliver the truth when it comes to sex…giant media companies are beholden to their sponsors, and…have to uphold whatever standards those sponsors dictate…

I think Kultgen is right on the money there.  It’s not that the owners of these companies are all a bunch of prudes; it’s that far too many of the people who buy their products are, and they can’t afford to take chances in a world where “offense” is as fetishized as it is today.  So even though both the information and the means of disseminating it exist, the most prominent sources are controlled by people whose legal and marketing departments have informed them that a very large and vocal minority (most especially in America) don’t want other people (especially not young ones) to know the truth about sex, and are willing to lie, cheat and buy politicians to censor most sources and drown out the rest in a flood of disinformation.

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Under the Bus

Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.  -  John Kenneth Galbraith

Among the enumerated grievances against King George III included in Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence was the following:  “he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere…the…King of Great Britain, determined to keep open a market where men should be bought & sold…” The delegates from the Southern colonies (predictably) objected; the words clearly condemned the institution of slavery, in which they were heavily invested.  Argument ensued, and the dissenters made it clear that if the offending passage were not removed, they would refuse to sign the declaration.  Faced with this threat, the declaration committee had little choice: either the slavery clause went, or the South did.  And so the slaves were, in modern idiom, “thrown under the bus”; their rights were sacrificed to a political deal to establish a new nation.  And though those men acted as they thought best, their choice erupted into the greatest bloodbath in American history only three generations later.

Though I can understand Galbraith’s point expressed in today’s epigram, I also recognize that it’s a bitter thing indeed to be a member of a group whose rights are sacrificed as part of a political deal brokered among a large group of governments with differing (and often conflicting) beliefs and concerns.  Furthermore, I wonder if choosing the unpalatable at the cost of inflicting the disastrous on one’s descendants is really the wise and moral decision.  The particular political deal I wish to discuss today is not remotely as momentous as the sundering of an empire, and the sacrifice lacks the enormity of consigning an entire race to continued slavery; I certainly hope the consequences are dramatically less severe than the devastation of the American Civil War.  But it’s a serious enough matter for those involved, and as a member of the group “thrown under the bus” I can’t help but resent being sacrificed for a deal from which we will reap no benefit.  Here’s how it was reported in the Guardian:

UN officials and activists expressed relief and delight over news that an agreement had been reached at this year’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)…After months of behind the scenes lobbying and two weeks of difficult negotiations in New York, the outcome document included strong agreements to promote gender equality, women’s empowerment, and ensure women’s reproductive rights and access to sexual and reproductive health services…the agreement was hard fought and civil society groups expressed “deep concern” over attempts by some conservative member states and groups to derail the process…NGO ActionAid…said… “A small but significant number of countries, led by Iran, Russia, Syria and the Vatican, have pushed hard to roll back language on women’s rights to where we were decades ago”…Vivian Thabet…[of] CARE-Egypt, said… “Women’s rights have become a kind of bartering chip to be traded away for political agendas that have little or nothing to do with the interests and wellbeing of women and girls”…The outcome document emphasised the need to end harmful traditional practices, including child marriage, and called on member states to ensure services were focused on marginalised groups, such as indigenous women, older women, female migrant workers, women with disabilities, women living with HIV, and women held in custody.  Protection for sex workers was understood to have been dropped…

There it was, in the last sentence; if you blinked you may have missed it.  Several countries (including, you can be sure, the United States) opposed language calling on governments to end institutional violence and discrimination against sex workers, so we were simply bartered away in order to close the deal on some other contentious issue.  Perhaps it was the right thing to do in the long run;  after all, I have no idea what phrase or sentence my rights were traded for.  But I think I’m justified in being annoyed about that only being worth one sentence in the Guardian’s article and no mention at all in that of the Huffington Post (despite complaints about the lack of language protecting gay men in a document concerned specifically with the rights of women).  As a result, this is how I read the quotes from delegates and commentators:

“By adopting this document, governments have made clear that discrimination and violence against women and girls has no place in the 21^st century.”  Except for discrimination and violence against sex workers, which are still quite welcome.

“We will keep moving forward to the day when women and girls can live free of fear, violence and discrimination.”  Unless they have sex for reasons with which we disapprove.

“The 21^st century is the century of inclusion and women’s full and equal rights and participation.”  Except for the right to choose their own work.

“It sends a clear and unified message to the world that there is no place in any society for acts of violence against girls and women.”  Except for state violence against sex workers, naturally.

Perhaps I’m being unnecessarily harsh; after all, several UN agencies concerned with health have recommended absolute decriminalization of sex work and the sex industry everywhere, and advocates of human rights are all beginning to recognize the importance of our cause.  And as I said above, I have no way of knowing what our exclusion gained, nor can I read the minds of the negotiators; perhaps they were just as agonized as Jefferson and company, and signed us away for something they considered extremely important.  What’s more, I can’t be sure I wouldn’t do something similar: What if one day, I’m part of a team negotiating a decriminalization deal, and our political opponents say they’ll accept total decriminalization of indoor prostitution if street work remains criminal?  Will I turn down rights for the 90% on principle?  Or will I accept the deal, reasoning that we can more effectively work toward street work decriminalization from an improved legal position?

Goddess help me, I only wish I knew.

(This essay first appeared on Cliterati on March 24^th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.)

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That Was the Week That Was (#314)

There are people who believe that migrant women who sell sex need to be saved; that they must want to go home; that they must want another job and they have 200-year-old ideas about what those jobs should be.  -
Laura Agustín

R.I.P. Carmine Infantino

My favorite comic book artist of all time has passed away at the age of 87.  It’s impossible to overstate his influence on the industry, nor how iconic his style was for those of us who grew up with Silver Age comics.  If you’re unfamiliar with his work, take a moment to look at this portrait of one of my favorite heroines and this 8-page story (written by Gardner Fox).

Anatomy of a Boondoggle

Cops do this all the time, but Pittsburgh-area cops are especially shameless:

Homestead Officer Ronald DePellegrin, 48, admits that he allowed Diana Gross, 26, to give him oral sex before he informed her that he was actually a cop…attorney…Michael Waltman…says DePellegrin’s conduct is unacceptable…”The police…are engaging in the exact type of…activity that they’re…[allegedly] trying to protect the community from”…

Lack of Evidence

You know how I keep pointing out that prostitution laws harm all women?

What do you do when you’re detained by powerful officials, everything you say is presumed deceptive, arbitrary “evidence” is held against you, and you’re treated like a moral deviant?…It happened three times in two weeks — being detained by U.S. border officials…my…“sexy underwear” were mentioned…[and my] condoms…were looked upon scathingly…[one official told me] that adultery was a crime in America — a crime that he could deny me entry for…I was detained, yelled at, patted down, fingerprinted, interrogated, searched, moved from room to room…without food, water or being told what was going on…

The Pro-Rape Coalition

Furry Girl explains how laws supposedly intended to “protect children” were really intended to harass the porn industry:

…”2257″ is shorthand for the…irritatingly-named Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act…when you appear in adult productions in the US, you as the performer/model must give the production company/photographer two forms of identification and sign…paperwork promising that you are over 18…fake IDs [exist]…and any contract a minor signs is void anyway [so this]…doesn’t do a thing to guarantee age…Any random person can search for companies reselling and licensing adult content, and with a purchase, buy performer’s legal names, social security numbers, and addresses…a determined stalker can comb through enough adult content resellers and have a good shot at finding their target…Independent pornographers…have to choose between a fear of federal prosecutions and prison time…and a fear of…stalkers coming to our homes to rape or assault us…

Where Are the Victims?

A man convicted of crimes related to promoting prostitution was sentenced…to…eight years in prison.  Kevin J. Barker…had about 35 women working for him…Barker would get $80 and women would get $80 per call and…anything after that was negotiable…

Trafficking, Trafficking Everywhere!

One of the few concessions New Zealand has made to “sex trafficking” hysteria (and one of the few things that keep it from absolute decriminalization) is its ban on international students in sex work.  Of course this creates a bottleneck which leads, predictably, to the very type of exploitation the law is supposedly intended to prevent.  The New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective of course understands this and is calling on the government to end the restriction; Catherine Healy explains:

Just recently I was dealing with a case of a young woman who…had gone into this agreement with a brothel operator who said…I’ll look after your money until you need it to pay for your student fees, and of course when that time arrived, the money wasn’t handed over…She couldn’t stomp off to the police, she couldn’t talk to…the university, so really…the law…contributed to her exploitation…back in 2003…the then minister of immigration had hatched this dopey clause in the 11^th hour, and we said look, this will have the opposite effect of what you’re intending…

None So Blind

Funny how religious fanatics are always ready to make convenient exceptions:

A Kuwaiti woman who once ran for parliament  has called for sex slavery to be legalized – and suggested that non-Muslim  prisoners from war-torn countries would make suitable concubines.  Salwa al Mutairi argued buying a sex-slave would protect decent, devout and “virile” Kuwaiti men from adultery because  buying an imported sex partner would be tantamount to marriage…[she] even suggested that it would be…better…for women in warring countries as they might die of starvation…offices could be opened to run the sex trade in the same way that recruitment agencies provide  housemaids…

To sum up:  prostitution under individual control = sin.  Compulsory prostitution under government control = good.

Counterfeit Comfort

…If Governor Bryant [of Mississippi] signs “Lenora’s Law,” sex offenders who violate the state’s registry system will wear a GPS tracking device…[the law] also [extends] the residence buffer for sex offenders to 3,000 feet from a school…”These are people who have proven they won’t obey the law,” said [bill sponsor Will] Longwitz.  ”Now…we will know where sex offenders are at all times, and can prevent them from striking again”…

No, these are usually people who can’t obey the law because its requirements have become increasingly-difficult to comply with:

Michael Byars’ effort to modify [Iowa] sex offender laws was a case study for effective citizen activism…until…he was arrested and fired from his job…[because] he didn’t update the state sex offender registry to reflect his voluntary, unpaid and, so far, largely successful attempt to persuade lawmakers to change the law…Byars…was convicted in 2008 of lascivious acts with a child…[for] a short, consensual relationship with a 13-year-old high school freshman while he was an 18-year-old high school senior.  The conviction…saddled him with a lifetime…sentence that requires him to check in regularly with a parole officer and stringently limits his interaction with children, including his own son…

24-year-old Byars was such an amazingly successful lobbyist that an opponent called the cops, claiming that his advocacy is a “job” and demanding he be arrested for failing to register it (despite the fact that when he tried to do so he was told it was unnecessary).  The cops were of course happy to comply, because we can’t have those dirty girlfriend-daters demanding their rights.

Naked Truth

Via Reason TV, Tracy Quan speaks with Shereen El Feki in “Sex and the Citadel: Does the Arab Spring need a Summer of Love?”

The Widening Gyre

Observable fact:  16-year-old leaves home.  Conclusion: sex trafficking!

…Vancouver police are investigating the disappearance of 16-year-old Isabella Castillo, and her family…thinks she’s caught up in sex trafficking because one of her friends told them they’d seen her around with another girl who is known in the local sex-trafficking world.  That girl is used by sex traffickers to recruit other girls by befriending them.  She then lures them in, grooms them and gets them to run away.  The girls are never heard from again…

“The local sex trafficking world?”  Was it really necessary for cops and fanatics to fill the family’s head full of this kind of nonsense?  Young women don’t leave home because they’re induced to run away by “traffickers”; they leave because home has become intolerable for some reason, often sexual abuse.  And if they enter the sex trade it’s because the laws have made that their only means of support, not because they’re “trafficked”.

Zimbabwe

I wish I had all the magical powers Zimbabwean harlots do:

A prostitute in Bulowayo, Zimbabwe…[apparently] died during an encounter with a customer…[but] came back to life just as officials placed her in a metal coffin…she suddenly woke up in a panic screaming, “You want to kill me!“ at the officers…Seeing a woman presumed to be dead spring back to life shocked onlookers, many of whom ran away in fear…

The More the Better (TW3 #32)

Apparently the word “legal” is not part of this reporter’s vocabulary: “Vicksburg [Mississippi] mayoral candidate Linda Fondren and her husband once owned a [brothel] in Nevada…it’s not clear…if the Fondrens are still involved…[and] Linda…denies she ever was…”  After the actual evidence, the fact that Mr. Fondren once publicly defended adults’ right to have consensual sex with other people is presented (presumably on the “only a witch…” principle).

Monkey Business

…chimpanzees…have the ability to “think about thinking”…according to new research…researchers…required them to…name what food was hidden in a location…chimpanzees named items immediately and directly when they knew what was there, but…sought out more information before naming when they did not already know…

The Naked Anthropologist

Dr. Laura Agustín is currently in Ireland (speaking at the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair today), and gave this short interview about “trafficking” hysteria and related prohibitionist schemes.

Change of Heart (TW3 #41)

Alexis Wright…has reached a plea deal with prosecutors in the Kennebunk prostitution case…[agreeing] to plead guilty to theft, tax evasion and prostitution…clients…who have been charged so far include a former mayor, a…hockey coach, a minister, a lawyer and a firefighter…

No Other Option (TW3 #132)

Another interview (this one in Reveal) with Becky Adams about her plans for a brothel for the disabled:  ”More than 700 people have already agreed to work for a reduced price…’We’re expecting the local council to object, but we are prepared to take the argument all the way to the European Court of Human Rights‘”…

Dutch Threat

A similar prohibitionist deception from a decade ago:

[In November 2000]…a Swedish radical feminist named Alexa Wolf…showed her “documentary”…Shocking Truth…[which]…shows what seems to be a rape scene…Wolf…[slowed] down the film making it appear as the woman was helpless and drugged…[thus creating] a moral panic…The pay per view-channels promised that there would be no “violent porn”…Video stores removed porn from the shelves.  57% of the Swedish population wanted to ban ALL porn…in conservative Norway we had more or less the same reaction…The woman seen “drugged and raped” in the film…is…award winning porn actress…Mila Shegol [who stated in an interview that] she was not on drugs, she was not raped, it was all acting, she actually took part in directing the scenes…she was not a suffering, oppressed or exploited woman, and she had no idea there had been made a documentary about her alleged rape…

A Broker in Pillage (TW3 #312)

Here’s that weird “pay back” euphemism again:  “A…brothel owner who made thousands exploiting vulnerable women was…ordered to pay back…£75,000 of his sordid gains within six months [or] he [will] be locked up for…two years…”  Because money gained via business is “sordid”, but that gained via extortion is “just”.

Birth of a Movement (TW3 #312)

“The French senate has voted to repeal a law banning ‘passive’ soliciting for sex… opponents said it put sex workers in a precarious situation…and…[led] to police abuse…”

A War for Peace (TW3 #313)

Muslim women have launched a campaign to send a message to “sextremist” collective Femen.  ”Muslimah Pride Day” was organised in response to Femen’s self-declared “Topless Jihad Day”, a day of topless protests around the world to support Tunisian Femen activist Amina Tyler…

Under Every Bed

Montana lawmakers are looking at ways to prevent and punish human trafficking in response to reports of increased prostitution [among]…people who have come to find work in the Bakken oil boom…there is no actual proof that trafficking is a problem in Montana, said…Rep. Sarah Laszloffy…But without the language on the books…authorities [lack] the tools needed to track it…

And more importantly, the way to clean up on “trafficking” grants!  Already, selfless volunteers are working to make sure “authorities” have sufficient disinformation to block out real facts:

…Melissa Woodward…helps train law enforcement about how to spot a child that may have been sold into prostitution…”Does she have physical markings on her?  Tattoos that are often visible…things like wearing very provocative clothes…”

You heard it here first, kids!  Tattoos, sexy clothes and looking for work are all signs of “sex trafficking”!  If you see a woman with any of those telltale signs, call the cops immediately so she can be “rescued” into the nearest jail!

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Awakening

This essay first appeared on Cliterati on March 10^th; 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 21^st 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.

Then in just the past few months, the stirrings have become extremely pronounced.  Melissa Gira Grant’s “The War on Sex Workers” in February’s Reason magazine touched off angry denunciations from radical feminists but soul-searching and even changes of heart from moderates.  On February 28^th, I spoke at a symposium at Albany Law School and was not only enthusiastically received, but found several academics and a UN official whose views were not far from mine.  Then on International Sex Worker Rights Day, a group of activists (including Dr. Brooke Magnanti and myself) took to Twitter to reveal some of the abuse we’ve received from prohibitionists under the hashtag #whenantisattack, opening the eyes of many to the brutality of those who wish to suppress our profession:

…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.

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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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