Our ambition is really to do as little as possible. – Mats Löfving, Stockholm Chief of Police
If I believed in astrology, I would suspect there had been some unfavorable aspect this week in whatever house or constellation rules police, because I could’ve made this column twice as long and yet featured virtually nothing but horror stories about police brutality and other misbehavior. But despite what the more cynical among you may think, I’m really not trying to upset y’all on purpose; I therefore picked a representative selection and will leave the rest of them to be discovered by a Google search if you’re looking for something to make yourself depressed, angry or both. Our top contributor this week was Jesse Walker, whose selections appear above the Fangoria music mix (which he he also supplied). Joyce Arthur provided the first link below the music, Radley Balko the next two, Popehat the fourth and Walter Olson the fifth; Brooke Magnanti supplied the video and the last link above it. The video is a demonstration of how much American education has declined since 1946; it’s a short film on menstruation produced by Walt Disney Studios, who wouldn’t get anywhere near any sex-related topic nowadays for fear of “controversy”.
- A clever sci-fi short-short in the form of a Twitter tech support complaint.
- Teacher punished for reminding students of their constitutional rights.
- The first generation of terminators is on the way.
- Cops threaten ten-year-old girl with “criminal damage” charge for chalk hopscotch grid.
- Cops murder asthmatic for refusing to assume a position he knew would be fatal.
- Another advantage of life in a workers’ paradise: toilet paper raids.
- Stockholm police ignore rioters, but ticket cars they’ve burned.
- Soviet board games, 1920-1938.
- Where did cops come from?
- The man who believed he was undead.
- Cop murders man for urinating beside a road.
- Cops beat 77-year-old blind man for the “crime” of waiting for a bus.
- Cops beat 14-year-old boy for (literally) looking at them the wrong way.
- Fanatics care only about their causes, never about actual human beings.
From the Archives
- I’m obsessed with crossdressers and paranoid about young women; would an older escort be more understanding?
- Nell Gwyn was born in a brothel and became an actress, a courtesan and mistress to Charles II.
- When I was 12 a strange man helped me escape what might have become a sexual assault.
- I was in a long relationship with a prostitute, and now I feel guilty when I hire escorts. Why?
- Another African country whose anti-whore rhetoric strongly resembles that of the US.
- Zimbabwe’s quest to cut off its collective nose to spite its collective face.
- The disgusting truth about Sweden’s policies of “female empowerment”.
- How Jezebel and other social constructionists give feminism a bad name.
- Why some project their own twisted needs and self-hate onto whores.
- Prohibitionists try to stop sex worker rights advocates with violence.
- An old prohibitionist trick in a new guise: activism via sock puppetry.
- You’ll recognize the rhetoric in this 1985 Satanic Panic documentary.
- Profile of a German sex worker officially trained to help the disabled.
- Don’t go on a call without someone reliable knowing where you are.
- Another advantage to decriminalization: access to the legal system.
- How does a sex worker still desire to make love with her partner?
- How can a man get a driver job with an escort service or brothel?
- An early episode in government attempts to control the internet.
- Why sugar baby relationships are both sensible and rewarding.
- Is having sex for donations to a third party still prostitution?
- The continuing death-spiral of Nicholas Kristof’s reputation.
- The most complained-about advert in the UK since 1995.
- Did you ever have a client who physically repulsed you?
- Irish prohibitionist claims “prostitution isn’t about sex”.
- Yet another actress pretending she isn’t a whore.
- A neofeminist fantasy of pure, psychotic hatred.
- The American pariah caste begins to fight back.
- The Super Psychic Mind Probe powers of cops.
- Do working girls really appreciate gifts?
- A two-part look at my favorite poems.
- Why do you use the word “whore”?
- Are most clients easy to please?