That Was the Week That Was (#320)

Feminism still feels like someone rescuing me from the patriarchy so that I may be told what to do by “sisters” who need to get their opinions out of my knickers.  -  Sarah Woolley

Lack of Evidence

The Fourth District Court of Appeal…deemed West Palm Beach’s “loitering with intent to commit prostitution” ordinance unconstitutional…[because it was] “overbroad and vague”   It… cited a 1993 Florida Supreme Court ruling [striking down]…a similar law [in Tampa for discriminating]…against previously convicted prostitutes.  [The earlier decision stated that]…“All Florida citizens enjoy the inherent right to window shop, saunter down a sidewalk, and wave to friends and passerby with no fear of arrest”…

Meanwhile, in California, “Two women suspected of loitering with the intent to commit prostitution were arrested at a Burbank hotel…after officers reportedly discovered incriminating text messages, condoms and oils in their possession…“

Check Your Premises

“…Baltimore City police officer [Lamin Manneh]…and his…wife [Marissa Braun were]…charged with human trafficking…19-year-old [Braun was caught in a sting]…and…investigators charged the pair with human trafficking because Braun looked so young…”  You read that correctly; she’s been charged with “trafficking” herself.

Feminine Pragmatism

Justice minister Francisco Dominguez’s warning…that…men…who seek [paid] sex…will be…[prosecuted] has roiled [Dominican] workers… “There are customers who’ve called us to tell us that they won’t come”…said Carla Matos…who…said she had to become a prostitute…to raise her children…”What we’ll have to do in a couple of days will be to go out and rob and kill people, because imagine, we can’t do nothing else.  I will not let my children starve,” [Jennifer] Paniagua said.

The Prudish Giant

From the “progressive” Huffington Post:

Not only is “prostitution” a tagged skill you can select on LinkedIn, there are actually escorts who advertise their services [there]…[but] LinkedIn…now explicitly bans escorts from using the site…The new user agreement states that you must not:  ”Create profiles or provide content that promotes escort services or prostitution” even if [they are] legal where you live…Not only can you list “prostitution” as a skill, you can list a whole lot of other unsavory skills like “rape,” “shoplifting,” “gangs,” “manslaughter,” and “drug trafficking”…

Yes, the writer did seriously equate consensual sex with rape and murder.  Dr. Brooke Magnanti comments on the absurdity and futility of the whole thing.

An Angel of Mercy

…Shona Langley, a street sex worker support officer, and Charlotte Crossland, a harm reduction nurse…[work for] the Harm Reduction project…[in] Lancashire…twice a week…they load their van with…condoms, panic alarms, needles and bank note checker pens, while Charlotte offers Hepatitis B and other vaccinations…[and] treatment for minor health issues…Shona said:  “We don’t judge.  We are not here to criticise or bully them into stopping what they do”…

Scapegoats

[David Beckman of Illinois]…faces a charge of misdemeanor animal cruelty after police said he sexually abused his pet peacock…police learned the bird died while they were investigating Beckman about an alleged case of indecent solicitation of a child…

Objectification Overruled

Feminists at Cambridge University lead such privileged, unchallenging lives that they imagine jelly wrestling (girls grappling in gelatin in front of male spectators) has “a significant role to play in the degradation and abuse of women,” and imagine they’ve won a great victory for womankind via a petition which caused the event to be cancelled.  Sarah Woolley explains why  this is pure bollocks:

…”objectification” is a herd word used by women who can rarely recall the name of their last waitress…If a person sees a woman arse-deep in jelly and regards her as subhuman because of it, then that shit is on them…it takes more than nudity to cancel out a man’s regard for a woman as a human being.  There will be misogynists in any crowd but –newsflash- a true woman hater will dehumanise you no matter how you behave or what you wear…Cambridge feminists …[are affiliated] with Object…a group known for lobbying against sex worker rights and for spreading irresponsible misinformation -particularly the fantasy that the Olympics would usher in an “explosion of prostitution.”  Also on the list is “Smash Miss Contest”  who “set off stink bombs”…at beauty pageants…

Worms in the Apple

New York City’s wallowing in the “end demand” sewer produced this grotesque display of political pandering:

…mayoral candidates…argued for tougher penalties.  Joseph J. Lhota…[called] for “a john list every day in the newspaper”…Adolfo Carrión Jr…went further, saying he would publish their license plate numbers…the moderator…took note of Edward I. Koch’s controversial directive…to read the names of convicted male customers on air…Christine C. Quinn…said she disagreed with publicizing the names…[but] favored an “incredibly effective” program in Brooklyn…that forces “johns” to sit through a program intended to deter bad behavior…

And no, “john schools” are not “incredibly effective”.

Finding What Isn’t There

…police admit they do not know the scale of trafficking in Victoria’s illegal brothels and cannot say how many…there are.  The cloak of anonymity and secrecy surrounding the industry makes it hard for police to investigate, Senior Sergeant Marilynn Ross told [a parliamentary] inquiry…”we suspect that in a small number of…licensed brothels human trafficking is occurring…on a…larger scale”…

Translation:  ”There’s no evidence whatsoever and the real experts say otherwise, but this makes a perfect excuse to ask for more power to stick our noses into people’s private business.”

Whorearchy (TW3 #19)

Prostitutes helped clean up the streets of Murcia, Spain, in an effort to draw attention to…[a] proposed bylaw…aimed at curbing prostitution and sexual exploitation [which] would damage [their] livelihood…”We’ve spoken with neighbors and local business owners and…they’ve told us that there’s no problem as long as we follow some of the requests that they’ve made, such as sticking to a timetable and keeping the streets clean…That’s why we decided to hold a clean-up day.  We wanted to show that we…want to get on well with everyone”…

Worse Than I Thought

As I predicted, the cancer of incredibly-broad “sex trafficking” laws based on the CASE Act is spreading, now to Pennsylvania:

…House Bill 663, which was unanimously passed 195-0…expands what the state considers “commercial sex acts” and raises the crime of buying or selling people for sex work from a third-degree to a…first-degree felony.  Under the new bill, the definition of commercial sex includes being forced to perform “any sexual activity…in which anything of value is given…or received”…

The bill’s sponsor complains that the “current law is vague”, but what he actually means is that it isn’t vague enough.

So Close and Yet So Far

Another would-be ally misses the bus by not bothering to check with sex workers first; though she makes several very good arguments against criminalization and recognizes from the title on that sex work is work, she also overestimates the role of pimps and the prevalence of street work, accepts the false “sex trafficking” dichotomy, supports regulation and licensing and ends by undermining her own argument with the typical mealy-mouthed disclaimer, “I am not endorsing the act of selling sex.”

Schadenfreude (TW3 #43)

Another rescue industry icon is exposed as a con artist:

Cecilia Flores-Oebanda has…become the face of the Philippines anti-trafficking movement…but now she is fighting a battle that could truly ruin her.  Fraud allegations made by Philippine investigators threaten to destroy her reputation and the anti-trafficking organization she’s run for more than two decades…

Nonetheless, the credulous CNN reporters spends about 95% of the story lauding her and repeating her bullshit stories, apparently forgetting about that word “fraud”.

Across the Pond (TW3 #45)

Scottish local governments seem unusually resistant to anti-sex business hype:

The owners of an over-21s nightclub in Inverness have been issued a licence to introduce lap dancing…Rhoda Grant…said…“The commodification of woman in society is damaging and I would have hoped the objections raised by the Highland Violence Against Women Strategy Group would have been listened to”…

Japanese Prostitution (TW3 #131)

A perfect demonstration of how the “sex trafficking” paradigm confuses those whose minds it pollutes:

…Osaka Mayor…Toru Hashimoto…told reporters…that Japan’s wartime sex slave system… “were necessary in order to provide relaxation for those brave soldiers who had been in the line of fire”…Hours later [he said]…he’d…told [U.S. military brass] that…there were legal facilities for releasing sexual energy, and that unless soldiers in Okinawa made more use of similar facilities, it would be difficult to control the sexual energy of the marines…

The media have conflated two totally different statements.  What Hashimoto said about military personnel needing whores is true and every experienced commander knows it, no matter what political crap the Pentagon may emit.  But that isn’t the same as his disgusting rationalization of the enslavement of the comfort women, who were neither professional sex workers nor volunteers.

Skin To Skin

A centre in Nuremberg is offering a course to sex industry professionals on how to cater to the sexual needs of disabled clients.  Those who complete training successfully attain a certificate in “sexual accompaniment and assistance”…

Comfort Zone

It’s great to see ever-larger numbers of academics openly declaring that the “trafficking” narrative is largely an excuse for restricting migration:

“anti-trafficking”…essentialises gender and childhood, it confuses and obfuscates, and…it…acts against the interests of many that it purports to serve…the state is directly and inescapably the source of vulnerability…those formally excluded are given…the right NOT to enter, to be protected from movement.  The [victim of "trafficking"]…is supposed to return home.  Indeed the narrative is that she wants to return home, and part of her innocence and victimhood is that she never wanted to move in the first place…immigration controls are claimed to be a mechanism of protection for migrants, rather than a mechanism of oppression…

And here’s a UN official on bogus data and bad definitions:

…data is often taken from methodologies that are not…estimates…media…have often reported that 79% of trafficking is for sexual exploitation, based on the “Global Report on Trafficking in Persons” by UNODC…[but] the data is of victims identified by state authorities and of convicted traffickers…The internationally recognized definition of human trafficking states the purpose of human trafficking is for exploitation…yet [it] is…equated with sex work or irregular…migration…as a result…data on trafficked persons almost exclusively focused on women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation…

Cops and Condoms (TW3 #313)

…If we’re honest, many of us do see condoms as robbing us of pleasure, stealing some excitement and spontaneity…and dulling the intensity of sexuality…These factors are the primary reasons that still only 60 percent of teenagers claim to use condoms…[and] usage declines as people grow older.  The number one reason…is the reduction of pleasure…[but] criticism of the condom opens one to…demonization…Bill Gates’…plans to make a condom that “is felt to enhance pleasure”…came under ideological fire.  Gawker called the argument that condoms reduce sensitivity one for “creeps” and “pervs,” while Popular Science reacted by concluding “men are idiots.”  Salon likened any criticism of the condom’s detrimental effect on sexuality to “whining“…

The Naked Anthropologist (TW3 #314)

The Proper Study (TW3 #319)

The feminist antiporn group Stop Porn Culture has sponsored a petition…to change the editorial board and title of Routledge’s forthcoming…publication, Porn Studies…Constance Penley…co-editor of The Feminist Porn Book…[said] “[The petition] reveals a total lack of understanding about academic freedom, academic integrity and the nature of scholarship…and…how desperate the antiporn people are to prevent any research being done that might not support their ideological position”…

Somewhere in the Middle

St. John’s, Newfoundland has just over 200,000 people, which means fewer than 100,000 males.  The escort interviewed for this article (“Iris”) says there are about 30 escorts working there full-time, and doing such good business travelling girls are stopping in as well.  Now, ask yourself:  is it credible that only about 14,000 of those men have ever paid, that the majority of those who did are now regulars and that those working girls are doing well on an average of 1 client per day?  Or is it more likely that the claim few men ever pay for sex is completely absurd?  As Iris said, “We wouldn’t be doing this well if your husbands and boyfriends and friends weren’t coming to see us.  It’s that simple.”

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Links #149

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”).

• Wine tasting is bullshit.
• The key to longevity: more bacon.

• Cop claims that a cell phone can be turned into a gun and that “officer safety” trumps the Constitution.
• Linguists trace modern Eurasian languages back to the late Pleistocene.
• High school class president suspended for criticizing a Twitter hastag.
• Chronic pain sufferers are “collateral damage” in the War on Drugs.
• Cops beat man to death, then steal all the witnesses’ cell phones.
• Woman “sends a message” by falsely claiming she was attacked.
• 40% of chronic lower-back pain may be curable by antibiotics.
• More than half of the human race lives within this circle.
• That’ll teach him to neglect safety precautions!
• Woman calls 911 to report kittens having sex.
• Because he can.

From the Archives

• Cops in Zimbabwe believe whores force men to have sex with them for free, those in South Africa think we form syndicates and poison clients, and those in Pennsylvania imagine we have our own SWAT teams.
• The vice cops of Syracuse, New York are so aggressively ignorant and unselfconsciously stupid that they actually boast about it.
• Crusade to impose Western norms on Nepal  turns low-caste people into persecuted criminals.
• Reminiscing about my wild youth, my favorite grandmother and my dear, departed friend Terry.
• The US government conjures thousands of “pimps” and “trafficking victims” out of thin air.
• We all have the right to our preferences, but nobody has the right to impose his on others.
• How infantilization of teenagers and adults has the opposite of its intended effect.
• Why extrajudicial punishment of whores is a spectacularly bad idea.
• The tale of a young woman who wins a chance at her dream job.
• The FBI wants private companies to enable its spying on people.
• In which I demolish a load of total nonsense about “sex robots”.
• Lawheads delight in charging a crime victim with another crime.
• A bizarre neofeminist manifesto in the Wall Street Journal.
• Gonorrhea is rapidly becoming immune to all antibiotics.
• How the whorearchy is used as a tool of social control.
• Spain continues to turn the screws on streetwalkers.
• Dania Suarez is interviewed on the Today show.
• The first of several virginity auctions last year.
• Why Janet Jackson’s nipple won’t go away.
• The incoherent absurdity known as Femen.
• The ignominious demise of Escorts.com.
• Deep Geek on sex worker rights.

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Tales from the Dark Side

An inability to tell fantasy from reality would normally be considered evidence of psychosis, but in law enforcement it’s a job requirement.  -  Maggie McNeill

Since at least the time of Plato, the natural world was generally viewed in Western thought as corrupt, foul and bad; this idea entered Christianity via Gnosticism and dominated philosophy until the advent of the Romantic Era in the late 18^th century.  Anything of the natural world (including, of course, sex) was to be looked down upon and avoided wherever possible; the things of the mind and spirit were what was important, and those who wished to appear superior to others removed themselves from the natural world and eschewed the “pleasures of the flesh” (at least in public).  The Romantics, however, rejected all that; they taught that the natural world was innately good, that childhood “innocence” (i.e. closeness to the natural state) was a thing to be cherished, that primitive people were “noble savages” and that “natural” living was purer and better than “artificial”.  This was decidedly a minority viewpoint; the growing middle class of 19^th-century Europe and America still saw untamed Nature as rather nasty, and those who lived closer to it than they (in other words, the working class) as inferiors to be “improved” by curing them of their dedication to physical pleasures such as sex and liquor.

But humans are not known for logical consistency, and the bourgeois less so than most; as the Victorian Era wore on, some elements of Romantic philosophy were absorbed into the common weltanschauung, even when they contradicted other aspects of it.  For example, the “innocence” of children became the center of a veritable cult despite the fact that adults were expected to behave in an incredibly artificial manner, and “natural” foods and medicines were all the rage in the “social purity” crowd because they were believed to excite the (natural) physical passions less than highly processed ones!  But if the Victorians’ beliefs were incongruous, those of the neo-Victorians are even worse: while they reject the belief that sex is innately bad, they also believe against all reason and evidence that it’s something like a radioactive material which must be handled with special and elaborate precautions or else it becomes the single most destructive force on Earth.  They imagine that engaging in sex for the “wrong” reasons, or without the benediction of elaborate rituals of consent, or with people separated from one another by more than a very few years of age, is terribly harmful.  They believe that merely taking pictures of the taboo act creates a kind of Gorgonic icon which drives its viewers mad, and that the mere existence of such images harms women and children who are not even in close proximity to it.  And they fervently assert that it is so incredibly dangerous to the sacred “innocence” of “children” (a term which refers not to true children, but to a ritual category which actually includes some adults), for strangers to even imagine sexual contact with them causes such tremendous harm that those who indulge in these Forbidden Thoughts deserve penalties greater than those for violent assault, followed by lifelong social ostracism.

Needless to say, most of this has only the most tenuous basis in reality, and some of it none at all.  But the desire to describe Nature (especially sex) as “good” or “bad” is a very strong one, and for the neo-Victorian mind to accept sex into the “good” category it must be ritually purified by amputating all of its darker aspects, branding even the discussion of them as “violence”, and even pretending that they aren’t even sex at all.  This belief flies in the face of reality; sex, fear, dominance and violence are inextricably bound together, and only by living in a state of complete denial can someone pretend that the only valid, “healthy” and legal sex is that which is so sanitized and neutered that it resembles the real thing about as closely as a hamburger does a heifer.  Even many unadventurous people have a few rather dark fantasies or repressed turn-ons, and a few have fantasies that if acted upon would be evil indeed (as my friend Philippa used to say, “good fantasy, bad reality”).  But the mere existence of violent, dark fantasies does not indicate a corresponding plan to carry them out; probably 99% of all sexual fantasies are never acted upon, and when it comes to those involving unquestionably evil acts I’m sure the percentage is higher still.  Furthermore, the mere discussion of such fantasies with others does not constitute a conspiracy to turn them into reality.  But in a world where prosecution for thoughtcrime has become a grim reality, it might be wise to restrict such discussions to fully-anonymized online accounts and to encrypt any files referring to the fantasy; otherwise you could end up like Gilberto Valle:

…agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation took Officer Valle into custody…after they uncovered several plots to kidnap, rape, cook and eat women…the officer’s estranged wife recently contacted the F.B.I. to report that…[he] viewed and kept disturbing items on his computer…[though he] never followed through on any of the acts he is accused of discussing.  His lawyer…said the officer committed no crime.  “At worst, this is someone who has sexual fantasies…There is no actual crossing the line from fantasy to reality,” she added…

At first I leaned toward believing the allegations, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that these were almost certainly no more than extreme fantasies used by a vindictive ex to put him away; the only reason I had given the story as much credence as I did was that it’s very easy to believe a cop capable of acts of extreme, non-consensual sadism.  Then just a few weeks ago, I went from “almost certain” to “dead certain”:

A high-ranking police official…and a former high-school librarian were charged…in a plot to kidnap, torture and kill women and children, federal prosecutors said.  Richard Meltz…and Robert Christopher Asch…were held without bail…Peter Brill, an attorney for Mr. Meltz, said his client “had no interest or intention of hurting anybody…it was never anything other than a fantasy”…An official said the case against the men grew out of an investigation in which a former New York Police Department officer was charged and convicted in a plot to kidnap, rape, cook and eat women.  The former officer, Gilberto Valle, was convicted in March and is awaiting sentencing.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of an organized interstate gang of serial killers who plot capers for months on the internet without ever carrying a single one out.  I think it’s pretty obvious that what the defense attorneys in both cases said is true:  these are men with a very extreme BDSM fantasy who are being sacrificed to further the dominant cultural myth that sex can be purified, sanctified and tamed.

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Links #148

Daddy, I love you so much that I want to cut your head off and carry it around so I can see your face whenever I want.  -  Unnamed child

There was an unusual degree of backlash against the police/nanny state this week; unfortunately, it was more like thrashing about a bit in a fitful sleep than actually waking up, considering that 80% of Americans think that it’s perfectly OK for the government to restrict civil liberties for “safety”, and 26% think they haven’t been restricted enough yet.  And though one of the week’s top stories should have been a former FBI agent’s revelation that the US government now records every single domestic telephone call without bothering to get a warrant, I’ll bet this was the first most of you even heard of it.  There, I figured I’d get the worst of it out of the way up front; most of the rest aren’t quite so bad.  Jesse Walker was our top contributor this week; you can thank him for the first video and all the links above it.  The second video was provided by Nick Tolman, and the first three links between the two by my cat, Wendy Lyon and Luscious Lani (in that order).  The next three were supplied by Grace (except for “AIDS patients” via Women With a Vision), and the rest by Brooke Magnanti  (“Google”), Teller (“conjoined twins”), Walter Olson (“poor pets”), Kevin Wilson  (“Muppets”), EconJeff (“porn law”), Scott Greenfield (“stop & frisk”), and Lenore Skenazy (“tools”).

• Best “selfie” of all time.
• Songs that sound like other songs.
• A collection of quotes to feed your paedophobia.
• Faux superheroes vs. faux anarchist clowns armed with silly string.
• Scientists support girl charged with felony for a mishandled experiment by “tweeting” about all the stuff they’ve blown up.

• Australian Cat Ladies buy abandoned fundamentalist site; hijinks ensue.
• The newsworthy part is that he was actually held accountable.
• Artist draws himself in 100 different animation styles.
• Welcome to our world, drivers and AIDS patients.
• Never do business with a cop, either.
• Paging the Doctor!
• Let me Google that for you.
• Chemical-free chemistry sets.
• 23-year-old conjoined twins are becoming teachers.
• Florida court declares it’s a felony for poor people to own pets.
• Peanuts recalled because bag lacks the words “contains peanuts”.
• Which Muppet would be most likely to successfully assassinate Hitler?
• What’s the difference between a porn magazine editor and a criminal law attorney?
• NYPD officials say they instituted “stop and frisk” program to discourage cops from laziness.
• Teacher suspended, charged with “possessing a weapon” for showing ordinary tools to students.

From the Archives

• Congresscritters challenge the ruling striking down the “anti-prostitution pledge”, while others toothlessly attempt to censor Backpage.
• Reading Pennsylvania sex work articles is like looking into a dirty toilet.
• Lawyer proposes decriminalization of drugs and prostitution in Detroit.
• Humorless neofeminists crucify a respected surgeon over a silly joke.
• The sleazy deal to impose the Swedish Model on Western Australia.
• Do you advocate that escorts adhere strictly to a referral system?
• I decide that the outing of anti-whore politicians is commendable.
• Lawheads love classifying various activities as “legal” or “illegal”.
• Reporter thinks that a cop raping a hooker is a rare occurrence.
• Real-life superheroes offer to protect working girls in New York.
• Cops in riot gear and masks save Houston from evil harlots.
• This is sleazy even by Ashley Madison’s abysmal standards.
• An early draft of one of my favorite books is auctioned off.
• Another serial killer targeting whores, this time in Detroit.
• A biography of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the “D.C. Madam”.
• My previous columns for May Day, May Eve and Floralia.
• Octomom says a masturbation video isn’t “really” porn.
• And all it took was triple jeopardy and lying to the jury.
• Drug decriminalization actually decreases usage rates.
• How can I make sure that a lady doesn’t have a pimp?
• Do you mind editing or deleting reader comments?
• Sadistic freak arrested after torturing sex worker.
• Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever.
• Arthur Huntington, AKA Agent Cheapskate.
• The FDA claims wet-nursing is dangerous.
• Genesis, Pretty Baby and Looney Tunes.
• Why “safe harbor” laws don’t work.
• CNN claims fat is like heroin.
• Politician.  Whores.  Yawn.
• Wet shelters.

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Links #147

There is no evidence she condoned being called a horse.  -  Jeffrey Merlino

This was a weird week for links; up until Wednesday evening all I had was the first video (via Mike Siegel, who also provided “flu tax”), and I was trying to figure out what I would do if I didn’t get anything else!  But then the internet came through, and as you can see I have a full slate of interesting stuff.  This week’s top contributor was Franklin Harris, who supplied everything down to the first video; the second video was provided by Radley Balko (who also gave us “Idaho”), and the links between the videos were suggested by Mistress Matisse (“Elvis”), Walter Olson (“cigars”), Violet Blue (“CISPA”), Wil Wheaton’s Cat (“sci-fi”), and Kevin Wilson (“bingo”).

• Chick-Fil-A is opposed to gay marriage, but encourages medieval incest.
• Calling a classmate a “fat ass” is now a criminal matter in New Jersey.
• Somebody wants to make a movie out of an anti-D & D Chick comic.
• 4^th grade “science” quiz from a creationist school.

• In 1995, a New Mexico legislator introduced a bill that would’ve required psychologists to dress like wizards while on the witness stand.
• Elvis impersonator cleared of poison charges, looks for Moo Cow and promises foot massages for ladies.
• Cops are trying to steal a yacht because there were cigars on board.
• Idaho government agents abduct children of marijuana activists.
• US Congress votes on taxing the flu.
• CISPA is dead again, for now.
• Sci-fi children’s books.
• Statist bingo.
• Zardoz?

From the Archives

• My take on the Secret Service scandal attracted quite a bit of media attention, but US personnel running over whores did not.
• Jezebel blogger saves unwitting women from accidentally prostituting themselves “in fucking Thailand or some shit”.
• Real men support sex worker rights, and here’s a list of a few examples.
• Valeria Messalina, the Roman empress who enjoyed playing the whore.
• In honor of Vinalia Urbana, a catalog of aspects of the goddess Venus.
• The New York Daily News strongly criticizes Anna Gristina’s treatment.
• Last year’s attempt at banning “condoms as evidence” in New York.
• Tennessee joins the list of states defining miscarriage as murder.
• Northern Ireland has railroaded convicted its first “sex trafficker”.
• Either my strangest column ever, or not. Or both simultaneously.
• Government is practically the definition of “necessary evil”.
• The methodological deficiencies of prohibitionist “studies”.
• Cops try to blame the Long Island murders on hobbyists.
• In Asia, sex workers are welcome at feminist events.
• Helpful dating advice from government. Yes, really.
• Greta Christina invited whores to tell our stories.
• My favorite books and my favorite authors.
• The self-destruction of Somaly Mam.
• A selection of poems about harlots.
• The Thing and No, They Can’t.
• Early CISPA shenanigans.
• A hooker coffee klatsch.

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Links #146

Dinosaurs aren’t mysterious, strange creatures. They are creatures that God created to help Adam and Eve and they did until Adam sinned.  –  Creation Truth Foundation

The big story this week was of course the bombing at the Boston Marathon, but I’m sure you’ve had enough of that and I’m certainly not inclined to participate in promoting the mainstream narrative of the events.  Instead, I prefer to call your attention to this essay in which Clark of Popehat discusses Boston’s massive exercise in security theater which used the bombing as an excuse, and to the first of Radley Balko‘s four links above the first video (which was provided by Jolene Parton).  The second video (which needs to be internalized by any man who’s ever been made to feel guilty about paying for sex) was suggested by Sarah Wooley, and the links between the videos by Franklin Harris (“Elvis”),  Mike Siegel (“contempt”), Jesse Walker (“Lovecraft”), Mistress Matisse (“hipster babies” and “dialects”), and Popehat (“headline”).

• More badge-licking cheerleading for the fascist police state.
• How Jim Crow was largely the offspring of Progressivism.
• A lesson in truly effective terrorism from the real pros.
• Eighth-grader arrested for picture on a T-shirt.

• Politician says the only people who don’t want the government spying on them are “14-year-olds in their parents’ basements”.
• Minneapolis bans sale of plastic bags and Brillo pads in high-crime areas.
• Elvis impersonator attempts to poison politicians over body-part sales.
• Government is just a word for things we choose to do together.
• Judge holds himself in contempt of court for ringing cell phone.
• “I am the senator. You are the citizen. You need to be quiet.”
• Lovecraft would be delighted and fascinated by this theory.
• Hipster babies poop in the street.
• Dialect map of American English.
• Headline of the week.
• God’s Gospel Lizards.
• More of this, please.

From the Archives

• Prohibitionists claim that cops can’t find “trafficking victims” because  they just aren’t looking hard enough.
• The logical fallacy in which someone discounts a person’s argument simply because she is a prostitute.
• Bitching about criteria which attract men to women is like complaining about water being wet.
• Female escorts paid to pretend to be clients of imaginary male escorts.
• Using a well-known study to cross-check my whore census estimate.
• Is porn in which women beat up men still “violence against women”?
• New York circumvents law by forcing businesses to do its dirty work.
• Cyndee Clay, head of Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS).
• How “social construction of gender” harms male-female relations.
• Girl Scouts taught propaganda belief rather than critical thinking.
• The warped minds of prohibitionists project evil into everything.
• Prohibitionist seeks to “rescue” teen hooker by molesting her.
• The Secret Service hooker scandal, and updates on the same.
• Strip club owner supposedly plots to assassinate politicians.
• Sex workers refute the claims of neofeminist prohibitionists.
• The hard facts about decriminalization and “sex trafficking”.
• Jezebel compares use of sexual metaphors to forcible rape.
• Breaking news:  President Obama has a human friend!
• Dr. Laura Agustín vivisects a “trafficking” scare story.
• Brazil moves toward decriminalization of brothels.
• The “house rules” of this blog, and a guided tour.
• What’s the legal definition of prostitution again?
• Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever.
• The ludicrous “real men don’t buy girls” fiasco.
• Never On Sunday and The Origins of Sex.
• The Long Island Killer may be a cop.
• The Swedish rot reaches France.
• The first appearance of CISPA.
• What would Orrin Hatch do?
• Judd not, lest ye be Judded.
• A faerie tale.

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Links #145

Every officer that signed off on this ”no evidence” conclusion should be guarding the entrance to a petting zoo for the remainder of their careers.  -  Anonymous

The big news this week was the death of Margaret Thatcher, and I seem to be one of the few people on the internet who does not have some strong opinion about her one way or the other (she was a politician; ’nuff said).  But whether you loved her or hated her, you will probably enjoy the sight of a prime minister quoting Monty Python in today’s first video from Mike Siegel  (who also provided “nukes” and “cosplay”).  The second video is my all-time favorite comic strip imagined as a “dark, gritty” movie as per current fashion; it and all the links down to the first video were supplied by Radley Balko.  Other links between the videos were contributed by Jesse Walker (“new sun”), Luscious Lani (“girl and cat”), Mistress Matisse (“Anonymous”), and Kevin Wilson (“honest fat”).

• Man criminally charged for not allowing himself to be mauled by bear.
• Politician arrested for masturbating out car window while speeding.
• Maryland plans to tax the rain.
• Another advantage of big tits.

• The zombie defense.
• Headline of the week.
• When the sun was new.
• What a humiliating way to die.
• Politician wants to ban cosplay.
• Beautiful, enchanting photo set of a little girl and her cat.
• An argument for restoration of proper evidentiary standards.
• Researchers estimate nuclear power has saved 1.8 million lives.
• Cops fail to solve crime in a year; Anonymous succeeds in two hours.
• Southerners aren’t really fatter than other Americans, just more honest.

From the Archives

• 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.
• It’s time to stop the ruinous Gender War which has been foisted on the human race by fanatics with lunatic agendas.
• Secret to success at heterosexual male prostitution:  don’t charge anything or expect much business.
• American states with “abstinence-only” sex education have the highest teen pregnancy rates.
• Those who define sex work as criminality just don’t get it, and never will.
• Both halves of the U.S. Big Government Party are against sexual rights.
• The incredible hypocrisy and yellow journalism of the New York Times.
• Naomi Wolf’s analysis of the TSA’s true motivation is much like mine.
• Why those who call themselves “anti-porn” are in reality pro-rape.
• More on Michael Weinstein’s campaign against an anti-HIV drug.
• Too bad Jezebel doesn’t stand up for sex workers more often.
• Neofeminist propaganda used to undermine abortion rights.
• A look at actresses who have played sex workers in movies.
• Reminiscing about lost friends and my favorite cousin.
• Who gets to define what the “collective good” is?
• Jennifer Love Hewitt on her show The Client List.
• Prohibitionists are the biggest pimps.
• Young woman jailed for being raped.
• Dr. Laura Agustín on Gloria Steinem.
• An orangutan hooker?

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Links #144

Informally known as “mooning,” exposing one’s buttocks is a practice often intended as a sign of defiance or disrespect.  -  Will Greenlee

Another quiet week, and I’m disappointed there weren’t even any memorable April Fool pranks except for this one from REI discovered by my husband.  That is, of course, unless you count has-been comedian Jim Carrey making an April Fool of himself over gun control a few days early; today’s first video mocks the fact that opposing vaccination (as Carrey does) probably kills far more people than guns do.  The second video continues our Star Trek theme of the past few weeks, and was provided by Grace; everything above the first video was contributed by Radley Balko, and those between the two by Jolene Parton,  Popehat, Lenore Skenazy (two items), Jesse Walker, Amy Alkon and Aspasia (in that order).

• Man moons bus driver, then removes dentures and steals basketball.
• “This is not a photo of the actual papayas…thrown in the incident“.
• Judge rules that careful driving is not a crime in New York.
• So, a goat walks into a bar…
• They never learn.

• A rhyme for “orange”?
• Universal criminality in action.
• 14 words that are their own opposites.
• 7-year-old charged with felony for shooting BB gun.
• This is quite possibly the longest book title of all time.
• Man sentenced to decades in prison for custom car modifications.
• Next time someone tells you to go to Hell, you’ll know how to get there.

From the Archives

• My Easter columns for the last two years, and a creepy story I wrote on Easter Sunday, 1997.
• Stupidly endangering oneself is not a political statement; it’s just stupid.
• Women do not always have the luxury of obeying stupid, arbitrary laws.
• Vaginal injuries are just as likely to result from consensual sex as rape.
• Imaginative sex law ideas proposed by politicians in Alaska and Texas.
• Heroic cops save town from menace of a desperately-hungry woman.
• A one-woman prohibition campaign enabled by a sleazy political deal.
• Fanatics multiply a credible estimate of “trafficking” victims by 1000x.
• Sex workers in Asia and Africa are an example to those in the West.
• The Swedish Model is “a failed experiment in social engineering”.
• Why the “Occupy” movement should support sex worker rights.
• The real origin of that claim about “300,000 trafficked children”.
• A petition to press criminal charges against prohibitionist liars.
• Is New Orleans serious about giving up on harassing whores?
• Judge releases 400 sex workers from “sex offender” tyranny.
• An extreme example of how anti-whore laws hurt all women.
• Are the negative effects of underage sex as bad as claimed?
• How the entire trafficking myth is held together with lies.
• The New York Times takes aim at its own collective foot.
• The crumbling of Nicholas Kristof, idol with feet of clay.
• An ancient Roman festival and pictures of my pussy.
• How prohibitionists take statistics out of context.
• Witch-hunting is still a popular pastime in Salem.
• The how and why of the politicization of rape.
• An influx of web traffic and my first milestone.
• More on the upholding of the Himel decision.
• Jezebel’s weird ambivalence about sex work.
• Several links for sex worker rights in Korea.
• Gloria Steinem, “sex trafficking” fetishist.

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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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Links #143

I am appalled at the utter waste of US tax dollars.  -  William Shatner

Like a runner exhausted after a race, the internet was much quieter this week after last week’s link frenzy.  That’s not to say there weren’t plenty of “tweets”, links and blog posts flying about, but most of them seemed to be concentrated on a smaller number of subjects and few were noteworthy enough to inspire me  to grant them space in this column.  In keeping with last week’s Star Trek theme, we heard about how the IRS blew $60,000 on a terrible parody of the classic show, but it was “terrible” in the sense of “jejune” rather than in the sense of “ludicrous”; I couldn’t get through a third of it, so there’s no way I’ll feature it here.  Instead, I present a “bath salts” scare video produced by the US Navy, which I found in a Reason feature entitled “5 Government Videos Every Bit as Terrible as the IRS Star Trek Parody“; if you haven’t seen the Star Trek abortion yet and you’re feeling masochistic, you can watch it there.  In contrast, I’ve also included a good didactic video, a 1974 PSA on carpooling which I enjoyed so much as a child I used the word “kalaka” for decades afterward.  Radley Balko was our champ this week, providing everything down to the first video and the second half of “fascism” (the first half was supplied by Wendy Lyon).  The second and third links between the videos were contributed by  Jesse Walker, and the fourth and fifth by Gideon’s Trumpet.

• De-extinction?
• Fast track to cop promotion:  murder someone.
• Surgeon falsely jailed for over a year in order to seize his property.
• Beating someone for filming you?  Make sure he’s the only one doing it.
• Cops used black neighborhood for SWAT training because it’s “realistic”.

• Welcome to our world, punks.
• The Muslim foot bath that wasn’t.
• The United States of Autocomplete.
• Prosecutor files 141 charges for one murder.
• Congress is planning to make the CFAA much worse.
• Counselors at Scientology drug rehab traded inmates drugs for sex.
• Under fascism, every institution or large company is an arm of the State.

From the Archives

• An inability to tell fantasy from reality would normally be considered evidence of psychosis, but in law enforcement it’s a job requirement.
• Once you win your rights it’s OK to join in with stigmatizing other groups who haven’t yet, just to show you’re part of the gang.
• Book reviews:  All or Nothing, Freakonomics, Harmful To Minors, Tickle My Tush and A Vindication of the Rights of Whores.
• Were many hookers molested as children? Are many drug addicts? And are most lesbians?
• It’s only OK to grope people if one puts on a uniform and does it without their permission.
• Neofeminism is rooted in a deep-seated hatred of one’s own femininity.
• The drive toward increasingly vicious anti-whore and anti-client tactics.
• How do you expose a man pretending to be a woman on a chat site?
• The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld two-thirds of the Himel decision.
• Why do mature escorts want sex when many mature women don’t?
• Helping legal workers to conduct legal business is a crime in France.
• Even when the Feds botch an extortion scheme, they win anyway.
• The predictable failure of the first legal male prostitute in Nevada.
• Activism, backward Satanic messages and my target audience.
• Canadian neofeminists sneak over to Israel to poison the well.
• How South Africa and the US changed places on human rights.
• Police reports are more useful when they contain information.
• Natalia Fabia loves hookers…as a promotional gimmick.
• What’s the best way to perform oral sex on a woman?
• Another criticism of Nick Kristof’s anti-whore crusade.
• Acknowledging the ape does no harm to the angel.
• La Belle Otero, the last of the Grandes Horizontales.
• The chief con man of a group of scammers resigns.
• The weird cognitive impairment of prohibitionists.
• Another day, another politician, another whore.
• “The healthiest sex industry ever documented.”
• The truth about the birth control “controversy”.
• Would an HIV-positive escort quit working?
• A short glossary of prohibitionism.
• New Orleans, Cthulhu and Fear.
• How do Kegels exercises work?
• Modern-day Lysistrata.
• Karayuki and japayuki.
• Timing is everything.

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