Dysphemisms Galore

Words that are saturated with lies or atrocity, do not easily resume life.  -  George Steiner

Busybodies simply adore dysphemisms; they’re one of the moralists’ chief weapons in transforming a fact of life into a “menace”, a statement into a “shocking revelation”, a thing they dislike into something “seedy” or discussion of a taboo subject into a “conspiracy”.  The ignorant, naïve or spineless are actually influenced by these words, while the better-informed and more reasonable may simply dismiss them as empty rhetoric.  But when one takes the time to actually look, one begins to see that they’re not simply insulting and manipulative, but ludicrous and self-evidently wrong.  Here’s an illustrative example on the South Korean sex industry, which is extremely typical for articles of its kind:

South Korea, a wealthy, powerful Asian…technology hub and stalwart U.S. ally, has a deep, dark secret.  Prostitution…[flourishes] in South Korea just under the country’s shiny surface.  Despite its illegality…the sex trade is so huge that the government once admitted it accounts for as much as 4 percent of…Gross Domestic Product — about the size of the fishing and agriculture industries combined.  Indeed, paid sex is available all over South Korea – in coffee shops, motels, hotels, shopping malls, the barber shop, as well as the so-called juicy bars frequented by American soldiers and the red-light districts which operate openly.  Internet chat rooms and cell phones have opened up whole new streams of business for ambitious prostitutes and pimps.

The self-contradiction begins from the very first line:  If the sex trade is so all-pervasive, how can it also be said to be a “deep, dark secret”?  The fact is that it’s not a secret at all, and never has been; it’s just that the phrase “deep, dark secret” is actually code for another, more obviously subjective word: “shameful”.  A secret is something which is hidden, which the South Korean sex industry isn’t; “dark” implies something unpleasant or harmful, which almost nobody in South Korea really believes despite the extensive lip service paid to the notion in Korean culture.  Prostitution was only criminalized in 1961 (at the urging of the United States, naturally), and police, whores and clients alike virtually ignored the law for more than 40 years, carrying on just as they always had.  But American cultural imperialism refused to be denied, and in 2004 harsh new Swedish-flavored laws were implemented in response to US demands that Seoul “do something” about the nearly-nonexistent “problem” of “sex trafficking”.  The fixation with the word “pimp” probably dates to this period; I see it used more often in stories about South Korea than in any other articles (discounting pure prohibitionist hatespew).

The…Ministry for Gender Equality estimates that about 500,000 women work in the national sex industry, though, according to the Korean Feminist Association, the actual number may exceed 1 million.  This means that 1 out of every 25 women in the country might be selling their bodies for sex — despite the passage of tough anti-sex-trafficking legislation in recent years.  (For women between the ages of 15 and 29, up to one-fifth have worked in the sex industry at one time or another, according to estimates)…

The phrase “selling their bodies for sex” is such a clichéd inanity I almost hesitate to call attention to it, but I find it almost incomprehensible that it’s still being passed around.  It’s almost as though some people actually believe that after one transaction whores become spiritual beings (after all, when one “sells” something the buyer generally takes it with him when he leaves) who then, presumably, reincarnate like the Dalai Lama and return to the brothel to “sell” their instantly-grown, identical new bodies again.  One wonders what happens to all the old bodies, however; I reckon once the men are done with them, they flush them down the loo like unwanted goldfish or “child sex slaves”.  For comparison: if it’s true that 4% of South Korean women work in the sex trade, that’s roughly comparable to 19^th-century Europe and America, which given the comparable levels of industrialization and similar social hypocrisy about sex is wholly unsurprising.

Indeed, the sex industry…is so open that prostitutes periodically stage public protest demonstrations to express their anger over anti-prostitution laws.  Bizarrely, like Tibetan monks protesting China’s brutal rule of their homeland, some Korean prostitutes even set themselves on fire to promote their cause.

A reporter who lives in New York (where prostitutes periodically stage public protest demonstrations despite criminalization) considers it “bizarre” that people strongly resist tyrannical attempts to destroy their businesses and virtually enslave them.  I wonder how he would react to the police violently smashing their way into his office, arresting everyone, forcing him into “rehabilitation”, then consigning him to work he hated at 5-10% of his former salary?  Besides, since he apparently believes Korean harlots have the power of voluntary metempsychosis, it seems as though he would consider their behaving like Buddhist monks to be entirely predictable.

…According to the government-run Korean Institute of Criminology, one-fifth of men in their 20s buy sex at least four times a month, creating an endless customer base for prostitutes…

One-fifth of American men buy sex “occasionally” (i.e. closer to four times a year rather than a month) and only 6% “frequently”.  If the Korean figure is correct, it makes the claim that the sex industry is a “secret” even more absurd.

From here, the article rapidly proceeds into the typical “child sex slavery” garbage, liberally sprinkled with phrases like “descending into the business of sex” and “illicit trade”; young women are intentionally conflated with “children” in the American style, so that the well-known Asian preference for youth is equated with pedophilia.  Furthermore, the age of consent in South Korea is 13, while the age of legal majority is 19 by Western reckoning (20 by the Korean calendar).  So when “Yun Hee-jun, a Seoul-based anti-sex trafficker, told the Times:  ‘On online community websites, you can easily find information about prices for sex with minors and the best places to go’,” he was being extremely duplicitous; up until 2011 it was completely legal for a South Korean man to have sex with a “minor”, presuming she was at least 13 (which as we know, the vast, vast majority are).  But beginning with the 2008 “Trafficking in Persons Report”, the US began to pressure the government to “crack down” on what American law defines as “sex trafficking” (whether it actually is or not), and early in 2011 Seoul decided to “out-Herod Herod” by raising the age of consent to that of legal majority…possibly the highest in the world.  It is unclear whether the new law applies to all sex, or only that in which the older person is somehow “superior” to the younger (wealthier, in a position of authority, etc); try googling “age of consent South Korea” and you’ll see that nobody in or out of the country is entirely sure.  And that makes moralizing about “underage prostitution” disingenuous at best, and at worst flagrantly dishonest.

Moving on, we find author Palash Ghosh either drinking deeply of the Kool-aid or expecting his readers to.  He says that “women from…The Philippines, flock to South Korea to work as prostitutes and ‘bar girls’ (lured by the promises of legitimate work as waitresses or entertainers)”; Dr. Rhacel Parrenas  demonstrated that parenthetical comment to be an outright lie.  We are also told that “The prevalence of prostitution in contemporary South Korea provides an ironic counterpoint to the passionate political activism of elderly Korean women who relentlessly criticize Japan for their servitude as prostitutes and comfort women during Tokyo’s brutal occupation of their country”, but only a moral imbecile could find irony in the idea that people who choose to do something for good pay under pleasant conditions have very different attitudes about it than those who were forced at gunpoint to do it without any pay under horrific conditions.

The fact that Korea has had a thriving and legal sex industry since at least the Middle Ages is pushed down nearly to the bottom of the story, as is the fact that Park Chung-hee “actually encouraged the sex trade in order to generate much-needed revenue…[from] thousands of U.S. troops stationed in the country.”  Ghosh then quickly changes the subject to North Korean refugees who work to pay off “people-smugglers”, and refuses to recognize that the poor conditions under which these unfortunates work are made possible by criminalization.  He even seems surprised that Korean sex workers have challenged the 2004 law, the injustice and tyranny of which is easily recognized by anyone whose mind is not enveloped in a fog of dysphemisms and burdened by the misapprehension that they represent something even remotely akin to reality.

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Unintentional Hilarity

Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little.  -  Mason Cooley

Psychologists still aren’t entirely sure what makes a given thing funny.  Oh, there’s been considerable thought about it in the past few decades, but no general consensus on some important details such as why one person finds something funny while another may not.  Part of this undoubtedly comes down to taste; for example, while I find absurd situations intrinsically amusing, others may only find them irritating.  And while many people find exaggerated depictions of misfortune hilarious, they only make me uncomfortable.  This accounts for my mixed reaction to the Three Stooges; though I find ridiculous scenes like Curly fighting a living clam in a bowl of chowder to be extremely funny, the physical slapstick leaves me absolutely cold.  Of course, some humor depends on knowledge; those in the know will get the joke, while those who aren’t, won’t.  Sometimes the latter may even take a situation very seriously, while the former recognize the irony and so perceive it as ludicrous.

That was the case when I read this recent story about a “sex trafficking” propaganda session held by Shared Hope International at a Washington State high school.  What first attracted my attention to it was the fact that though the speaker admits to having been naïve and ignorant at the beginning of her supposed “ordeal”, she is still just as clueless as ever, but doesn’t realize how her words betray that fact to anyone who’s ever done any kind of sex work (or even set foot in a modern strip club).  I planned to use the story in TW3 #318, but the more I looked at it the funnier it got, and I realized it needed the full-column treatment.  I hope I’m able to help most of you see what I saw, and if not…well, I guess you had to be there.

…Brianna…sketched a scene of lost innocence.  She was in Seattle on a whim to party with two older guys she barely knew.  She’d lied to her parents, telling them she was at a girlfriend’s house for the weekend.  The guys seemed nice enough, attractive, possibly wealthy.  But she soon discovered their motives weren’t merely impure, they were also likely criminal.  They told Brianna, who’d just turned 18, she could make a lot more money stripping than she could working her other job, waiting tables…

In other words, Brianna is a spoiled, sheltered moron who thinks it’s perfectly safe to spend the weekend with complete strangers 200 km from home without anyone knowing she’s there.  That’s not “innocence”; it’s exceptional stupidity.  Even so, these guys (if they existed at all) don’t appear to be “criminals” to me, unless telling the truth has been criminalized in Washington; a good-looking 18-year-old girl CAN make a lot more money stripping than waiting tables.  Surely Shared Hope and reporter Tyler Graf aren’t denying this?

“The strip club was really loud and really dark — it smelled,” Brianna said…”Everything there was really sticky.  It had germs on it.”

My guess is that Brianna has never actually been in a strip club; her description appears to be a combination of something she saw on a TV cop show and what somebody told her about seedy porn theaters, embellished on suggestion of her handlers.  Germs!

The guys told her she could make a lot of money with her young looks.  So why not get out of La Center?  Why not head down to Phoenix, Ariz., and catch some sun?  Why not empty her bank account and hand it over?  They’d take care of her.  In only a few days, the requests became increasingly unreasonable, and she realized something was wrong.  What she didn’t know until later was that she was on the brink of entering the sex trade world.

“Increasingly unreasonable”?  Really?  You mean, more unreasonable than “Hey, why not travel halfway across the country with two dudes you don’t know after turning over your bank account to them?”  Because I’m honestly having difficulty thinking of something that could be more unreasonable than that to anyone who was reared outside of a Skinner box and has a greater cerebral capacity than the average stray dog.  Though we aren’t told how Brianna “escaped” from these guys, it’s pretty obvious they did not actually intend to harm or (criminally) exploit her; she clearly lacks the intellectual agility to outwit a goldfish, much less a pair of gangsters (even assuming they were relatively obtuse).  I’m also very amused by the phrase “sex trade world”, which was clearly shat out by the same Yellow Journalism Phrase Generator^TM that produced “sex trafficking world” and “sex trafficking trade”.

Brianna’s brush with sex trafficking two years ago is documented in…”Chosen,” which made its premiere…in front of more than 100 La Center High School students.  The 20-minute video, produced by…Shared Hope International, is meant to be an educational tool warning teens and others about the dangers of the sex trade.

Shouldn’t that be “sex trafficking trade”?  Or is it “sex trade world”?  One needs to be precise about these things.

In the video, another young woman details how a pimp groomed her as a young teenager.  He bought her expensive gifts before eventually setting her loose at strip clubs in Portland.

I just can’t help picturing her running around the club going “woop woop woop” and “nyah nyah nyah”, then falling on her side on the floor and spinning around in a circle.

Law enforcement officials consider…Interstate 5…to be a major arterial for sex-trafficking operations, especially of underage girls…

Evidence!

“You might think pimps are cool — like, they have lots of money and cars,” senior Olivia Loreth, 19, said.  ”They get a lot of women because they’re just that cool.”

You might, if you were a complete imbecile.

…Former U.S. Rep. Linda Smith, the founder of Shared Hope International, says she wants the video to be another tool in fighting the rise of human trafficking…

…which is “an extension of the ‘pro-life’ cause.”  Finish your sentences, Linda.

…Smith said more awareness of the realities of sex trafficking needs to be coupled with stronger state laws that punish Johns and pimps but protect victims.

I’m starting to get the giggles every time I see some po-faced twit use the word “john” to mean a client.  Even more so when he capitalizes it.  And the irony of one of the chief disseminators of “sex trafficking” myths and lies using the phrase “realities of sex trafficking” is just icing on the cake.

Washington has been a leader in this.  It’s one of a handful of states that has what’s known as a “Safe Harbor” law, which redefines prostituted minors as victims…

What does it mean?
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!?

Here’s an example of Washington’s “leadership”, and the truth about “safe harbor laws”.  I know this bit isn’t funny, but it does demonstrate Smith’s duplicity and Graf’s credulity.

[A new Washington law] will toughen the definition of sex trafficking, making every minor who participates in a sex-for-money scheme the victim of trafficking…

That’s right, the law has the power to rewrite reality like the Lathe of Heaven and make them victims even if they weren’t.  Justice!

In the two years since her ordeal, Brianna has rebounded.  She often joins Smith to spread the word about the realities of sex trafficking, and she’s enrolled in a nursing program at Clark College.

If I might offer a bit of unsolicited advice, Brianna, I don’t think you’re cut out for nursing; perhaps fantasy-writing or acting would be a closer fit.  Or better yet, stand-up comedy.

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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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That Was the Week That Was (#317)

The laws just don’t make sense.  They don’t help sex workers.  They don’t protect sex workers.  They increase their risks and they make it harder for them to do their jobs.  –  Chris Bruckert

Cops and Condoms

Ugandan men are even worse about condoms than American and European ones; the sex workers interviewed for this article say that only about 20% of clients will agree to use one,  even when the worker tells them she is HIV+.  The problem is that many workers there will provide bareback (“live” in Ugandan slang) on demand, so a woman who insists on condoms is at a competitive disadvantage.

See No Evil

A New Zealand court has sentenced a man to three months in prison for downloading cartoon porn.  Ronald Clark has previous convictions for sexually abusing a minor, but the Japanese hentai he watched…[involved only] drawings…[and these were not even of humans, but rather] “elves and pixies, which led to concerns the images were linked to child sexual abuse…“

The More the Better (TW3 #4)

Heidi Fleiss…is…helping to renovate Dennis Hof’s Love Ranch…in Crystal, Nevada… “this…was very similar to a women’s penitentiary…You had to go through all these weird bars and buzzers, and someone’s peering out the little peephole, scoping you up and down… It was really a creepy feeling.”  [Fleiss says she wants the brothel to be] ”…not the dirty little secret where people drive up and sneak in…and then afterwards they’re full of shame…It’s something where people are so proud to be here, not only do they come back, but bring their friends back.”

The Notorious Badge (TW3 #15)

In The Client List…Jennifer Love Hewitt plays a struggling housewife who takes a rub-down side job in order to support her kids after her husband disappears.  The show…has always struck us as more campy nonsense than an accurate portrayal of the erotic massage business.  But how could we tell?  We asked an escort to watch the show and help us tell fact from fiction…

Little Boxes

Young people being pragmatic and sensible about sex?  We can’t have that!

…around 85 per cent of sexually active teens in the Bahamas are engaging in some kind of transactional sex…the majority of middle and high schoolers…are not sexually active.  But of those who are, the majority are involved in risky behaviour…Transactional sex…differs from prostitution in the sense that only a portion of the needs of the person providing the sex are met through the practice…“Many young people put themselves through high school and college in this way…They feel that if a man wants to deal with them he has to pay in some way and they are not prostituting themselves by doing this,” [NGO official Prodesta] Moore said…

Somehow I doubt an American court would accept “this isn’t prostitution because I have another source of income” as a defense.

First They Came for the Hookers…

What selfless devotion to duty!  Several different Oklahoma “law enforcement” agencies partied for four months at a strip club in order to “keep the citizens safe” from the scourge of private, consensual sex!

A Coweta strip club was busted on prostitution charges…Cherokee County deputies [investigated] the Secret Cavern strip club [for] a total of four months…[Alcohol Beverage Laws Enforcement Commission] agent [Pedro] Zardeneta…[said] “different agencies from different parts of the state worked well together to keep the citizens safe”…

The Widening Gyre

Dear “Sex Trafficking” Fetishists, please keep up the good work; we couldn’t possibly make y’all look as ridiculous as y’all make yourselves look:

Dear Michelle Obama…you were recently quoted as saying that Beyonce is a great “role model” to your two daughters…I think it’s time to stop suggesting to very young girls that ultimate feminine success…comes with the…expectation for them to undress…Variations of Beyonce’s body suit can be found in brothels, strip clubs and red light districts across the world – where sex is for sale…Remember that in the USA, the average age of a girl when she is trafficked for sex for the first time is 13…by drug dealers who promise her a celebrity lifestyle, clothes like the ones Beyonce wears…we are feeding a demonic myth that women must make themselves sexually available to enjoy ultimate success…It can take years of a young girl’s life away from her when she tries to escape a life of abuse at home…only to be sold for sex, beaten, and made addicted to drugs…

Bogeymen

A study conducted by a University of Ottawa criminology professor has confirmed what sex workers and those in the industry have said and known for years — the laws meant to protect sex workers from exploitation by targeting people who work in the industry but don’t actually do sex work end up putting those who do at much greater risk…These could include drivers…security personnel…website designers or photographers…receptionists…or the more traditional pimps or madams…Under current Canadian laws, all of those people, even the ones doing jobs that have mainstream counterparts, could be criminally charged…[despite the fact that] anything a third party could do to exploit a sex worker is already illegal if it were done to someone else…

Too Young To Know

Another sign of the decay of “sex trafficking” hysteria: even the most ignorant, dysphemism-riddled “sex trafficking” scare story chock-full of bogus statistics (“About one-third [of runaways] will be approached by a sex trafficker within 48 hours…the average life span for victims is seven years“) may admit to some real truth these days; this one, for example, recognizes that “pimps” don’t abduct screaming girls from their middle-class homes.  It will be interesting to watch as they start contradicting each other.

Bottleneck

…Jules Kim – migration project manager at Scarlet Alliance…told the [federal] inquiry into slavery and human trafficking…[that] the  current “scatter-gun” approach in which police look for trafficking victims by raiding Asian brothels was an “enormous waste of time, resources and misdirected energy…that has resulted in a gap between law enforcement bodies and…sex industry workers…People change the nature of their work to avoid that harassment…because constant raids on your business have an implication…None of the cases involved deception or trickery of the fact the person would be doing sex work.  Instead of an evidence-based approach addressing real vulnerabilities, Australia’s approach continues to try to detect the mythical trafficking victim and trafficker that is a media-driven stereotype”…

Poe Folks

According to a report released in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, watching porn only affects [young adult] sexual behavior in a negligible way.  Other influences such as personality type, educational and family background and poverty hold more girth than viewing sexually explicit material.  The study…surveyed 4,600…people between the ages of 15 and 25 living in the Netherlands during 2008-2009…

Another Small Victory (TW3 #133)

The fight in the SCOTUS over the “anti-prostitution pledge” began Monday.  On the side of Good:  The Open Society Foundation, the ACLU, the Cato Institute, the Gates Foundation and even such unlikely supporters as Fox News, the New York Times and MSNBC.  On the side of Evil:  The usual suspects, including the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.  Here’s Melissa Gira Grant’s look at the battle-lines as they were set up on Monday; note the important point that the whole thing has been framed as a question of free speech (hence the support of otherwise-hostile media outlets) rather than a referendum on the rectitude of the War on Whores.  No matter which way this goes, the persecution will go on until our “allies” stop vomiting out moronic filth like “Sex work is everywhere.  It is a brutal system.  It is an exploitative system.  Nobody thinks it’s OK.”

Big Sister (TW3 #138)

An excellent article, though I must point out that only someone hopelessly mired in the “left-right” myth could seriously consider Iceland “ultra-liberal”:

Ultra-liberal Iceland wants to ban online pornography…[as] the latest step in its attempts to eliminate the sex industry entirely.  In 2009 it introduced fines and jail terms for those who patronise prostitutes (whom it treats as victims).  In 2010 it outlawed strip clubs…No country has yet wholly succeeded in controlling commercial sex, either through legalisation or criminalisation…Iceland’s proposal is in its early stages and may lose momentum after an election on April 27^th, which the government is expected to lose.  But its plan puts it in some odd company.  Saudi Arabia similarly bans strip clubs, prostitution and pornography…Prostitution has proved hard…to police and stamp out…[but] regulating pornography is hardest of all.  Distributing and selling it has been illegal in Iceland since 1869…[but] a ban would be legally dubious, technically unfeasible and ineffective, argues Smari McCarthy…of the International Modern Media Institute…In an open letter to Ogmundur Jonasson, the interior minister, he and other opponents compared banning online pornography to repression in China, Iran and North Korea.  Iceland’s constitution forbids censorship…and…Studies in America, Denmark, Germany…Sweden…China, Finland and Japan…show that as pornography became increasingly available, the number of rapes in those countries remained stable or even decreased…

Anatomy of a Boondoggle (TW3 #314)

Florida rapists are cleverer, excusing themselves via the moral panic du jour:

…Police in Florida [went nude] during an undercover prostitution investigation at a Hallandale Beach massage parlor…and…arrested three women…attorney…Howard Finkelstein…said. “It is seedy, back-alley, icky, and we don’t want our cops doing that, especially so when it’s meaningless.”  But Florida ranks third in the nation in the number of reported cases of human trafficking…”This is not just an act of solicitation, but an organized crime effort,” [said] Police Chief Dwayne Flournoy…”It is not just a street-walker. It is a more sophisticated operation…”

The More the Better (TW3 #314)

She hated it so very much that she married a client and went on to own a brothel.  That’s deep hatred, y’all!

Linda Fondren, a mayoral candidate in Vicksburg, Miss., not only admits to a past life in prostitution, she says her husband was one of her Johns.  ”I was a working girl in a legal brothel over 30 years ago.  It’s true, my husband was my client…[we've] been married for 28 years”…Fondren tried to hold off making that admission for weeks…she…[says] she only did it to support herself after she got pregnant at age 14 and…her mom died of cancer…“I hated it.  I hated it.”  She also said that she would not support legal prostitution if elected…

That last bus-throwing line earns her a nomination for my Hall of Shame, though she’ll have to be still more disgusting to actually be inducted.

Held Together With Lies (TW3 #316)

Step 1:  Define some normal behavior as a problem.  Step 2:  Redefine it so you can claim it’s “growing”.  Step 3:  Increase “regulation” so as to narrow the bottleneck for “legal” behavior:

After years of dispute, Germany’s center-right governing coalition has agreed to enact tougher penalties for human trafficking and forced prostitution…and [to] more strictly regulate the commercial activities of brothels…brothel operators will need special authorization…authorities will be required to enforce hygienic standards and operators will be screened for prior criminal offences…recently, a report by the European Union…showed that human trafficking in Europe has risen sharply.

Step 4 (early next year):  Complain that “criminality” has increased, and repeat step 3.  Proceed until full criminalization is achieved.

The End of the Beginning

Down near the end of this article about another idiotic and dangerous “sex trafficking” law is a reason for hope:  “A bill focused on tightening punishments for pimps…[which] would require some to register as sex offenders, is progressing in [Texas]…Opponents believe the…requirement for sex offender registration may overwhelm an ‘overly broad database that includes too many offenders who are not threats to the community’…”  In other words, these opponents recognize the “pimp menace” as hype and the “sex offender registry” as far too large.  The same could be said for the reporter covering this story in which a Florida police department is claiming that the law says it “has to” humiliate so-called “sex predators” with huge red warning signs in their yards; she seems extremely skeptical of these theatrics, and asks a number of very sensible questions which the police chief of course answers dishonestly and smugly.

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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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That Was the Week That Was (#313)

We are simply sisters, mothers, neighbors and friends. We shop where you shop, we vote where you vote and we pay taxes like the rest of you.  -  Kristen DiAngelo

Cops and Condoms

…Bill Gates has…[offered] a $100,00 grant…to…develop “the next generation of condom”.  Though condoms are the most reliable…method to protect against pregnancy and STIs, it doesn’t take your ex-boyfriend to tell you how much they kind of suck (oh, and will he tell you).  So the foundation is requesting proposals for a…condom that “significantly preserves or enhances pleasure, in order to improve…regular use”…

Advice for Clients

Amanda Brooks published her own set of tips for clients; I think it’s worthwhile for a gentleman to read as many of these as he comes across, because every woman is different and may include something others didn’t think important.

Lying Down With Dogs

Ask yourself once again:  Is this really the company you want the US to keep?

Egyptian prosecutors ordered the detention of 17 women and a Lebanese man…[for]…commercial phone sex…security forces raided [their] office…and confiscated phones and computer devices…Investigations showed “gang members” recruited female university students through job ads in newspapers and then agreed with them to perform acts “that run contrary to morality”…

Sales Pitch

Sweden says its “model” has reduced prostitution and deters clients:  “[A] newspaper…published an advert about a fictional 19-year-old [sex worker]…Over the weekend, the phone had 130 missed calls and seven texts.  After a week, the number had grown to 287 calls and 57 texts…[a] local police [spokesman claimed]…the callers were more curious than interested in buying sex…”  What a pathetic rationalization!  Here’s the real attitude of Swedes toward the law:

Down Under

Can you imagine American cops contradicting a prohibitionist politician’s lies?

Police say they’ve seen no evidence to back up [a New Zealand] MP’s claims that girls as young as 13 are working as prostitutes in south Auckland…Asenati Lole-Taylor says there is “growing prevalence” of underage girls selling sex…and she’s backing a bill to ban all street prostitution and confine sex work to brothels…[she also claims] she has witnessed police dealing with young prostitutes …That was news to police Area Commander…Chris de Wattignar.  “It’s not something that police have seen ourselves.  We also work with a number of agencies and community partners in the Otara town centre and that’s certainly not the information we have”…

Decentralization

The US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has [issued] regulations on…Bitcoin…there’s been zero regulation…[so far, because that] would essentially admit that it’s legitimate…The nature of Bitcoin makes it untraceable so unless firms are coaxed into cooperation, it’s hard to imagine the regulations being enforced.

Droit du Seigneur

“A former Bolshoi ballet dancer has called the acclaimed company a ‘giant brothel’…Anastasia Volochkova claimed that female dancers were forced to sleep with wealthy patrons…”

September Q & A

Though the main Wikipedia entry for “Prostitution” is an unusable (and uncorrectable) mess due to aggressive sabotage by neofeminists, there is a new article on “Migrant Sex Work”  which is comprehensive, fact-based and non-judgmental and includes citations from many good writers like Laura Agustín, Elizabeth Bernstein, Pardis Mahdavi, Nick Mai and Rhacel Parrenas.  Here’s hoping the author is able to keep control of it.

Thought Experiment

Charlotte Shane’s “’Getting Away’ With Hating It:  Consent in the Context of Sex Work” is a brilliant exploration of how the weakness of the concept of “enthusiastic consent” (now being pushed by the “rape culture” folks) is demonstrated by sex work.  This is definitely a must-read, especially for my male readers, as it looks at an area of female sexual psychology most men seem to have difficulty understanding.  Even the comment thread is worth your time, especially the reactions to a Good Men Project writer who apparently thinks it’s only OK to pay a whore if she doesn’t need the job and is only doing it as a hobby or something.

The More the Better

The Australian Woman’s Weekly published “When Sex is Your Day Job”, an interview with five sex workers (including Rachel Wotton) about prejudice, sex work myths, discrimination and sex as a human right.  What a difference from the United States!

Above the Law

…New Jersey [prison guard]… Juan R. Stevens, 50, was charged with…sexual assault and…criminal restraint…Stevens would call…escorts…[and tell them]  he was a police officer in order to intimidate them into having sex with him for free…

A War for Peace (TW3 #11)

For once, I agree with a Femen leader’s analysis; too bad they don’t see it also applies to sex work:

A 19-year-old Tunisian activist who was threatened with death by stoning after posting topless pictures of herself online has reportedly been admitted to a psychiatric hospital.  The woman, known only as Amina, posted the photographs…to the Femen-Tunisian Facebook page…Amina’s aunt claimed…”She had decided to kill herself and so posted nude pictures of herself online.”  [Femen leader Inna] Shevchenko described the move as “a typical way of reacting to a woman’s demand to be free – they say she’s gone crazy or is being too emotional”…

Whorearchy

A…Mexican politician who…[appeared] in a…lingerie video is taking legal action against political rivals who claim she was [an] “escort girl.”  Giselle Arellano says the…accusations resulted in her failing to win the nomination of Mexico’s conservative National Action Party (PAN)…She wants the election annulled on the grounds that she was “slandered” by her rivals…Arellano…resides in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she has done stints as a model and also runs a small company that offers “concierge services” to visitors.  She was running for a seat in the Zacatecas State Legislature that is reserved for Mexicans who emigrate abroad…

Besides conventional services, Black Rose Services plans bachelor parties and group excursions to strip clubs and only takes clients by referral.

Bogeymen

Microsoft recently sponsored a “hackathon” based on the theme “combating human trafficking”, and a story on the ever-credulous NPR reports that one of the entries is a smartphone app that middle-class teenage girls who are suddenly “trafficked” by surprise (presumably by “pimps” leaping out at them from bushes) can use to surreptitiously “connect with resources, like a hotline number or a chat room where they can get help.  ‘One of the requirements of this project was to make it covert, so it’s not easily detectable…and [that] it’s for girls ages 11 to 21.’  So the app, which they call Blossom, is disguised to look like it’s just about fun for teens…”  Because captives would certainly be allowed to keep their phones, and university-age adult women are interested in the same sorts of games as 11-year-olds.

Bottleneck

“Authorities” not only refuse to recognize the damage licensing laws do, but often insist on congratulating themselves that they’re “helping” sex workers:

Saskatoon’s new adult services licensing bylaw…gives police new…powers to keep a closer watch on a large part of the sex industry…Anyone advertising sexual services…is now required to get a licence from the city…This is…taking part of the sex trade out of the shadows to protect vulnerable women, police and city officials say…”Prostitution is not against the law.  If a person is working at a hotel and communicating in a private place, then they are not committing a criminal offence”…

And that obviously wouldn’t do, so they had to find a way to make it into one.  For our own good, of course.

King of the Hill

North Carolina’s entry into the “trafficking hub” competition is especially hilarious for its claim that rural areas with low populations are “attractive” to those in the “sex trafficking trade”:

…On Eagles Wings Ministries plans to [build]…a haven for girls involved in the sex-trafficking trade…Gaston County provides a location that’s close enough to Charlotte to help girls there, but far enough away to keep traffickers at bay…North Carolina has become a hotspot for human trafficking…[due to] major highways and interstates, transient populations and large rural areas…

Book Reviews (October 2012)

Two of the authors of books from this column (Rob Arthur of You Will Die and Laura Agustín of Sex at the Margins) were interviewed on the subject of what inspired them to write those books; I think you’ll find their answers illuminating.

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (TW3 #50)

It’s a very hopeful sign when a review of a movie based in “trafficking” myth can conclude with this passage:  “Eden…[is] not a documentary, it isn’t entertainment, and…[it] sure as heck isn’t art.  It’s just a message, screaming on and on at people who agreed with the point before they bought a ticket.”

The Public Eye (TW3 #131)

More on the escort from American Courtesans who was arrested after complaining to police about a stalker:

Last month Lora LePoudre, who goes by the escort pseudonym Hilary Holiday, was arrested by the Eden Prairie Police department in Minnesota following an anonymous tip off by a neighbor and a subsequent sting operation…Neighbors in her family-friendly condo complex [said] they were thankful police had arrested her…

As you may remember, there was no “complaint” except from Hilary herself; the reporter also cherry-picks neighbors, spews inanities like “family-friendly” and misquotes Kristen DiAngelo as saying escorts are “very different” from other sex workers, when actually she said there was a difference between free and coerced prostitution.

Skin To Skin

…The head of the Essonne department…Jerome Guedj…called for allowing sex surrogates…as part of regular social services…[noting] that [they]…are permitted in some other European countries…But…[removed] the term…just ahead of the vote…after coming under criticism for opening the door to legalized prostitution…a national ethics council…ruled that authorizing sex surrogates would essentially “merchandise the human body”…

But while France says it’s OK to neglect disabled folks in order to “send a message” to dirty whores, New Zealand sees stories like this one:

I hired a sex worker for my late 93-year-old father.  He had dementia and lived in a nursing home when he said to me, “You’ll need to find me a woman”…I took his request seriously [because]…I’m a disability support worker and I’ve seen how an individual’s sexuality needs to be considered…Touching Base put me in contact with…the person they thought most suitable:  ’Emma’…After time with Emma, my father’s well-being and consequently his behaviour improved…He wasn’t as agitated.  He didn’t obsess over things like he used to.  He was serene, happy and relaxed…

For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (TW3 #139)

The Indian government has now completely reversed its sneaky criminalization attempt:  “Sex workers and women’s rights activists across India have welcomed the…move to drop the word ‘prostitution’…from the amended…Penal Code.  The new formulation targets sexual exploitation and not adult consensual sex work…”

Dutch Threat

What could possibly go wrong?

There is considerable sympathy among Dutch MPs for moves to get tougher on people who visit prostitutes and don’t report suspected exploitation or abuse…The senate…is currently considering legislation that would force prostitutes to sign up to an official register.  Clients who fail to check if a girl is registered, could face prosecution…[some] want to go further and say clients should be prosecuted for failing to report to the authorities if they suspect a woman may be being abused or forced to work as a prostitute…

King of the Hill (TW3 #312)

Oregon is really ramping up the hysteria; between two different stories on the same legislative/cop antics we are told that “trafficking happens in small towns” to 9-year-olds, that “80 children are victims of sex trafficking each year”  in Portland, that prosecutors want to use “racketeering laws” to prosecute whoever a girl names as her “pimp” after being jailed indefinitely (for her own good, of course), and that “men looking to buy sex from minors describe the victims they want to order.” All this on the word of unnamed women who present no evidence; you know, kind of like witch trials.

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Dutch Threat

Man seems to be an animal whose capacity for lies is only equalled by his credulity; it does no good to let battalions of cats out of bags, to produce whole harems of naked facts, people eat the same three meals daily deception, and are always ready to turn with fury upon the purveyors of bagless cats and facts undraped.  -  John Dos Passos

For some time now, anti-sex politicians have been working to undermine the Netherlands’ legendary tolerance of sex work.  Using the “trafficking” hysteria as an excuse and branding almost any male who has a relationship with a sex worker a “pimp”, these stealth-prohibitionists have made it much more difficult to get a brothel license, and in 2006 tried to revoke the licenses of 30 established brothels.  In September of 2007 the city closed more than a third of the famous windows (by buying the buildings) and commissioned a study, which was published in 2010; it’s 232 pages long and available only in Dutch, but here is the conclusion and summary in English.  Among its more interesting findings: underage prostitution is essentially nonexistent in Amsterdam, as are coercion and other wrongs among the roughly 20% of whores who are independent escorts and the roughly 40% who work from clubs or private incalls.  It estimated the fraction of window prostitutes who were coerced to be 8%, and the fraction of the entire sex worker population involved in “wrongs” of any kind to be about 10%.

Of course, prohibitionists insist that this is a lie (or the result of “brainwashing”, “Stockholm syndrome”, “false consciousness”, etc), and proclaim (without any evidence whatsoever) that a whopping 90% of all Dutch whores are somehow coerced, exploited or otherwise harmed.  Thanks to their efforts a massive police raid in search of “trafficking victims” was launched in April 2011 and found…none.  Not a single blessed one, despite the detention and interrogation of 157 women.  But prohibitionists never let little things like facts stop them, so they continued to push for “reforms” and “action”, all the while desperately searching for any kind of flimsy rationalization for their demands.  But then they got what must have seemed like a godsend:

In the Fall of 2011, Parool and Algemeen Dagblad published the first stories of prostitute “Patricia Perquin”.  She described the ways of the Amsterdam Wallen from the inside.  It is her “true story”, as she later stated on the cover of her book…In revealing articles she led her readers into a world of sex, violence, humiliation, and exploitation…[she described herself as] tall, slim, blond [and] D-cup…[and] says she got into prostitution after having built up a 150,000 Euro debt due to shopping addiction.  She…managed to pay it off in four and a half years…working through ten thousand clients.  Her record is thirty-one in one day.

Patricia Perquin’s articles made a deep impression.  Publishing house Prometheus contracted her for a book.  In March 2012 the bestseller Achter het raam op de Wallen (“Behind a Window in the Wallen”) was released…[and soon] producer Talpa developed a TV series…The stories attracted the attention of Amsterdam Alderman Lodewijk Asscher, now the Deputy Prime Minister…[who was] very busy with [a project to] clean up the Wallen area.  He took Patricia so seriously that he had a number of long conversations with her.  “If one wants to get a realistic picture of what is happening in the Wallen all you need is to read Perquin’s book,” he said.  Her tale strengthened him in his mission:  stricter actions against exploitation.  Perquin penetrated deeply into the world of Amsterdam policymakers…meeting with Mayor Eberhard van der Laan.  “Her book moved me and it gives a very clear picture of what is happening on the Wallen,” he said in the Senate in June 2012, pleading for a quick introduction of a new prostitution law…

Perquin was instrumental in developing some of the “reforms” I’ve recently reported, such as raising the legal age of prostitution to 21 and demanding fluency in the Dutch language of the 70% of sex workers who are not Dutch nationals (thus dramatically expanding the illegal hooker underclass and facilitating exploitation).  Needless to say, the Amsterdam sex work community wanted to know who this prohibitionist shill really was:

The first cracks in her story begin to show when prostitutes call Metje Blaak, former spokeswoman of the prostitution advocacy organization, De Rode Draad.  “Nobody had ever heard of her.  They asked me where Patricia worked.  They wanted to work where she worked because she made such good money.  She had sometimes seven clients in one day, whereas if you do well on the Wallen, you might get four.”  There was also suspicion on Hookers.nl…

Of course, the politicians couldn’t be bothered to check up on her; if they had, they might not have been so quick to lionize her.  After giving a lengthy radio interview, she was recognized by people who knew her in the past not as a sex worker, but rather as a disgraced journalist named Valerie Lempereur:

Lempereur…has worked in both the Netherlands and Belgium, among others for Nieuwe Revu, Story, TV Family, and Het Laatste Nieuws.  Many…well-known people…accuse her of lies and deceit.  In the Nineties Lempereur was fired on the spot by crime reporter, Peter R. de Vries, on account of “fraud and deceit, committed more than once,” he wrote in an open letter to Trouw…She was born [in Zeeland] as Daniël…[and] had [gender-reassignment] surgery many years ago…she was addicted…to heroin…for eight years…and…sentenced to prison for several months, for drug theft…[after she] sneaked into hospitals…to steal the goods, dressed as a nurse…A well-known window owner who wants to remain anonymous, says he knew Valérie around 2000 as a prostitute in the Singel area.  That contradicts the [claim] that Lempereur began working only five years ago, in all innocence.  From the four and half years she [allegedly] worked in the cribs, she also managed for two years a publishing company in Belgium.  It’s not clear how she did that with simultaneously working ten thousand clients on the Wallen.  Her book also doesn’t say a word about the effect of her transsexuality on her work in the crib…

Though the story has been building since March of last year, it was only broken at last by the newspaper De Volkskrant on March 9^th, with the following note:

De Volkskrant has repeatedly asked Valerie Lempereur for a reaction on the veracity of her book and articles.  She has neglected our requests.  Instead, she applied twice for a temporary injunction to prevent the revelation of her identity.  Friday night…the judge decided that De Volkskrant can publish this article.

And a good thing, too; the anti-whore momentum has been building so strongly that a socialist representative named Myrthe Hilkens has even been able to start pushing for the Swedish model.  Will the exposure of this fake be able to stop the descent of the Netherlands into prohibitionist madness, or will the busybodies just find a new sock puppet (perhaps they can borrow Justine Reilly from Ruhama?)  Only time will tell.

(I wish to express my deep appreciation to regular reader and die-hard sex worker ally Frans van Rossum, who not only called these articles to my attention but also invested a great deal of time and effort in preparing English translations for me.  Thank you so very much, Frans!)

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Original Sin

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.  -  Emma Goldman

As I have often pointed out, many of the beliefs presented as “political positions” these days are actually religions, and that includes those which sell themselves as “scientific” or “atheist”.  Any organized group which insists on “rigid adherence to a morality and interpretation of reality…derived entirely from knowledge revealed in sacred scriptures by [its] founders…[and] must be accepted unquestioningly by adherents” is a religion, no matter what it calls itself or whether it has a definable deity; it is based in faith, not science or logic, and any attempt to understand and deal with it as anything other than a religion is doomed to failure.  This is why the “sex trafficking” myth is so pernicious; its adherents believe in it just as Christians believe in the divinity of Jesus, and no weight of evidence is sufficient to convince them otherwise.

I chose Christianity as the subject of that analogy because “sex trafficking” mythology is an outgrowth of Protestant theology; as Yvonne Zimmerman points out in her book Other Dreams of Freedom, “the theoretical basis of US government anti-trafficking efforts derives directly from Protestant theology and traditional ideas of what she calls ‘sexually pure and pious womanhood’.”  The Salvation Army was one of the earliest and most aggressive promoters of the “white slavery” panic (the first iteration of “sex trafficking” hysteria), and is still beating that drum (pardon the pun) today; furthermore, the myth-narrative itself is clearly a development from the Satanic Panic, which was itself merely a recrudescence of the intermittent witch-panics so common in post-Reformation Europe.  At first the “trafficking” fetishists were careful to disguise their campaign as a secular one in order to forge an alliance with neofeminists, but as signs of the disintegration of their manufactured hysteria have multiplied in the past year, they have grown more desperate and careless, exposing the fundamentalist Puritanism which underlies the whole paradigm.

Then on February 28^th, the anti-whore crusade experienced a major setback when funding to the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons was sharply reduced as part of more general (but still extremely superficial) cuts in US government spending.  For a short while it looked as though the Trafficking Victims Protection Act might not be re-authorized at all, but at the last minute it was added by Senator Patrick Leahy as a rider to the deceptively-named Violence Against Women Act of 2013, whose passage (despite hysterical claims by whitebread feminists) was a political certainty.  While this extended the unnatural life of the War on Whores until 2017 (note that date), one wouldn’t know it from this article by Janice Shaw Crouse and Brenda Zurita of the conservative Christian group Concerned Women for America, which clearly reveals the true sin-punishing motive behind the “anti-trafficking” cult:

Do senators and representatives even know…[that the bill] they just voted for…included an amendment with egregious problems[?]  The two worst ones are draconian cuts to the…TIP Office…and the…decriminalization of prostitution for minors…The once vaunted TIP Office is now on its way to becoming nothing more than white noise…Ambassador-at-Large John Miller fought hard to protect the office from attempts to dilute its authority and its mission to hold countries accountable in their efforts to end human trafficking through prosecutions and victim protections…[and] the U.S. became the world leader in ending modern-day slavery.  Leahy’s…amendment hands the regional bureaus of the State Department the means to undermine the significance of the annual Trafficking in Persons report…The TIP Office was established to be the central location to direct the United States government’s anti-trafficking efforts.  By dividing that authority, real leadership will be impossible …[the amendment also] slashes the TIP Office funding by more than 70 percent from $7 million to $2 million.  This will make it impossible for the TIP Office to fulfill its statutory mandate as the agency responsible for leading and coordinating the Federal government’s anti-trafficking efforts.  Without a strong TIP Office, the TVPA will never be faithfully implemented and trafficking issue decisions will inevitably be subordinated to such traditional agency concerns as maintaining good relations with foreign governments…

On the domestic side…senators and representatives voted to endorse the decriminalization of prostitution for minors in the United States.  Did they do this because there are many, many minors being arrested for prostitution?  According to the latest Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports, there were only 763 arrests of minors…for “prostitution and commercialized vice” crimes in 2011…the DOJ will encourage states to prohibit the charging or prosecution of a minor for engaging in or attempting to engage in prostitution.  While this sounds like a compassionate thing to do, it may actually lead to an increase in the number of minors in prostitution…gangs are using prostitution to make money…While pimping would still be illegal…imagine what will happen to minors who think that prostituting is a good way to make money…How many of them will join up with a gang or a pimp to sell their bodies and then facing the horrific reality of the decision…Many will see their pimps as their boyfriend [sic] and will not self-identify as a victim [sic] of sex trafficking.  When law enforcement does not have the power to arrest and through that arrest get the minor into a rehabilitation program, minors may remain trapped.  When the judicial system no longer has the authority to keep victims in rehabilitation programs through an arrest charge, the victims will be able to walk away from a shelter anytime they choose.  Most will walk right back into the arms of their pimps…

One can practically see these busybodies’ faces turning purple and the veins standing out on their necks.  While their anger over the partial defunding and potential marginalization of their Holy Mission is understandable, their real apoplexy is reserved for the idea that without the threat of being manhandled and caged by the Soldiers of the Righteous, thousands of junior Jezebels may voluntarily enter into sex work and not even see that they are helpless victims of dirty, dirty sex!!!  And what’s more, without the cudgel of law, girls will be able to make decisions for themselves rather than being forced to endure brainwashing designed to convince them of their sinful, fallen state!

The increasing prevalence of articles like this one, which so transparently emphasize Christian dogma of sexual sin, guilt and punishment, are a welcome development to those who support sex worker rights.  The more closely “trafficking” rhetoric is linked to anti-sex, anti-choice Christian demands such as criminalization of abortion and suppression of casual sex, the more non-Christians and moderate Christians will be repelled from it, and the faster the coalition which has driven the hysteria for a decade will collapse.

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That Was the Week That Was (#310)

If we [can’t] get the prohibition on sex work repealed, we [will] never end up hanging on to our abortion rights…it’s the same piece of property.  -  Margo St. James

Amsterdam

Dutch “authorities” narrow the bottleneck again and will no doubt be surprised when illegal prostitution increases:  “The city of Amsterdam…will raise the legal age of prostitutes from 18 to 21 and…close brothels during the early morning hours…Amsterdam says it wants to decrease the number of sex workers…to fight crime generated by prostitution…”

The Slave-Whore Fantasy

Yet another example of what real sex slavery looks like:

A sex worker who was…held hostage for two…days broke her legs and back when she jumped out a sixth-floor window…Benjamin Gaston and Johnny Jackson have been charged with kidnapping and raping the…woman…Gaston…stole her cellphone, money and identification…hit her and held a pillow over her face, telling her, “You’re…working for me and making me money.”  The next day, [she] was taken to another apartment…where there were six or seven additional men waiting to have sex with her, including Jackson…The woman tried to escape…by using her jacket as a rope…[but] fell to the ground…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

I just love it when they feed on one another.  In Stockholm, “Police…were surprised…to find that a man they had arrested for buying sex from a prostitute was the duty prosecutor to whom they were obliged to report the crime…”, and in New York, “Officer Luis Gutierrez…was on duty when he allegedly offered a prostitute money…[but she] was an undercover cop…”

Decentralization

Bitcoin is now the world’s best-performing currency:

…The number of coins in circulation grows very slowly–there are about 10.8 million…now, and that will increase to 21 million by 2140…growth…[can’t] keep up with demand and so the value of the currency [grows]…The U.S. dollar value of a Bitcoin is up from…$4.87 [a year ago]…to $31.09 today.  It has appreciated by over 100% from the end of 2012 alone, when the quoted price was $13.48…And it’s also going mainstream, reports in the Guardian and Forbes  suggest…

The Forbes article reports that “Silicon Valley Bank…and…Coinlab….will [soon] allow North America-based…users to directly convert money from dollars to bitcoin, without having to pay the hefty transaction fees associated with transferring money abroad…”

Against Their Will

Spanish police were puzzled when thirty Romanian whores they “rescued from exploitation by a network of pimps” immediately returned to work; “none of [them] asked for protection or availed themselves of assistance…to return to their country” despite police claims of beatings and debt bondage.  Meanwhile, Filipino “authorities” continued their weird crusade against “cybersex”:  “…police raided…[an] alleged…cybersex den…[and] rescued 12 [young men]…“They referred to themselves as ‘chatters’ because they chat online…as they perform sexual acts in front of the web cam,” said…officer…Romano Cardiño…”

Peeping Toms

Dennis Green admits he offered another man $20…for sex…[but his] defense…could have a far-reaching impact…legalizing prostitution in Ohio…Scott Nazzarine, Green’s public defender…believes there’s no way what Green did can be deemed a crime in today’s society.  He compares it to other acts that at one time were illegal – premarital sex, the sale of sex toys, abortion, contraception…but now are legal, protected rights…“It’s about privacy rights and constitutional rights and the government’s intrusion into them…Any justification for prostitution laws is just a pretext for morality”…

Nazzarine is of course totally right and the judges know it, but I don’t think this is the case that will do the job because there’s still too much hypocrisy afoot.  Still, this won’t be the last one, and eventually individual rights must triumph just as they have in other sexual matters.

We Told You So

The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women is the only large “anti-trafficking” organization which fights the use of bogus statistics and conflation of sex work with exploitation; it’s calling for papers for its Anti-Trafficking Review on the topic “Following the Money: Spending on Anti-Trafficking” …“Lacking is analysis of…anti-trafficking funds – where they come from, who they go to, what they are meant to do, what they actually achieve, and indeed whether they are needed.”  Two of the suggested topics are analysis of the motives behind “anti-trafficking” funding and questioning ties to law enforcement.

An Ounce of Prevention

A baby…who got immediate treatment now has no detectable [HIV] in her blood…within 30 hours of birth…she…got a cocktail of three drugs at a dose normally reserved for more advanced cases…There is still virus in [her] body.  But…it doesn’t seem to be able to spread from one cell to another…[or damage her] immune system…

The Law of Averages

Emi Koyama exposes journalists who knew the falsity of the “average age of debut in prostitution is 13” myth for three years, yet kept repeating it anyhow:  “While I was glad to see that The Oregonian now officially acknowledges that there is no basis for this…everything…Janie Har…wrote…was already in my three-year old blog post…[written after] I first read the claim…in [Oregonian reporter Elizabeth] Hovde’s column…” Emi details her July 2010 correspondence with Hovde, in which the reporter acknowledged her analysis but made excuses rather than issuing a retraction.  Then finally, last Saturday,

…The Oregonian acknowledges that the claim is baseless! (But why is it rated “half-truth”…and why did they not mention any other study that contradict 12-14 claim?)  I have a feeling that Janie Har read my blog post…she mentions the same Shared Hope report and points out the same problems…If she did read my blog, why did she not speak with me or give me credit…The Oregonian had the opportunity to stop perpetuating the myth for almost three years, and yet failed to do so as recently as this January.  While Janie Har’s column is to be commended, The Oregonian and Hovde need to take responsibility for their part in the falsehood…

Presents, Presents, Presents!

While I was in New York last week, Secret Lives and A Natural History of Rape arrived as gifts from reader “M”.  Thank you very much, both for the books and the good wishes!

Little Boxes

When Melissa King [aged out of] the Delaware foster care system at 18, she did some porn, entered some pageants, and enrolled in college…Last November, King was crowned Miss Delaware Teen USA…[but] she gave up her crown after an explicit video…surfaced on an amateur porn website…Now she’s being publicly shamed by former friends and international news organizations…Pageants and porn are…two sides of a very thin sexual boundary.  And for a young, pretty girl who’s strapped for cash…only one of [them offers it] up-front…

Naked Truth

Melissa Gira Grant continues a strong run of good articles with “Unpacking the Sex Trafficking Panic” in Contemporary Sexuality, the newsletter of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT).  When sex-worker-penned items criticizing a popular narrative appear under the imprimatur of a relatively-conservative organization, it’s clear the tide has begun to turn.  Also, here’s a good interview with veteran activist Tracy Quan by Caty Simon on Tits and Sass; I promise, I’m not just linking it because it mentions me.

The Birth of a Movement

In this interview with Bitch magazine, Margo St. James discusses the beginning of the sex worker rights movement, how the neofeminists turned mainstream feminism against us, “sex trafficking” hysteria and the future of sex worker activism.

Coming Out

“Dear Prudence” gives what I think is a reasonable response to an unconsciously-bigoted man wondering if he should “out” a sex worker friend to his other friends.  Unfortunately, the graphics give the impression that the woman goes around looking like a Hollywood streetwalker when in reality, the uptight questioner’s issue is that she looks just like any other woman.

Much Ado About Nothing (TW3 #44)

An escort who appeared on a video claiming that Sen. Robert Menendez…paid her for sex has told Dominican authorities that she was instead paid to make up the claims and has never met or seen the senator…a local lawyer had approached her and a fellow escort and asked them to help frame Menendez…That lawyer has in turn identified a second Dominican lawyer who he said gave the woman a script and paid her to read the claims aloud…

Texas Tall Tales

The “Facebook pimps” myth just keeps growing and growing, which really isn’t a surprise since it combines three of the moral panics du jour: “sex trafficking”, gangs and the evil, evil internet.  This sort of thing has been happening for as long as there have been exploitative men and naive, sheltered girls with romantic delusions; it’s not a “trend”, not limited to Facebook and not an international conspiracy.  CNN also fails to understand that three cases in a country of 300 million do not an epidemic make, and that 18 isn’t “underage”.

Genetic Fallacy

Yet another example of judges ignoring a law’s unconstitutionality on the grounds that those challenging it have not been sufficiently harmed by it:

The Supreme Court…[dismissed] a challenge to a…federal law that allows…interception of electronic communications…[on the grounds] that the lawyers, journalists and human rights organizations that brought the suit cannot prove they have been caught up in the surveillance and thus may not challenge [it]…the 5 to 4 ruling did not touch on…constitutionality…and challengers said it will be almost impossible now to get that issue before a court…

Profound Ignorance (TW3 #51)

An even more thorough refutation of the moronic prohibitionist claim that sex is somehow different from every other human activity:

“The assumption that liberal prostitution laws lead to an increase in human trafficking is refuted.  On the contrary…since…liberalisation, there has been more police activity but…significantly less suspects, convicts and victims.  That’s…an indicator that…disentanglement of prostitution from criminal environments is increasingly successful.” – Volker Beck, MP…“In the year 2000…[German officials] registered…926 victims.  In the year 2011, there were 640.  This equates to a decrease of just under 31 per cent.  If one compares the figures…in 2003 [a year after the prostitution law was passed] and 2011, one sees a certifiable decline of just above 48 per cent”…The…German government thus refutes the claim by Neumayer, Cho and Dreher  that legalised prostitution increases human trafficking…

Déjà Vu (TW3 #135)

More evidence of the evangelical Christian basis for “sex trafficking” mythology and a look inside the perverted minds of prohibitionists:

In the fight against sex trafficking, the Church needs to address the root causes – the ideas…that break the linkage sex has to love, responsibility and children, [said] Lisa Thompson…of…the Salvation Army…Thompson asked [her audience] not [to] divorce…sex trafficking from…prostitution [because]…all prostitution dehumanizes women…”God did not create any woman for the purpose…that she be a cum receptacle.  God did not create the female to be a human being that [johns] are basically masturbating into…sex was never intended to be a job, so let’s not use the language of ‘sex work’”…

That Thompson had to deny that sex work is work is a very good sign indeed.

Caring Professionals

I have long held that professional sex workers need to develop a code of ethics just as other professions have, not only for moral reasons but in order to push back against “authorities” who think they are more qualified than we are to set standards for work they’ve never done.  So I was pleased to hear that the Australian Sex-Positive Sex Industry Association (ASPaSIA) is working on just such a code, and I’ll report on it at full length once it’s finalized later this month.

Unclean Situation (TW3 #138)

Labour TD, Eamonn Maloney, said he did not accept the [claims] in the report on the [Magdalene] laundries…“They…made lots of money,” he said…adding that most commercial laundries in the 1940s and 1950s closed because of competition from the Magdalenes.  “Not only has the church as yet to apologise for their role in operating these prisons, they do also have a role…in compensating people,” he said…The Government has so far refused to say what contribution, if any, it will seek from the orders…

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No Friend of Ours

Thus much for thy assurance know; a hollow friend is but a hellish foe.  -  Nicholas Breton

There is a common misconception that Nevada is more whore-friendly than any other American state, but nothing could be farther from the truth (unless one considers a poultry factory-farmer to be a “friend” of chickens).  Nevada was willing to allow a small number of politically-connected cronies to run brothel ranches (switching from one kind of livestock to another) out in the desert far from human habitation (so the “sex rays” from diseased harlots don’t contaminate real people), but this was only because the state needed a means of drawing tourist dollars; it was equally happy to accept gambling at a time when the majority of Americans viewed it as an unsavory activity.  But while gambling has now become mainstream, Nevada still prefers to keep whores hidden away in the desert like a collection of mummified monsters and pickled curiosities in a roadside tourist trap, and to harshly persecute any who dare show themselves in town.  And because of this, both cops and prohibitionists can sell the moronic and puerile “pimps and hos” masturbatory fantasy and the “sex trafficking” mythology just as effectively in Nevada as in parts of the US where more than a short drive or local phone call would be necessary to interview dozens of people who could debunk them.  Here’s a recent example from a Las Vegas TV station:

Nevada has been named a top sex trafficking destination, where pimps force girls, young women and men into the sex trade.  Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto says Interstate 15 in the south and I-80 in the north are trafficking routes for pimps.  Major events attract the clientele, and the internet creates a cyber-gateway.  “James” says he was a successful, non-violent pimp…[who] was a millionaire only a few years ago, making a lucrative and illegal income selling young women — even girls — for sex.  “The youngest was 10 years old,” James said…“You make $8,000, $15,000 a night in cash, and you’re not paying taxes,” he said…he was never caught for pandering…“You lie to them, tell them you love them, basically say I’ll support you,” he said…at one point, he trafficked as many as 15 to 20 girls in five states…James left the sex trade, finding religion, redemption and recovery in a local church…He speaks out now about his life, hoping his experience will motivate parents to bond with their children…

This one short article is practically a catalog of every stupid myth, including the vast pimp income and Nevada’s entry into the “king of the hill” competition.  And conveniently, “James” doesn’t even have to offer any evidence for any of it (not even assets or a tax return) because the idiots will believe him even without it.  Similar unsubstantiated claims permeate this “sex trafficking” scare story; notice that the same person is behind the hysteria here:

…Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto…plans to introduce [a “sex trafficking” bill which]…would toughen penalties for pimps…[to] 20 years in prison…pimps who sell children on the streets, they would face life in prison…About 103 children, most of them between the ages of 15 and 17, were either arrested or recovered by the Police Department’s Vice Squad in 2012.  But Sgt. Ron Hoier…said that for all the children who police manage to save there are always the ones who fly below the radar…there [are] a few naysayers…who warn…[that] tougher penalties don’t…deter criminals…District Judge William Voy…has been pushing for some sort of safe haven as far back as 2006…

Despite all the “child” nonsense, the average age of the arrestees is “between 15 and 17”, probably closer to 17.  But people like Masto prefer to deny their capacity for decision-making and imagine “pimps” who largely don’t exist  except in the sick minds of prohibitionists.  Because the New Order requires “pimps” to be caged as sacrifices (rather than simply admitting sex work isn’t a crime), the prohibitionists have to come up with ways to manufacture them; Judge Voy’s so-called “safe houses” are actually prisons in which juvenile hookers can be held indefinitely until they are willing to tell prosecutors whatever they want to hear.

As for Masto, that bill of hers (AB67) was written by the Polaris Project and is modeled on California’s CASE Act; like it, the Nevada law would define virtually all sex as prostitution and a wide variety of normal human interaction as “coercion”.  But that’s not all; it also broadens the definition of “sex” to such a degree that there is essentially no way to defend oneself against a charge.  AB67 would empower Nevada prosecutors to charge nearly anyone with “sex trafficking” nearly anyone else, with no physical evidence or victim testimony whatsoever, and to lock that person up for decades…unless, of course, he is willing to plead to some lesser charge to avoid a sentence tantamount to death by slow torture.  This is how universal criminality works: as long as a prosecutor has that kind of absolute power, he can force virtually anyone to do virtually anything he likes.  The modern ruling class has become very good at using moral panics to secure such power, and since whores are the target of the currently-popular panic the worst of it falls on us…even in a state where most Americans wrongly imagine our profession to be legal.

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