May Eve 2017

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Links #356

I am an engineer.  –  Mats Järlström

I find Soviet cartoons fascinating.  This one, “Cat Concert”, is from 1986 and was provided by Violet Blue.  The links above it were contributed by Rick Horowitz  (“speech”), Radley Balko (“happens”, “talk” & “Progressivism”), Mistress Matisse  (“state”), Scott Greenfield (“prosecutors”), and Franklin Harris (“algorithm”).

• So much for free speech.
• I hate it when this happens.
• Not a police state, no sirree!
• Christians actually walking their talk.
• This is the world that Progressivism built.
• The predictable result of rewarding prosecutors for convictions.
• Don’t let an algorithm pick the illustration for your news article.

From the Archives

• Ordinary anti-streetwalker nonsense bears clear signs of infection by “sex trafficking” tropes.
• Clients per day propaganda has now dropped back down into the realm of the possible.
• “Prince’s only sister set to inherit his estate” isn’t a good enough headline for the Mail.
• First they came for the students, and I said nothing because I was not a student…
• The “sex trafficking” circus needs victims to die for the crowd’s satisfaction.
• Soon we’ll be hearing about how New Hampshire is a “sex trafficking hub”.
• In some places, cops don’t even pretend it’s about “rescuing” sex workers.
• Dear would-be allies, please talk to us before belching up asinine bullshit.
• “A Man for Every Day in the Week”, “Rent”, “Hey Lady” & “Darling Nikki”.
• The only people ever charged with “sex trafficking” in Alaska are whores.
• Guys have offered to pay me with dogs and horses, but never a monkey.
• There can never be too many resources debunking “sex trafficking” pap.
• One inevitable consequence of consensual crime laws: police corruption.
• Uber now wants its drivers to spy on whores and rat us out to the pigs.
• Few sources of sex rays are as dangerous as the names of body parts.
• Schools are rewarded for “finding” what the government wants found.
• Wannabe “pimp” follows script learned from anti-whore propaganda.
• Only good thing about prostitution stings: cops getting arrested.
• When sex is involved, people believe even the stupidest claims.
• Previous columns for May Day and May Eve (Walpurgisnacht).
• The more of Jessica Pliley’s work I read, the more I like her.
• OH MY GOD HE PAID THEM SALARIES! WHAT A MONSTER!
• A good article on Ruhama, the Magdalene nuns’ new front.
• The truth about the anti-whore “reality” show, 8 Minutes.
• Cops, fairy tales, Disney birth control and much more.
• Cops, politicians, “Rage of Thrones” and much more.
• More whore-shaming bullshit from pole dancers.
• An escort is almost killed by a possessive client.
• Is it common for sex workers to use AirBnB?
• Once again: Nevada is NOT whore-friendly.
• SEAF, driver’s licenses, chocolate and hair.
• Whores are better mothers, not worse.
• Absolute genius from Mark Draughn.
• April 2012 and 2013 in retrospect.
• Dealing with a very difficult week.
• “Sex trafficking” is everywhere!
• Another 18 windows closed.
• Rapist cops of the week.
• More filth from Phoenix.

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In the News (#734)

The time [for decriminalization] is now.  In fact, the time was long ago.  –  Sandeep Prasad

Whore Madonnas

Melissa Petro on working while pregnant:

…Moonlite Bunny Ranch sex worker…Summer Sebastian…recently announced that she’s pregnant and that she plans to keep working…for “as long as [she’s] healthy” and her doctor tells her there are no problems…Predictably, comments on her blog and on provocative articles about her suggest the move is selfish and a bid for attention, and that she ought to “put the needs of the child first”—as if financial security while furthering her education isn’t in the best interest of her and her kid.  People criticize Sebastian for exposing herself to risks…but…sex work—with its flexible hours and good pay—is a job that makes sense for an expectant mother…[absurdly] (considering how babies are made) some people just can’t imagine a woman being both a mother and a whore.  The idea that female sexuality and serious work, including the serious work of motherhood, are somehow incompatible is sadly outdated…

Lack of Evidence

Americans like to imagine themselves as ahead of India on women’s rights, but this would never happen in the US:

Observing that the mere presence of women and condoms in a place doesn’t necessarily mean that a brothel was being run there, a [Mumbai] court acquitted and set aside the two-year sentence [a lower court had inflicted on] a…woman accused of running a brothel…The court pointed to the fact that the…women found at the scene, were not examined as prosecution witnesses and neither were any customers found.  “There is nothing to show that victims were exploited or abused”…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic 

I could’ve filed this one under “To Molest and Rape”, but take a look at this monster’s “defense”:

…NYPD [pig]…Alberto Randazzo…sought out mothers on websites such as Match.com and Ashley Madison and…”persuaded them to sexually abuse their children and had them send him pictures and videos of the acts”…Three of the women involved have also been arrested on federal charges…Randazzo received a 28-year sentence, plus eight years of supervised release afterward and a sex-offender registration requirement…he had not only requested pornographic images of children—actual children, not teenagers—but also flew to meet mothers of young children to abuse the kids in person.  “He showed no qualms about drugging a child so that he could watch the child be molested,” wrote U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Rohde…Randazzo’s shameless defense [was] that he developed an addiction to child pornography following the death of his former police partner…

Under Every Bed

All you really need to know about this article is that it un-ironically includes the phrase “an increase in sex trafficking in northwestern Montana“.  What it actually describes is the typical sadistic cops getting their jollies by entrapping horny guys; no “sex slaves” were rescued, no “pimps” were discovered an there was nary a “trafficked child” in sight…which is unsurprising, because Kalispell, Montana has a population of only 22,000.

Paint By Numbers

We’re all familiar with the prohibitionist myth that sex workers are “voiceless”, but these fetishists appear to take that literally:

Advertising students at Portland State University School of Business…In collaboration with the…police…developed a way to help victims of what [fetishists] call modern slavery…their “Red Means Help” campaign launched this month…Signs inside 36 Portland metro area buses tell trafficking victims…to use a red object such as lipstick, toys or sunglasses to signal and [sic] officer or emergency working [sic] that they need help…PSU students plan to place red origami objects around the city at transit stops to spread the word and give victims something red they can use…

Seriously?  These people honestly think that if someone were actually being victimized in some way, they’d sit mutely instead of trying to make themselves understood by gestures?  And that this paralyzing fear would suddenly be lifted because of a magical sign, and the supposed “victims” will jump up and start waving red paper birds around like a semaphore flag?  Who comes up with this infantile rubbish?  This is like something a kindergartener would think of, not an actual design to help people fashioned by sane adults.

Whither Canada?

The kind of essay that’s common in the Canadian press, but rare in the US:

The Trudeau government has a moral obligation to address the public health and safety of all…people in Canada, including sex workers…this human rights issue is intentionally being left off the legislative agenda, which is a serious concern…the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health has condemned the criminalization, full or asymmetrical, of sex work as a violation of the right to health by creating barriers to sex worker’s access to health services…In December 2013…The Supreme Court’s Bedford decision marked a huge step in recognizing sex workers’ rights…Almost immediately, the Harper government communicated their intention to…justify the continued aggressive regulation of…sex workers…Like the laws struck down in 2013, this new regulatory regime fails to comply with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms…The Trudeau government has touted itself as one that promotes, respects and fights for Charter rights; yet, their response to sex workers’ Charter rights is dismal…

Nothing New

Remember how I told you that the (very recently-concocted) tale of Victorian ladies being masturbated by doctors because they didn’t know what orgasms were was a huge pile of elephant excrement?  Here’s a little more evidence for you:

…Matthews auctioneers in County Meath, Ireland, is offering for sale an “antique carved ivory ladies’ companion”…auctioneer Damien Matthews [said]…“We believe the ivory dates back to the 1840s…in India”…The well-travelled man later fought in the Boxer Rebellion in China from 1899 to 1901, which is where it is thought he had the ivory shaped into something more useful…“This…would have been a very loving gift from a husband to wife.  You can see that because the level of detail is incredible, down to the folds of the skin.  There’s a heart carved at the base of it, where her finger would have been, and a receptacle in which she could keep a lock of his hair”…

The Pro-Rape Coalition (#545)

Once again, prohibitionists demonstrate their total contempt for the sex workers they pretend to want to “rescue”:

Netflix’s new documentary Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On is…[a diatribe against] the porn industry.  Now, at least four sex workers feel the show itself has exploited them — by allegedly featuring them without their consent and, in one case, outing a performer’s real name…Gia Paige…initially agreed to appear and did sign a participant release, but changed her mind after…the [“feminist”] directors kept pushing her boundaries and pressuring her into talking about her family…the show revealed her legal name.  During one scene, her Facebook profile is displayed on-screen along with her real first name…Effy Elizabeth, a cam performer, only found out that she was featured…when a friend told her on Twitter.  The series used a publicly available Periscope clip of her with fellow cam performer Autumn Kayy.  Both women are upset the show…used the footage without their permission and did not warn them that it would appear in the series…

Signs 

This is mostly just a hodgepodge of the usual “sex trafficking” nonsense, lies and disinformation:  the exaggerated numbers, the agency denial, the pretense that individual thugs are organized into international cartels, the infantilization of African people & fetishization of Asian & Eastern European women, the pearl-clutching, the calls for greater surveillance & more police power, the anti-sex and “end demand” poison, the myth of female asexuality, and so on.  But what makes it interesting is the first picture I’ve seen of the one and only case of an actual barcode tattoo, found on the wrist of a Romanian woman in Spain in 2012.

To Molest and Rape 

Even though this rapist cop costs taxpayers millions, a newspaper felt compelled to portray him as a hero:

Irwindale [California] paid a $2.75 million settlement…to a young woman who was molested as a teenager by an Irwindale [cop]…for more than a year while she served as a police Explorer Scout…Daniel R. Camerano…pleaded “no contest” in late-2014 to a series of sex crimes for his molestation of the then-14-year-old girl…between May of 2009 and December of 2010.  Camerano, who…also [sent]…sexually suggestive texts messages to another 17-year-old female Explorer Scout in 2012, was sentenced to two years and eight months in state prison and ordered to register as a sex offender for life…the sexual abuse…took place during “ride-alongs” with the [pig]…who served as an advisor to the…Explorer program…department officials were aware…that Camerano was sexually abusing the…[girl] but did not stop his access to [her]…

Instead of the mugshot which would’ve been used for someone murdered by a cop, the paper printed a staged portrait with a caption about what a brave hero this rapist was. I am not making this up.

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The Forms of Things Unknown

At last, it’s here!  After literally years of delays, and months of design and composition, The Forms of Things Unknown is ready for sale!  This time there are two stories you haven’t seen; the first, “Trust Exercise”, opens the book and I gave a sneak preview of it back in December.  But the other, “Eight Minute Warning”, concludes the book and isn’t anything like any other story of mine you’ve ever seen (except that a sex worker is mentioned in passing).  If you’re interested, you’ll just have to buy the book!  Another thing you’ll need to buy it to see is the rest of the fantastic cover art by Chester Brown; see, this one’s a wraparound cover, so the image here is only the front.  The rest is a surprise (and yes, I’m teasing you again).  As with Ladies of the Night, I’ll be selling autographed copies here, but if you plan to buy through Amazon I have a special request:  please purchase your copy in the first week of May, in other words from this coming Monday through the following Sunday.  The reason I ask this is that a lot of sales in a short time will trigger Amazon’s algorithms and make the book much more visible to new readers who don’t know about me yet.  Also, if you like the book please write a review; a large number of positive reviews (I believe it takes 30 or so) will trigger yet another algorithm.  By taking these steps, you can help me in two ways:  once by your kind purchase of the book, and again by making it more visible to new readers; many of them may also buy Ladies of the Night!  As always, y’all have my sincere thanks, and I both hope and believe y’all will love the book!

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Back Issue: April 2014

Most “experts” aren’t even qualified to make decisions for their dogs, much less for millions of people they don’t know.  –  “Zero Intelligence”

One doesn’t generally think of April as a holiday-heavy month, but that’s only because May Eve isn’t that big a celebration any more in most countries outside Scandinavia.  However, there’s also Easter  (most years) and April Fool’s Day, plus the column explaining my annual prank (“Zero Intelligence“); this year I also published two columns  for my Book Launch.  The harlotography was “Jeanne de Clisson“, the fictional interlude “Double X” and the guest columnist Laura Lee; the Cliterati reprints were “Delightful Conversation“, “Habitable Room” and “The Missing Word“; and the Q&A columns were “A Little More Mentoring“,  “Dilemmas” and “The Craving“.  That leaves only “Of Course I Would“, the first hint that I had returned to work; “Slush Fund“, an expose on prohibitionist show pony Rachel Moran’s embezzlement from her “charity”; “Beauty and the Beast“, a look at an odd but not-uncommon female sexual fantasy; “Something Has To Give“, in which I announce that I won’t be doing unpaid guest posts any longer; the self-explanatory “Facts in the Case of Monica Jones; and “Counter-Countermeasure“, an examination of a then-new study backing up the landmark John Jay study.

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In the News (#733)

It is time to declare that sex worker rights are human rights.
–  Camilo Gómez

Shift in the Wind (#328)

George Will, who once had a good mind, is apparently going senile.  But National Review, which hs always been anti-prohibition, should’ve known better than to publish this pap:

It is unclear how many victims of DMST there are because…[most people the law labels] victims [do not consider themselves victims]…They are products of poor or nonexistent parenting…80 percent are addicted…Big sporting events…attract traffickers…[prohibitionist & profiteer Frank] Milstead…says: “Leaving your kid alone at night in his room with [a cell phone]?  You might as well leave him or her in the city park downtown.  Anything is available on a phone”…

Drawing Lines 

The whorearchy here is so thick it can be cut with a knife:

…If you spend enough time in Hollywood, it won’t be long before you start noticing pink and black vans with “TOPLESS MAIDS” painted on the sides wherever you turn.  They’re everywhere…However, unlike [TV show] Famous in Love‘s depiction of topless maids — in which Cassie is a legitimate maid who just so happens to be topless, but otherwise wears normal clothes — real-life topless maids don’t focus so much on actual cleaning.  Instead, topless maids just do a little dusting and “light chores,” which apparently consists of sexy dancing with a Swiffer while dressed in lingerie…One thing Famous in Love does get right is that topless maids are in no way sex workers…

Sorry, Sadie Gennis, but topless maids are indeed sex workers; they make a living by sexual titillation.

Maggie in the Media (#429)

Normally I don’t use this tag in news columns any more, but I wanted to be sure to call attention to the previous interview with Thaddeus Russell, for Reason TV three years ago.  This one’s the second episode of Thad’s new podcast, and it’s generating high praise so I think you’ll enjoy it (and if it inspires you to subscribe to the podcast, so much the better)!

New Excuse

It’s so nice to see others writing about the War on Whores as the new War on Drugs, especially when they cite me:

…both authorities and the public believe sex trafficking is far more common than it is…To inflate the numbers, the American government includes people that know the sex workers personally, or who are just buyers as “pimps,” in the list….decriminalization—that is, to stop regulating sex work among willing adults—is the only tool to fight [exploitation]…Prohibition in one form or another has been used for a long time without good results…by decriminalizing sex work, resources can be devoted to preventing and resolving actual cases of trafficking, not paranoia supported by people with a narrow political agenda…The sex trafficking paranoia is like the new War on Drugs and there is even a bipartisan consensus in opposing sex work.  Conservatives usually oppose legalized sex work on religious, moral, or societal grounds.  Even liberals often oppose it by saying that sex work oppresses women, or assume that all prostitutes are really victims of sex trafficking…

O, Canada! (#617)

Canadian prohibitionists are trying desperately to whip up “sex trafficking” hysteria there to US levels, this time by referring to men trapped by cop sex work stings as “purchasing prostituted children”.  As I’ve pointed out before, one has to wonder what these supposed traffickers do with these “child sex slaves” they “purchase” when they’re not using them; do they store them in hatboxes in the back of the closet, or perhaps hang them on hooks in the garage?  And when they’re done with them, do they just flush them down the loo like unwanted goldfish?  Do any of the idiots who vomit out nonsense like this even bother to think before speaking?

Under Review

The British press, partying like it’s 1999 and nobody’s heard of escort reviews yet:

The language of UKPunting is, in some ways, similar to that of other online review sites: contributors will gripe about a disparity between the appearance on the marketing shots and that of the actual product – the woman…Those bad reviews aren’t just mean, they can really affect business…Even positive reviews on the site can have a negative impact…a sex worker or an offended poster could complain, but only in a way that doesn’t challenge the status quo here, which is vehemently pro-“punter”.  Basically, punters can post offensive, libellous content with impunity…

Broken Record (#636)

Prohibitionists just can’t stop beating this dead horse:

Kentucky’s attorney general is urging people to pay attention to more than horses and parties during the springtime celebrations leading up to the Kentucky Derby…authorities are asking for the public’s help in cracking down on sex traffickers trying to cash in on the crowds expected for the world’s most famous horse race…

To Molest and Rape (#643)

Other classics from this headline writer: “Is the Pope Catholic?” and “Do Bears Shit in the Woods?”

A common theme emerged at a panel discussion on policing and rights…police officers regularly violate the human rights of marginalised minorities such as sex workers and members of the lesbian‚ gay‚ bi-sexual‚ transgender‚ questioning and intersex (LGBTQI) community.  The dialogue‚ hosted by the South African Human Rights Commission‚ heard from Sonke Gender Justice‚ an advocacy organisation against gender-based violence‚ how a survey conducted on sex workers revealed blatant and regular abuses of human rights by the police…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do (#647) 

It’s nice to see cops’ evil deceptions ruin the life of one of their own for a change:

A Montgomery County [Maryland cop]…pleaded guilty…to proposing sexual acts with an undercover detective he thought was a 15-year-old girl.  Christopher B. Dunkes…was caught in a child sexting sting in June…

Business As Usual (#719) 

In other words, after a couple of weeks of media attention the cops will just rape us & claim they didn’t, as they do in the other 49 states:

Undercover police officers in Michigan will no longer be able to [legally & openly rape] prostitutes who[m] they’re [trying to entrap], under a new law that was unanimously approved by the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week.  Senate Bill 275 aims to…make it possible [but not obligatory] for [cops] to be prosecuted for prostitution-related offences, “if the officer engaged in sexual penetration [but not groping or other molestation] while in the course of his or her duties.”  Michigan police currently enjoy immunity from prosecution for [raping] prostitutes on the clock, something that doesn’t sit well with…Judy Emmons, who sponsored the bill…

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Diary #356

Last week was a whirlwind of travel and other commitments; it seemed as though I just couldn’t stop!  This isn’t to say it was all unpleasant; far from it!  In fact, as I alluded to in Friday’s “Learning to Relax“, a lot of it was very pleasant indeed.  And this week is shaping up to be another good one.  The only really bad thing about last week was multiple rental-car company screwups which made what should have been ordinary tasks into multi-hour ordeals, but while I’d usually get very upset about those, this time they only barely ruffled my feathers.  My credit card company temporarily shutting off my card because they seem to think it’s suspicious for a person whose billing address is in Houston, and whose account was started in Tulsa, to be in Dallas is a different story; however, a few minutes of screaming, cursing and telling a customer service rep that I’m 50 years old and don’t need their permission to travel sorted that out quickly enough.  Even my flights were relatively stress-free now that I’ve doubled my dose of diazepam and added yet another precaution: eat absolutely nothing for at least 6 hours before takeoff time, so there’s nothing in my stomach to lose if I do get queasy.  I’ll be trying that again this week when I fly to San Francisco; I’ll be very busy Friday and Saturday, but if you can do an evening appointment on Thursday & can be a little flexible in case my flight arrives late, drop me a line.  Also, sometime in the next month or so I’ll be visiting Chicago to promote The Forms of Things Unknown; I’ll keep you posted!

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Links #355

Please don’t touch me.  –  John Benji Haygood

Like nearly everything these days, this parody of the “your brain on drugs” video (provided by Lucy Steigerwald) is overdone and unnecessarily verbose.  But it features the same woman who did the original, and that makes it worth a watch.  The links above it are from Radley Balko (“fascism” and “together”), Glenn Kessler (“boxes”), Jesse Walker (“pinball”), Jillian Keenan (“autistic”), and Mistress Matisse (“prohibition”).

• Fascism in action.
• Why cats love boxes.
• The Internet Pinball Database.
• Cops arrest child for being autistic.
• Drug prohibition is dying, slowly but surely.
• Ken White on the “Nazi exception” to free speech.
• Government is just a word for the things we choose to do together.

From the Archives

• Articles questioning “sex trafficking” are now becoming more common in mainstream media.
• The Swedish model’s xenophobia shows in rhetoric designed to rationalize its failure.
• We need more men to write like this rather than licking neofeminist boots.
• The rescue industry is full of opportunities for the wealthy to play cowboy.
• Bad laws never die, even if they appear to have been staked & beheaded.
• What a large-scale, organized forced prostitution scheme really looks like.
• Small cities insist they’re infested with bogeymen and imaginary victims.
• Less human rights lawyer and more Hollywood propagandist these days.
• Massage parlors are targeted by cops because they’re low-hanging fruit.
• The bond between close friends is stronger than almost anything else.
• This is extra-stupid and dishonest even by prohibitionist standards.
• Harassing streetwalkers has become a popular “Christian” pastime.
• Cops, law, computers, irony, reading, Doctor Who and much more.
• Another software package designed to sell whores out to the cops.
• There weren’t any actual victims, but we just have to cage people.
• Anne Elizabeth Moore on “sex trafficking” & the garment industry.
• Misinterpreting ordinary interactions is common in a moral panic.
• What Ruhama’s “assistance” to sex workers actually consists of.
• Prince, cops, authoritarianism, sea monkeys, art & much more.
• “Sex trafficking” is an especially good excuse for money grabs.
• Another study shows most violence vs. sex workers is by cops.
• Noah Berlatsky on sex workers conducting our own research.
• Tara Burns, still doggedly fighting for sex workers in Alaska.
• Another Potemkin village designed to please the ignorant.
• A disabled Australian couple gets help from a sex worker.
• The start of a nationwide fight to decriminalize sex work.
• Cleveland tries to paper over an atrocity with a “policy”.
• Mostly just ignorant cheerleading for a do-nothing law.
• Are providers deliberately vague about their services?
• China is cracking down on exotic dancers at funerals.
• Greece abolishes its horrible HIV shaming law again.
• On the horrifying “Operation Underground Railroad”.
• How to share the restroom with a trans person.
• The more lawsuits against the cops, the better.
• On the supposed morality of overpriced clogs.
• A warrant for “suspected sexting”. Seriously.
• Another good profile of my friend Laura Lee.
• An excellent essay on the Tracy Elise case.
• A sex worker is arrested for placing an ad.
• Farm machinery causes “sex trafficking”!
• Yet another murdered trans sex worker.
• I just love watching them eat their own.
• A special edition of Ladies of the Night.
• A diary entry thumb-typed on a ferry.
• On the recrudescence of Puritanism.
• Chiropractor, client and exorcist.
• A weekend with Chester Brown.
• A sex worker’s rapist is jailed.
• I’m sure you feel safer now.
• This ain’t gonna work, y’all.
• Go, Stephanie Farnsworth!
• Movie review: My Normal.
• A King of the Hill twofer!
• Rapist cops of the week.
• Color me unsurprised.

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In the News (#732)

How can we dial back the obsession with sex trafficking? – Lenore Skenazy

Check Your Premises

Step One: Define people who make choices the law refuses to recognize as “victims”.  Step Two: Define the decisions of 21-year-olds as legally invalid. Step Three:

…researchers have found that roughly one-fifth of all homeless youth in the U.S. are victims of human trafficking, often for purposes of sex…Covenant House funded the report…The youths who spoke with researchers were all 21 and under…

The Leading Players in the Field, Not (#351) 

Has this histrionic now made a rotting moral panic her whole career?

The horror the victims suffer is almost too much to contemplate.  And yet, we can’t combat the abomination that is human trafficking unless we first acknowledge that it exists.  That’s why [has-been] actress and [moral panic profiteer] Mira Sorvino came to Bakersfield…According to Sorvino…the trafficking of human beings claims some 40 million victims and generates obscene annual profits, making it one of the most lucrative criminal enterprises in history.  One young woman Sorvino interviewed estimated she was raped 43,000 times between the ages of 12 and 16…

Nice While It Lasted

Buried in the usual pap about “signs of trafficking” and masturbatory fantasy about passive, doll-like 12-year-olds being “sold for sex” is this horrific proposal:

…Assemblyman Brian Maienschein held a news conference in San Diego…to push his bill, the Commercial Child Rape Prevention Act, which aims to give governments tools they can use to target sex trafficking in civil court…This would mean that district attorneys, attorney generals, some city attorneys and the victims would be able to sue the perpetrators, hitting them where it might hurt the most — their profits…State Sen. Toni Atkins…has two bills pending…one…would allow prosecutors in criminal trials to introduce evidence of past illegal acts…that would typically be excluded at trial…

In civil court, the burden of proof is reversed; this would allow prosecutors, backed by the vast resources of the state, to levy charges that presumed guilt.  I wonder how much longer before presumption of innocence is nothing more than a mere historical relic?

Traffic in Nonsense (#508)

Despite its name, The Libertarian Republic is Republican, not libertarian; that explains why it’s printing pro-surveillance, anti-body autonomy “sex trafficking” propaganda:

Human trafficking has become…the third largest criminally ran [sic] industry in the entire world, generating estimated revenues of $32 billion a year…the average age a person is abducted/coerced into this horrendous trade is 12-14…resilience against law enforcement…trying to shut down this insidious industry…[snitching on sex workers to the pigs] can help combat human trafficking at the source, on the street level…truckers have found themselves leading the charge against this industry…Commonly known as a lot lizard, prostitutes often wait around truck stops to solicit sex to the drivers who are passing through…truckers are exposed to the largest portion of prostitutes…it is vitally important for news outlets to [uncritically parrot police-state propaganda]…

The idea that truck-stop hookers make up the largest fraction of sex workers is probably the stupidest statement in this reeking pile of stupidity.

Checklist (#523)

Arizona wants hospitals to rat sex workers out to the pigs:

A hospital network with several facilities in Arizona said it was taking steps to counter human trafficking.  Dignity Health said it has trained staff at three hospitals…to look for indicators of possible human trafficking and that it has implemented mandatory screening in emergency rooms and obstetrics departments…so-called “red flags” of trafficking include homelessness, discrepancies between reported and apparent ages, lack of identification and a dominating or controlling companion who refuses to leave the patient alone…

Signs 

How many resources will our society waste in trying to stop an omnipresent voluntary activity older than the human species?

…The Palm Beach County Commission…approved additional training for several groups of its employees to spot signs of [“sex trafficking”], which has been described as modern-day slavery.  Employees who are out in field — code enforcement, youth services and parks and recreation workers, for example — will be among those receiving the training…Among other signs, victims of trafficking may exhibit poor health, show signs of physical abuse or restraint, and lack control over personal documents or the ability to speak for themselves…

Rooted in Racism (#605) 

It’s no longer safe for men to travel with their children:

A dad returning from Mexico with his 3-year-old daughter who has lighter skin than his is suspected of sex trafficking her…despite papa having her passport, his passport, AND a notarized letter from the mom saying that she gave them her permission to travel, the authorities felt compelled to act upon a “tip”…that was nothing more than a passenger’s hunch fueled by the hysteria of the moment:  That 3-year-olds are being trafficked right and left in the USA…

Where are the Victims? (#634)

We’re so lucky to have cops qualified to diagnose us as “victims” no matter what we may think:

Seven men and a woman have been arrested as part of a nationwide crackdown on…prostitution.  Dawn raids were carried out out across Lancashire, Gateshead and Evesham in relation to a…[so-called] “Romanian crime group” centred on Blackburn.  [Cops fantasize] the gang netted up to £1.3million…Eight women, aged between 18 and 26, were found inside the suspected brothels and are [pretended] to have been trafficked to the UK from Romania for the purposes of prostitution.  Police [used euphemisms to cloak the fact that the women were being held without charge pending deportation]…

Peeping Toms (#662)

The larger implications of anti-sex toy laws:

An ordinance of the City of Sandy Springs, Georgia, prohibits the sale of sex toys.  Businesses and individuals have challenged this statute as unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause in controlling their consensual, sexual behavior in the privacy of their homes.  The district court and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the ordinance given the Eleventh Circuit precedent of Williams v. Attorney General (2004), which upheld an Alabama sex-toy-sales ban…Williams…is inconsistent with more recent Supreme Court precedent in United States v. Windsor (2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)…Windsor and Obergefell… raised the protection of rights concerning private sexual intimacy and Obergefell described this right as “fundamental”…Williams also misinterpreted Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which in striking down a ban on homosexual sodomy made clear that it wasn’t merely the right to perform “a particular sexual act” that was in question in these intimacy cases, but the infringement of rights regulating “the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, in the most private of places, the home.”  Lawrence also made clear that state assertion of a “morality” interest isn’t a sufficient justification for limiting the right to adult sexual intimacy…

Eternal Vigilance (#667)

Puritans are still upset about the fact that some women are comfortable paying our rent (and other expenses) with sex:

…despite the fact that [sex for rent] ads have been around for more than a decade and tend to transparently describe the (consensual) relationships they’re after, a gaggle of outraged internet activists are suddenly convinced it’s “abusive” behavior that must be stamped out.  The issue has been getting attention this week because of U.K. columnist Vonny Moyes, who covered it in Scottish newspaper The National…The ads she shared ranged from requests for household labor from a hot girl in exchange for free rent to fetish-related requests…ongoing mistress or “sugar baby” type situations…and people looking for short-term sex-for-housing arrangements…But the Twitter outrage brigade can’t conceive of these varied individual ads as anything but a big patriarchal plot to extort sex from homeless women…

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Learning To Relax

For many years, people have been urging me to relax; I always replied that I’d relax when I was dead, or something to that general effect.  But then I came to Seattle, and under the influence of some if the best, most loving women I’ve ever known, and over the past year and a half I’ve slowly, gradually come to accept that relaxation really is OK.  I’ve learned to set aside large blocks of time for just doing things that are fun and help me shed stress, such as getting high, reading for pleasure and my regular Sunday night Doctor Who binge with Lorelei Rivers.  And the practice seems to be therapeutic; though a number of things have gone very, irritatingly wrong in my traveling this week, I’ve simply taken it all in stride rather than having my usual conniption.  Now, I don’t think this is the beginning of some new general imperturbability, but even the occasional episode of calm in the face of chaos would be an improvement over my usual reaction to disruptions in my plans.  So here’s to relaxation; may Aphrodite grant I learn to do it myself as well as I promote it in others.

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