In the News (#773)

The point [of vice laws] is keeping cops busy, giving them a chance to play hero, and letting them seize all the assets they can.  –  Liz Brown

Check Your Premises 

This is why sex workers shouldn’t “debate” prohibitionists; it gives an air of false legitimacy to people who are so stupid and deranged that they make up their own facts, support them with outright lies, then argue that stalking, harassing, humiliating, evicting and impoverishing women is actually “helping” them:

De[ranged politician]…Thangam Debbonaire  [fantasized that]…punishments must remain in place for the “pimps and punters” who “buy and sell other women’s bodies”.  The [ignorant prohibitionist]…was arguing against Niki Adams, a spokeswoman for the English Collective of Prostitutes…Debbonaire said [propaganda] produced by the Police Foundation, a [pig-fellating] think tank, [fantasized] women working in three-quarters of Bristol’s 65 brothels were…coerced, trafficked and forced…she [fantasized that]…“if I’m exploited as a prostitute and someone says, ‘I’m going to pay to have sex with you’ and I then change my mind for whatever reason, and they insist on having their commercial contract fulfilled – which legalising or decriminalising would do – then they are raping me, and I have no choice”…Debbonaire said she supported prostitution continuing to be against the law so that [pigs can rape]…women [instead]…

The Pro-Rape Coalition 

The anti-porn loons are completely losing their minds:

Uganda’s pornography detecting machine is said to be coming soon…the machine is said to be able to detect both deleted and current pornographic materials stored on people’s computers in Uganda.  This apparently includes detection and blocking of porn photos, videos or any graphics taken or saved on anyone’s phone, computer or camera…The…machine…cost Uganda’s government $88,000…and is reported to have been developed in South Korea…It is not exactly clear what the porn detector machine actually is, i.e. whether it is a content filtering machine which all ISPs in Uganda will be expected to connect to, or whether it is some of a deep packet inspection system…

She Should Know Better

As I’ve pointed out before, Arianna Huffington is a world-class hypocrite. Despite the fact that she made a tremendous amount of money via her sexual liaisons with men, she allows her rag to host propaganda claiming every other woman who does it is a “victim”.  And now she’s hosting some of the most vile filth I’ve seen in a while; prohibitionists drunk on blood and money have now expanded their claims from the usual “women have no sexual agency” to the much larger “no person has sexual agency”.  And as usual, the silence from Gay, Inc is deafening despite the fact that a very large fraction of gender and sexual minorities have participated in the sex trade from either the selling or buying side, or both.  I’m not going to quote any of this regurgitated feces; suffice to say that the lunatic who wrote it has expanded the “money is a magic mind-control spell” idiocy to a whole new level.

The More the Better 

Sex work is work, and there is no specific “sex worker type”:

…Rosie Renee, a 22-year-old from Queensland, quit her job as a personal trainer to enter the lucrative “camming” industry and decided to share her story to break down sex industry stereotypes.  But after reading comments from critics claiming she needed to “go to school” and that she “can’t possibly be proud”, Ms Renee took to her Facebook page to address them directly.  “I’ve worked harder and have done more than just about any other 22-year-old I know…I built, owned and operated a gym, I’ve managed restaurants, I ran my own cleaning business, I PAID out of pocket to get an education after high school and yes I am proud of what I do because I’ve worked damn hard (I’ve worked harder as a cam girl than I have in even the most hands on vanilla job I ever had)”…

Bogeymen

Remember this next time you hear pigs oinking about how many “pimps” they arrested:

A husband and wife…were arrested.  She was charged with a misdemeanor.  He’s facing a human-trafficking charge and decades in prison.  The case perfectly encapsulates how harsh laws against human trafficking are used to target sex workers’ families, friends, and colleagues who so much as drive them to meet a client.  It also showcases the sexism at work…Neither [Jason] Hicks nor his wife Heather…were involved in anything the average person would think of as sex trafficking; this was just an old-fashioned vice sting…

The Public Eye 

Another sex worker turned performing artist, this one a rapper:

…Chae Buttuh is definitely true to this…HoFi and its sexiness was inspired by a brief time in my life when I escorted.  I don’t escort now, unless I have to.  I hate it…it’s the customer that matters type shit…I’ve been a sugar baby for almost 10 years now…I met my main sugar daddy when I was 18, he was 42.  He fed me, housed me, and  really helped me a lot (He actually funds a lot of my touring)…from the outside it all seems good, but it’s not always.  I’m constantly worrying about when he may just stop and I’m left stranded…I want to be able to survive off my art and quit the sugar baby game…

I Saw My Brain

Your regular reminder that Grady Judd is an utterly loathsome excuse for a human:

A Florida sheriff said…he’ll arrest people with open warrants who seek shelter from Hurricane Irma…”If you go to a shelter for #Irma, be advised: sworn [law enforcement officers] will be at every shelter, checking IDs.  Sex offenders/predators will not be allowed,” the Polk County Sheriff’s Office tweeted [last] Wednesday morning as the hurricane hit the Virgin Islands. “If you go to a shelter for #Irma and you have a warrant, we’ll gladly escort you to the safe and secure shelter called the Polk County Jail”…

Just a reminder: most “registered sex offenders” are only guilty of “offenses” like public urination or sexting/having sex with peers while teenaged.  And most “warrants” are for garbage like unpaid fines or missed court appearances; most of those fines are for things like broken tail lights or expired license plates.  For most of my twenties I had warrants on a regular basis, probably about once a year; in much of the US, especially the South, having warrants is almost synonymous with being poor.

Lower Education

Emily Yoffe takes a deep dive down the “campus rape crisis” rabbit hole:

…[Kangaroo courts] were mandated or strongly encouraged by federal rules that govern the handling of sexual assault allegations on campus today.  These rules proliferated during the Obama administration, as did threats of sanctions if schools didn’t follow them precisely…a new attitude about due process—and the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty—has taken hold, one that echoes the infamous logic of Edwin Meese, who…argu[ed] against the Miranda warning.  “The thing is,” Meese said, “you don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime.  That’s contradictory.  If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect.”  There is no doubt that until recently, many women’s claims of sexual assault were reflexively and widely disregarded—or that many still are in some quarters…But many of the remedies that have been pushed on campus in recent years are unjust to men, infantilize women, and ultimately undermine the legitimacy of the fight against sexual violence…

The Mote and the Beam (#762)

Jeremy Malcolm uses the imminent destruction of the internet by SESTA as the jumping-off point for a broader discussion of censorship in the name of “THE CHILDREN!!!!!”

…SESTA will cause significant harm to those who have nothing to do with sex trafficking, impacting free speech and innovation across the Internet.  And this is only the latest in a long line of measures taken in the name of child protection by both governments and private companies that actually have much more sweeping ramifications for users…

The Mote and the Beam (#763)

Now that “sex trafficking” hysteria is endangering the entire internet, the ACLU and other groups have finally decided to pull their thumbs out of their arses and say something:

We, the undersigned human rights and civil liberties organizations, write to convey our significant concern with S.1693, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), which was introduced earlier this week…the approach of SESTA, to create substantial new federal and state criminal and civil liability for the Internet intermediaries that host third-party speech, will lead to increased censorship across the web…These entities – including website operators, email providers, messaging services, search engines, access providers, and more – form the platform on which all online speech depends.  These intermediaries in turn depend on protections from liability for the user-generated speech they host and transmit.  Without this protection, intermediaries would face a potential lawsuit in each one of the thousands, millions, or even billions, of posts, images, and video uploaded to their services every day…

Diary #376

Travel, travel, travel!  Grace and Chekhov got home on Saturday, and tell me they have two loads left to be completely done (which is good, because this is costing me a small fortune).  It looks as though they’ll be headed out again later in the week, though that will depend on how quickly they can get unloaded, how much rest they plan to take and how much money I can come up with how quickly.  One thing that’s helping is that I’m traveling today myself; I’m flying to Philadelphia for an overnight with a generous gentleman and plan to return tomorrow, but I could be persuaded to stay another night for the right offer.  That’s the beauty of this kind of travel; I can change my arrangements at a moment’s notice if I like.  And the reason I’m mentioning it, aside from just general interest, is to remind y’all that I can now see gentlemen anywhere in North America for an overnight; if you’re west of the Mississippi an 8-hour appointment may do; in LA a 6-hour; and in Portland a dinner date!  I’ll even come to Europe for a 24-hour engagement, though the rest of the world might require a weekend.  I can’t promise I’ll always be able to fly to your side as quickly as I did for the gentleman I’m seeing today (who only contacted me a week ago), but if you have the resources and a bit of flexibility we’ll usually be able to schedule within a month of initial contact.  So what are you waiting for?  There’s only one Maggie McNeill, and arranging an unforgettable rendezvous with me has never been easier!

Sex, Lies and Statistics

Brooke Magnanti has released a new, revised edition of her book The Sex Myth, retitled Sex, Lies and Statistics.  This was adapted by Brooke from her afterword (the foreword was written by yours truly), and I hope it will serve to encourage you to buy the book, which demolishes the shoddy garbage prohibitionists hold up in place of actual facts.  And it’s on sale now!

Media are obsessed with promoting a view we would previously have dismissed as Victorian.  There are indeed parallels.  The end of the 19^th century and start of the 20^th brought new technologies to add to the dissemination of ideas through mass media (much like the Internet today)…with the predictable horror and blame that brought then, just like now.  The political class made some unexpected alliances as a result; again, we see this happening.  Feminism has joined the anti-sex bandwagon in a big way.  Not just by blaming men for inequality between the sexes, but perhaps more profitably and successfully by blaming other women.  Many mainstream feminist critiques gloss over old “man-hating” attitudes and place blame squarely on other women.  Instead of embracing women who challenge convention, the preoccupation is with shooting them down.  On the one hand, we’re told that anyone who believes women and men should have equal rights under the law is a feminist, whether they know it or not.  On the other, we are told that one or another group of women are traitors.  It’s the feminists who have taken up the finger-wagging role of the patriarchy.  Take, for example, this quote by Julie Burchill:  “When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women.”  Advocating the murder of large numbers of women is such a great way to win supporters to the cause, no?

The more you look at the key players behind some of the stories, the more you notice odd pairings.  A group working closely with the anti-gay, anti-abortion US lobbying group using a female MP as the mouthpiece of their opinions on porn.  The well-known feminists signing up to work with far right groups.  Celebrities lending star power to issues they don’t understand at all.  Almost all approaches to these issues fail to consider the diversity of factors involved.  The “Swedish model” of sex work is an example of this.  Lots of hype, not a lot of data on whether paid sex work has stopped or whether anyone’s life has been improved as a result.  Columnists like Joan Smith can gush about jumping in to a cop car to see how the law is panning out, all while ignoring the fact that sex workers repeatedly confirm that the police are their greatest source of harassment, assault, and rape.  Proponents of the Swedish approach mention how “pressure” is ramping up on this topic – pressure that they themselves have generated through unchallenging media coverage.  When in doubt, follow the money.  Over and over again the people fronting these campaigns are connected to industries with vested interests, radical right-wing think tanks, or anti-LGBT lobbyists.  The deputy editor for the New Statesman previously worked at the Mail and is rumoured to have subedited Jan Moir when she wrote a viciously homophobic column about Stephen Gately’s death.  Arch-feminists like Julie Bindel write for staunchly right wing, regressive magazines like the Spectator.  There’s a saying where I come from:  you got to dance with the one who brung you.  I wonder, when everyone gets to the end of their dance cards, what promises feminists have made and what obligations they’ll have to honor.

Before 2009, when I wrote books under a pseudonym about my experiences as a sex worker, there was no small amount of grumbling in the press.  After I won the Guardian Best British Weblog award in 2003, a number of female contributors to that paper signed a letter vowing that if I was commissioned to write for the paper, they would quit.  Yet I continued to believe that if they knew I was real, they would feel differently.  It’s probably not a surprise to you that I was unprepared for what any fool could have predicted would happen.  Since coming out as a former sex worker, I have been criticized for being too middle class, too well educated, too independent.  As if my very existence in sex work was, somehow, unique.  But data across the spectrum of sex work shows this not to be true.  In any case, if I admitted to a drug addiction instead, or had been homeless?  That would have been used to write me off, too.  It is bizarre to read articles by people who’ve never met me attempting to dissect this or that bit of my life.  Some lazy commentators “blame” me for the existence of other call girls, or whatever new student sex worker is uncovered by the tabloids.  As flattering as that is, it is not true.  Prostitution is called “the oldest profession” for a reason.

After a while all such nonsense became background noise.  I assumed the combined forces of feminists and the Rescue Industry had nothing worse up their sleeves.  I was wrong.  When the first edition of this book was published in Britain in 2012, it was embargoed before publication day and available to fewer than 20 people to review.  Journalists who saw the book signed confidentiality agreements.  So it was a great surprise to wake up on the morning of publication slapped with a libel lawsuit from Eaves For Women, the domestic violence charity whose hapless forays into research are touched on in this book.  If their work had been published in academic journals, anyone writing to correct their numbers would have been treated professionally, but this was not academia I was dealing with.  Obviously, I did not write anything about Eaves that could not be verified, and just as obviously, they had not been sent a pre-publication copy of the book by my publisher but had been given one by book reviewer – and Eaves board member – Julie Bindel.  The firm representing Eaves in this lawsuit threat?  The one with Bindel’s wife as a founding partner.  The Eaves claims would have been hilarious if they had not been so ludicrous.  They claimed I “hacked their servers” to get information about their income and expenditures (as with all UK charities, it’s public information available on government websites) and “broken confidentiality agreements” to discuss their research (I looked up their publications from conferences, also available online).  Their arguments depended on evidence so far-fetched it could have served as a bad science example in the book itself.  I later learned this was not the first time this had happened.  Eaves had threatened to sue so many people, so often, they even served legal threats on Bindel’s own employer at the time, the Guardian newspaper for an article by Belinda Brooks-Gordon (Bindel is no longer on Guardian staff, but freelances for them).  The intellectual dishonesty of someone like Bindel, who claims to be “silenced” and a “free speech” advocate yet uses archaic laws to try to silence opposition, is staggering.  Unsurprisingly the threatened suit was without merit and quickly dropped.

Meanwhile, the media feminists of the UK rounded on me.  Julie Burchill wrote one article claiming I was a “sex addict”, another calling me a “human toilet”, and compared me to a convicted (and executed) Nazi war criminal; this was especially offensive as I am of Jewish heritage.  The “feminist” literature magazine that published those last two tidbits claimed they did not know what the words meant.  Sorry, Mslexia, but ignorance is no excuse.  They did not apologize.  One feminist turned up at a talk in Edinburgh to shout to the audience that I was a pedophile and claim my screenshots of the Glasgow City Council’s website (showing how much they paid for anti-strip club consultations) were faked.  Others picketed talks and book signings, sent death threats, and harassed me so frequently by phone that I gave up on carrying a mobile altogether.  They contacted my former editor at the Telegraph in an attempt to get me fired – long after I’d already quit.  Few in journalism seem to care that the people doing this are all a couple of degrees of separation from known anti-LGBT and white supremacist orgs in the US.  All anyone wants is to see the naughty, naughty sex lady be punished.  They don’t care how it’s done or who does it.  This, I was told, was the price of being a sex worker in public.

Writers with the left-leaning New Statesman magazine, many of whom launched careers by harassing trans women and sex workers, also got the boot in.  Their assistant editor, Helen Lewis, sits on the board of a charity that is anti-sex work and anti-trans women.  She and other feminists joked on social media when a former partner tried to sue me for reporting his abuse (he later dropped the suit to much less fanfare).  They encouraged Breitbart to run a week-long campaign of harassment and abuse.  They egged on nasty “investigative journalist” Jeremy Duns who made sexual threats against me and my husband.  They examined photos from my escorting days, speculating on whether I was “hot enough” have been a sex worker, and speculating about what diseases I might have.  They circulated a list at public events suggesting that I and others were employed by a shadowy “Pimp Lobby” and financially benefitting from trafficking (if that’s the case, I have yet to receive a paycheck).  The laughable list, compiled by Julie Bindel, included a number of people uninvolved with sex work at all, including an artist who died in 2010, so it’s clear fact-checking is not a valued quality among these people.  The abuse peaked when they outed a trans camgirl whose Twitter account they thought had been written by me.  It wasn’t – but in the process they humiliated a woman who was not yet out to her family.  Their supposed evidence?  We both supported Scottish independence, and both, at different times, used the phrase “snake oil”.  In spite of having got it drastically wrong, no apology to the woman they doxxed was forthcoming.  Why would anyone do this?  In short, to control the narrative.

It would be unthinkable – to most people, anyway – to have a discussion about women’s rights that did not involve any women.  Or a discussion about race that did not include people of color.  But time and again when the topic is sex work, sex workers themselves are not simply ignored, they are actively excluded.  What do sex workers want?  A seat at the table.  To be able to work together for safety.  To report crimes against them without fear of arrest.  For services to be made available that are not dependent on them giving evidence against others.  To not live in fear of deportation or abuse by police.  In short:  they want the same protection under the law that any other worker can expect.  And not only is this what sex workers want, it’s what the evidence supports as best practice.  We’ve seen the benefits of decriminalization in New Zealand, in New South Wales Australia.  We’ve also seen what goes wrong in Sweden, in the Netherlands, and in the US.  International agencies from the WHO to Amnesty agree.  But this evidence-driven support for decrim hasn’t come out of thin air.  Much has been written on the disruptive effects of social media, but this much is true:  if not for the internet, people like me would never have been able to challenge the stereotypes with facts.  Marginalized people with multiple oppressions – black trans sex workers, drug using sex workers – who would otherwise fear being outed, are being taken seriously by a mainstream that otherwise would never have known they existed.  The infantilized victims who need rich white ladies to save them, it turns out, are fully capable adults who can make their own decisions and won’t hesitate to tell you that.  And that makes some folks with vested interests very upset indeed.

What happened to me was not the first nor even worst example.  Entrenched second-wave feminists in media have harassed trans politicians out of their jobs, driven black cultural commentators off of social media, and consistently outed and trashed any sex worker who crosses their paths.  Heaven help you if you happen to belong to more than one of these groups.  They reserve the worst treatment for the most marginalized, secure in the knowledge that society does not care because they told society not to.  The disinformation campaign used to sustain sex myths was a glimpse into a post-truth world where what matters is not what is right, but who can get the most money.  Some of those folks were so threatened by one woman and one book that they tried to bankrupt, discredit, and silence one blogger.  A movement backed by billions of dollars in international grants is so susceptible to people seeing the real data, they will stop at nothing to keep the truth from getting out.  And they are not interested in ethical debate; they demand that their point of view be bowed to in any discussion, even (and especially) if that means keeping the discussion centered on their feelings rather than other people’s right to exist.  They use the media not to understand, but to bludgeon.  They simply do not care if their information is incorrect.  I started off believing that open debate was the best way to win hearts and minds; I ended up realizing that some people will use that to drown out anyone who does not agree with their own intolerant, hate-filled views.  There simply is no way to have a debate with people who characterize you as an “orifice” who “should be dead in a ditch.”  There is no common ground to be found with people who willingly promote your abusers.

And yet, in all the negativity, there are signs of light.  In the years from when I was a sex worker in 2003, since I came out in 2009, and after the first edition of this book in 2012, the ground has rapidly shifted.  When Amnesty International rejected threats from famous feminists and backed the decriminalization of sex work based on the evidence, it was a win for a sex workers’ movement that far predates and will long outlast any one person.  When I gave evidence to UK Parliament in 2016, the MPs – to my surprise – took the suggestions of sex workers on board in their report, rather that listening to entrenched and well-funded special interests.  In Scottish Parliament, Rhoda Grant (who receives funding from the anti-gay, anti-abortion charity Care) has tried three times to introduce criminalization of sex work, and been defeated all three times.  Evidence really does win out from time to time; it might not seem that way in the moment, but things are changing, slowly and surely.  In 2009 and 2012, it felt as if every week brought new abuse from a media obsessed with surfaces instead of content.  So-called progressives shame and reject us, even when sex workers were early supporters of feminism, gay rights, and other movements that have since gained public acceptance on the back of that effort.  In particular, the most marginalized sex workers from black and trans communities were the ones most likely to be erased, people like Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P Johnson, and many more.  Slowly and surely their legacy is being reclaimed, too.  The pendulum of attitudes about sex and sexuality is always in motion.  I hope that in my lifetime the burden of shame felt by so many for so long will be lifted.  With evidence and hard work we can reclaim the narrative – and take back our lives from the playground bullies of shame and fear.

Brooke doesn’t pull any punches in this new, US edition; it’s a vital debunking resource for those who support sex worker rights, and you really, really, REALLY ought to read it!

Links #375

I am tired of black peoples [sic] paranoia that white people are out to get them.  –  “Officer” Cynthia Whitlatch

Over the past month I’ve played a few songs I remember well from childhood; this is one of the first I can remember thinking of as my favorite song.  Don’t be surprised; as I’ve told you before, I was a strange, melancholy child (and a very, very, very old soul).  The links above the video were provided by Dave Krueger  (“bootlicker”), Ivan Dragomiloff (“brilliant”), Tushy Galore (“Seattle”), Amy Alkon  (“whatever”), and Radley Balko (“together”).

• A bootlicker to the core.
• Sounds like a brilliant idea to me.
• A new low in bootlicking from Progressive^TM Seattle.
• Wouldn’t it be easier to just cry or laugh or whatever?
• She couldn’t be any worse a ruler than the clowns in Parliament.
• Government is just a word for the things we choose to do together.
• Pigs imagine their magic badges give them license to practice medicine.

From the Archives

• Another rape victim caged to force participation in the state’s morality play.
• Hilary Hanson of Huffington Post is starting to distinguish herself as an ally.
• Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever, especially if you’re a whore.
• Amateurs are a public health menace; they should be licensed & regulated.
• Why are some gay dudes so clueless & announce their ignorance so loudly?
• The Rentboy raid was a turning point in the struggle for sex worker rights.
• We don’t want to be “legalized & regulated”; we just want to be left alone.
• “Unbelievably” is a good adverb for nearly every sentence in this fantasy.
• Since this fascist wankfest hasn’t sold as a TV show, they made a movie.
• Seems I wasn’t the only one who had Ashley Madison pegged as a scam.
• An anti-whore article that reads as though it were stuck in a time warp.
• Remember, cops, you’re allowed to RAPE us, but not to obtain consent.
• 1.5% is my standard estimate of coercion among Western sex workers.
• “Virginity tests” are a sign of our culture’s deeply-sick sexual attitudes.
• Contrast the way this is covered by badge-lickers & by rational people.
• Only in Australia would a politician follow this insult with this apology.
• Pathetic losers wanking to their fantasies of superhuman sex robots.
• A coalition between fundamentalist groups is in no way “surprising”.
• Farley’s going to keep hawking this same snake oil until she croaks.
• Thargelia barely missed being the most influential whore in history.
• A reminder that in most of the US, the situation is still worsening.
• Cops, pretexts, LSD, Superhenge, the Dutch angle & much more.
• Quickly becoming one of the stupidest tropes of the whole panic.
• Article equates sex workers with child molesters and murderers.
• The loathsomeness of linking sex work to historic black slavery.
• Watch for escorts to be prosecuted for “trafficking” themselves.
• Government-backed internet gentrification harms sex workers.
• Jean Urquhart, MSP moves beyond merely “calling for debate”.
• I’m rather glad to see the return of “criminal whore” rhetoric.
• The French just love these massive DNA fishing expeditions.
• Politician hires sex worker; meanwhile, bear shits in woods.
• “Induce sex trafficking”? That’s some serious bullshit there.
• Cops, fascism, clowns, rock opera, The Prisoner and more.
• Like something Melissa Farley would make up, only true.
• Pigs steal $26,000 from citizens & spend it on strippers.
• I know I’ve written about this before, but I can’t find it.
• How did you stop thinking of your husband as a client?
• It’s nice to know that at least a few reporters get this.
• My friend Kaytlin Bailey, on coming out to her father.
• Is it bad if I can only feel intimacy with sex workers?
• No doubt the child was contaminated with sex rays!
• In which I finally finish decorating my apartment.
• How you can help me wake up in the morning.
• The descent of LGBT rights into conservatism.
• Her escorting was “caused” by being bipolar?
• Cop stalks sex workers via police records.
• Kari Lerum on the Amnesty declaration.
• You know you’re in a moral panic when…
• Nobody ever sold sex before Backpage!
• Preparing to take Jae back to Seattle.
• Nothing happened; film at 11!
• Rapist cop of the week.
• R.I.P. Candida Royalle.
• Desnudas in the news.
• Surprising no one.
• Rise of the apes.

In the News (#772)

Every day that me and my clients aren’t being arrested is a day that my life gets a little easier.  –  A mother in New Zealand

Whore Madonnas

Imagine this article in an American parenting column:

I’m young, Māori and a sex worker, and my life is harder than you can imagine, but not for the reasons you’re thinking…I’ve lived with chronic pain in my body since I was a child, and my daughter’s severe disability means that I will continue to care for her full time for the remainder of my life…My body isn’t capable of working a 40 hour week, nor allowing me to become qualified at something that pays well…Both my daughter and I will gradually become more and more disabled, but she much sooner than me.  She already needs one-to-one care at all times, and she’s still just a small child…I need to plan for her future – and I imagine she will outlive me, so I need to plan for that as well…Being a sex worker means I can work when I am able and have days off when I’m not.  I can fit my work around my disability, I choose when and how I work, and there is no pressure from my workplace.  I never have to do more hours than I want to, so I can spend lots of time caring for my daughter…Some people [pretend]…that any woman who needs money is not free to truly choose [to] work, but is forced into [work] by circumstance…They say my clients should be arrested, and they want to stop me from being able to work…but…sex work is getting me out of a lifelong predicament, and I’m glad I have the option to do it legally…

Anatomy of a Boondoggle 

Note the buried lede: cops sexually assaulted women in order to arrest them:

That a Chinatown spa was busted for prostitution…is further reinforcement of a cliche stereotype…A summons is currently duct-taped to the front door, and…There is also a note on the legal document stating, “prostitution is a right of free people; this is an attack upon human liberty, you evil fucks”…At least two instances were highlighted – both back in April – in which employees “performed a sexual act” on [disguised pigs]…

The Sky is Falling!

Only in the looking-glass world inhabited by prohibitionists can could anyone take seriously the notion that a common arrangement literally as old as human culture is only now becoming “normalized”:

[Prohibitionists] have warned against the normalisation of the “sugar daddy” or “blesser” culture, whereby young girls are lured into sex in exchange for material goods, bringing them one step closer to the threat of sex trafficking…girls lured with promises of setting up with a “sugar daddy” have ended up, trapped as sex slaves.  The idea of having a sugar daddy, or “blesser”, is a widely normal…concept in South Africa to describe a transactional relationship struck between young girls and older men who provide them with material goods in return for sex.  But [prohibitionists pretend] the normalisation of [something that was described in the previous sentence as already widely normal]…is leading to growing numbers of girls being duped by sex traffickers…

Under Review

I’m completely aghast at everyone involved in the creation of this shitshow, from the pigs, to the prohibitionists who came up with the moronic “sex trafficking” rhetoric they’re using to justify their sadistic game, to the cheapskate haggler, to any board sleazy enough to allow this kind of review, to the reporter with his dysphemisms and weird scare quotes; frankly, I’d like to see all of them put in a weighted sack together and thrown into the Columbia river.  Read this pile of rancid filth at your own risk, but you may feel the need to scrub your eyeballs after.

To Molest and Rape 

Your periodic reminder that the State covering up for rapist cops isn’t confined to the US:

…The Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (GSOC)…has received 47 complaints relating to [rapes]…sexual assaults and similar offences in the last three- and-a-half years, none of which have resulted in any criminal proceedings being taken.  [Only] nine of the cases remain open, including a…[report] that a garda had sex with an underage person last year…

Scrupleless in Seattle

Holy shit, guys, STOP GOING TO PLACES YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF TO SEE GIRLS WITH NO REPUTATION!  Stick to ladies with an established internet footprint and you’ll be safe from this evil:

…Bellevue police and the King County Sheriff’s Office opened [a fake] brothel…setting up a sting in a condominium…Over the course of seven days, dozens of unsuspecting [men]…answered online ads posted by [pervert pigs pretending to be sex workers]…They were arrested after showing up at the condo…[pigs] arrested 110 men and impounded 105 cars, two motorcycles and one bicycle…

The End of the Beginning (#718) 

Maybe, just maybe, we’re about to witness the beginning of the end of these evil laws:

A federal court judge in Denver has called the public sex offender registry…“cruel and unusual punishment”…Judge Richard Matsch has found [registration] to be a violation of the U.S. Constitution.  He wrote that the public has been given the “power to inflict punishments beyond those imposed through the court.”  Alison Ruttenberg, the attorney for the sex offenders, [said]…“Making them at risk for vigilantes’ action to have their houses burned down, beaten up or even killed…is cruel and unusual punishment…There’s not a single crime in Colorado that has been solved because of the sex offender registry.  Sex offenders have probably the lowest recidivism rate of any felon and to single them out for this type of public ridicule and registration is irrational. It doesn’t do anything to keep our community safer”…The judge found the posting of sex offender information to be a violation of two different amendments…The Colorado Attorney General’s office says it hasn’t decided on if it will appeal the ruling…

The Course of a Disease (#745)

This is exactly what prohibitionists wanted, despite their claims to the contrary:

Attacks on [Irish] sex workers have increased dramatically since a change in the law last March which criminalised the purchase of sex…the law change has forced the trade deeper underground…put sex workers under greater pressure to put themselves in riskier situations…[and] makes sex workers less likely to report dangerous clients to gardaí…[Lucy Smyth of Ugly Mugs]…said [the organization] had received 1,635 reports from sex workers who were concerned about clients in the five months since the law change, a 61 per cent increase on the same period last year.  Some 137 of these incidents involved violence, including sexual assault, with knives or guns reportedly produced in 12 of these case. A total of 79 incidents of violence were reported in the first five months of last year…

The Notorious Badge (#760)

What was the point of talking to Annie Sprinkle if she wasn’t going to listen?

…Maggie Gyllenhaal…as…Candy is the lone figure in [The Deuce]…who suggests an inner life and the toll the sex trade takes on the human soul…“I needed to talk to someone who’s done this”…[so the] series executive producer…introduced Maggie to Annie Sprinkle…[who]…“hooked me up with a bunch of her friends…Annie was really the key into that world.  The women I spoke with were in their 60s.  I was so grateful”…

Yes, in a mainstream newspaper in the 21st century, an apparently adult writer is actually claiming that sex has magical booga-booga powers to damage souls, presumably like a curse or the One Ring or something.

Argument Department

It’s been a while since I’ve had to say this, but as my readership has grown it’s inevitable that I’ve picked up readers who don’t get it.  Some people who visit here, or read my tweets, seem to think they’re on YouTube, Reddit or some other site dominated by testosterone-addled adolescent trolls and can therefore get away with saying any stupid, rude thing that comes into their minds.  So I’m taking today to correct that misapprehension in those of you who may be suffering from it:  this is my online “house”, and if you’re going to visit here you’ll have to play by my rules (which I helpfully spelled out more than six years ago).  A little over a year after that, I penned a helpful sequel called “How Not To Get Your Comments Posted“, which you should read right now if you’ve been coming here for less than five years.  And yet, the narcissistic ninnies still refuse to get that:

A) throwing garbage out of my own space does not constitute “censorship” in any way because I’m not a government and you’re still free to strew your filth anywhere else on the internet that isn’t mine; and

B) I am not your dancing monkey; I am a professional entertainer, so even though I don’t charge people to read my blog or Twitter, if you want me to entertain you in some way that I am not interested in freely giving (such as by engaging in stupid arguments with you), you’re going to have to pay me for that just as you would have to pay me to play the part of your mother, daughter, sister, teacher, secretary, or whoever else you’d like to fantasize about fucking or being chastised by or whatever.  And it won’t even cost you my full rate; for internet argumentation not involving sexy talk, I only charge $100/hour (minimum 30 minutes).

Every sex worker has hard limits, things she won’t do no matter how highly paid, and I’m no exception; for example, I don’t do scat play and I won’t see anyone before noon except as the tail end of an overnight or part of a multi-day gig.  And in the argument department, you can forget about my “debating” you on the topic of whether or not the State has some imaginary “right” to control adults’ sexual choices, or the “right” to send armed thugs to spy on, harass, threaten, brutalize, rob, rape, cage, humiliate or otherwise harm individuals for any consensual act (including the “possession” of some object or substance the state has decided it doesn’t like).  In fact, I have absolutely zero tolerance for bootlicking, toadying, pig worship, partisan cheerleading, authoritarian apologia or any other sycophantic defense of the police state; I have no stomach for evil or for useful idiots who enable evil via their spineless excuses for it, so if anyone posts comments or tweets at me with such filth I will view it as tantamount to the intellectual equivalent of a monkey flinging poop, and that individual will be muted or banned so quickly he may not even realized what’s happened.  I do the work I do because it’s right, not because I’ve been sentenced to it, and I feel no masochistic need to watch the noblest of animals abase itself by groveling to sociopathic control freaks who think every individual is their personal or collective property.

The Scent of Money

I’m an older gentleman who wants to start a blog, mostly about my erotic adventures.  I’ve read your “staying anonymous” article but I’m confused about how you can do that when accepting donations by PayPal.

The article you’re talking about is hosted on my blog, but was not written by me; it’s by my friend Brooke Magnanti, whom you may know as Belle de Jour.  I’m not anything like an expert at remaining anonymous online, and honestly I don’t even try any more; I’ve gotten used to complete strangers greeting me by name or telling me they saw me on TV or whatever.  However, I will tell you this: when there’s non-cash money transfer involved, you can’t be completely anonymous, period (no, not even with bitcoin).  The federal government has a sick, pathological need to peer into the business of every single person in the world, trebly so when money is involved.  So if you take donations via Paypal, Patreon, Google wallet or anything else, that is going to be linked to a bank account with your name on it.  Even if you form a corporation in Delaware as I did, thus keeping your legal name out of the public record, your corporate agent still has your legal name on file because Uncle Sam demands it.  So even though stalkers, reporters and other garden-variety Nosy Parkers can’t easily discover my legal name, I can guarantee you as sure as the sun rises that if any government actor of sufficient power really wanted my info, all he’s have to do is present a “warrant request” to his trained pet judge and they’d have my name before you can say “Holy police state, Batman!”.  Actually, I’m reasonably sure my FBI file contains all that info anyway (up to and including my legal name, street address, IQ, psychological profile, bra size and close-up photos of every one of my scars*).

All this having been said, I doubt you’re trying to hide your identity from the IRS or FBI; I assume you’re probably just trying to hide it from friends, associates and family members.  In which case, you’ll be just fine because ordinary folks can’t easily discover which bank account the PayPal account (or Google wallet) for a given email address is connected to.  But if it’s the government you’re concerned about, you might as well hang up that idea of taking donations right now, unless you plan to go around the country on foot picking up anonymous cash donations left in nondescript satchels in bus-station lockers.

*The answer is “quite a few”.

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)