You’re on my property with a gun in your hand, threatening to shoot me, because I’m picking up trash. – unnamed cop victim
When Angela Keaton and I were quite stoned one night while she was visiting two weeks ago, she played this video for me and I instantly recognized the guy as the one who did the minor-key “Kiss the Girl” which sounds like the soundtrack to a lesbian bondage scene. In this one, the key shift actually completely changes the perceived meaning of the song (play it and see if you think I’m wrong). The links above it were provided by Popehat, Mike Siegel, Radley Balko, Mike Chase, Lauren Chief Elk, and Mark Bennett, in that order.
The Missouri Collaborative Against Human Trafficking is working to [profit from the moral panic over] sex trafficking in Missouri…Kathleen Preble…and Andrea Nichols…[fantasize that] Missouri is uniquely positioned for sex trafficking. The [profiteers] said that Missouri’s place between big Midwestern cities like Chicago, Minneapolis and Denver makes it a hot-spot for human trafficking…
A Brooklyn dominatrix is being forced out of her…dungeon by [a busybody] neighbor…Charlotte Taillor…can no longer pay rent on the…space she spent $14,000 transforming into a school of domination and kink after the outrage[ous] neighbor scared away the dominatrices, instructors, advocates and lecturers Taillor employs, she said…in a letter, left outside Taillor’s front door in February, the woman wrote the organization made her “feel unsafe and a prisoner” in her home…Many of Taillor’s employees quit because they feared coming into contact with the woman…the dungeon does not break New York City law because the dominatrices do not engage in [PIV] and the business does not have a storefront or affect traffic flow on the block…
…“If you’re a prostitute, it’s because something happened, and your body is your commodity”…Marie…was sold for sex at Fredericksburg-area hotels…targeted by a member of the MS–13 gang…broken into submission…traffickers are…targeting…ages 14 to 16 years old…A…report by the Human Trafficking Institute in Northern Virginia looked at every human trafficking case…Virginia ranked sixth…“I can order a pizza and a prostitute in 5 minutes”…pimps wait nearby…sex slaves for…heroin…
So many of these stories don’t even try any more; they just string together as many cop masturbatory fantasies and other stupid “sex trafficking” tropes as they can in one place and call it good.
Denver [politicians] called a press conference to announce the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program two weeks ago…Three days [later]…the…vice [gang] arrested six women in a…prostitution sting and [locked them in cages because the cops intentionally held the “sting” on the opposite side of magical lines drawn by the politicians]…Kevin Kelly, program administrator for Denver’s Office of [Re-education]…said…once more [cops] are trained [not to rape so much]…they could expand the program as Seattle has done…Kelly [claims] that Seattle’s LEAD program has shown a 60 percent reduction in recidivism among its participants…
A…Florida cop…resigned [when it was discovered that]…he used the department’s database to get [information on]…nearly 150 women over the course of the past six years…Leonel Marines [was caught] consistently…us[ing] his badge…in the [same way many other cops do]…in June of last year…Marines…follow[ed] a young woman [he saw in a parking lot] home…and asked to speak with [her] “about a domestic matter.” The girl’s parents…understood that there was no domestic issue and refused the [would-be rapist] entry. Marines…kept pushing to speak with the couple’s daughter…he eventually left, but the parents quickly called the police, got Marines’ name and…filed [a] complaint. When confronted about the incident, Marines [claimed]…that he followed the woman to her residence because she had a tail light that was out and he “believed her to be impaired”…an increasing number of audits…showed “a very, very clear trend of focusing on female versus male names” when ostensibly looking into subjects and persons for open and active cases…investigators…locate[d] and interview[ed] almost 150 women who detailed [creepy] interactions with Marines–a smaller subset reported being repeatedly harassed by the [stalking pig]…
The FBI has adopted a new tactic…taking over suspects’ online identities to infiltrate private groups…a now-convicted pedophile…Daxton Hansen…grant[ed FBI spooks]…control of his accounts on Instagram and Kik, a…chat app…popular among under-18s…From April 12, 2017, to at least November 13, 2018, a…[spook]…assumed Hansen’s online identity…[to visit] chat rooms with names like “Boy Poorn Lovers” [sic] to “Gaypervyoung”…[and] watched…a mass of child abuse [videos]…for a year and a half…the FBI…let child abuse material spread for months after they had identified it…no subsequent prosecutions based on the protracted sting have emerged. The [agency won’t say]…whether the agent distributed illegal content or simply tracked others’ activities. And there’s no indication as to when the chat rooms were shut down, if they ever were…
A Detroit man has filed a lawsuit [against] three white women [who] fabricat[ed]…bogus claims against him…Marc Peeples [was]…repeatedly lied [about] to police in an effort to boot him from Hunt Park, a green space on the city’s east side where he had built out an urban garden…Deborah Nash, Martha Callahan and Callahan’s granddaughter Jennifer Morris…conspir[ed] to [falsely] “accuse Marc of various crimes”…In one instance, they told Detroit police Peeples had threatened to burn down their homes and kill them. The women reportedly had their own plans for the park and were willing to do whatever they could to…[get Peeples] “incarcerated or seriously injured” by police…Their false claims ultimately led to Peeples getting arrested and charged with three counts of stalking…he…wa[s]…acquitted…of the charges after [a judge found]…that the women’s allegations were largely based on race…and said they had lied under oath…Nash…claimed Peeples had…attempted a drive-by shooting on her home and claimed the pan-African colors he had painted on nearby vacant homes were “gang colors.” In March 2018, she called police as Peeples worked in the park near her home, claiming he had a gun. Police arrived to find him raking leaves instead…Hunt and Callahan [then] waited until he was working with children in the garden to call police and tell them he was a pedophile…
Anna Chambers…was arrested, handcuffed, and [raped by]…New York Police Department detectives Richard Hall and Edward Martins. The case should have been clear-cut from the moment a hospital rape kit found semen matching Martins’s and Hall’s DNA inside Chambers…But…[since at the time New York] law [(which] has since been rightly changed[) allowed cops to use “she asked for it” as a defense]…the Brooklyn district attorney [used that excuse to]…drop…all the rape charges, as well as those for other sexual crimes…Hall and Martins, will face trial only for official misconduct and bribery…From the moment her case became public, [bootlicking] tabloids highlighted social media photos in which Chambers appeared scantily clad and questioned her character. In court, her…credibility [was] continuously questioned…despite the fact that…the defendants…[admitted] that they had [raped]…a [handcuffed] teen…
The Columbus, Ohio, [cop] who [murdered] Donna Dalton last year has now been arrested by the FBI and indicted on federal charges….Andrew Mitchell is accused of kidnapping women “under the guise of an arrest” and [raping them]…Mitchell [orally raped at least one woman]…and [raped another]…vaginal[ly] and anal[ly at least twice. When he]…bec[a]me aware of the investigation into his activities…Mitchell [threatened his victims]…he later attempted to obstruct a federal grand jury investigation into this, and then lied to the FBI when asked if he had ever “had sex with a prostitute”…Police later announced that [when he murdered Dalton while attempting to rape her]…Mitchell was already under investigation based on an unspecified citizen complaint…
Five spa owners or operators were arrested in…early-morning raids…and a few hours later, [gangs] of [thug cops] forced entry into 11 massage parlors…in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. Twenty-six Chinese women, many of them new arrivals who spoke little or no English, were [arrested and processed in a church, but not allowed to talk to reporters or others outside cop control]…King County prosecutors have since charged two men and three women with money laundering and three to six counts each of second-degree promoting prostitution [but as usual, no one has been charged with “sex trafficking” despite badge-lickers like the prohibitionist Seattle Times‘ Sara Jean Green obediently slurping up the “sex trafficking ring” spooge cops and politicians insisted on shooting all over the place]…
No matter how many times cops stage these racist melodramas, intentionally evoking the “submissive Asian sex slave” masturbatory fantasy in order to push the narrative they are handsomely paid to push, Sara Jean Green obediently parrots their racist, misogynist propaganda despite having contact information for a number of Seattle sex workers who have explained the truth to her. Naturally, legions of the Deeply Stupid also swallowed the filth despite the raids’ close resemblance to the rapidly-disintegrating rhetoric of the recent Florida raids, up to and including cops spying on and sexually abusing supposed “sex slaves” for an extended period of time before “rescuing” them from lucrative jobs (this story claims the women averaged $10,000/month, more than I make by a comfortable margin).
I’ve written several times already this year about my desire to make my life easier by spending more energy on the things I’m good at, and less on the things I’m not good at. And as I’ve explained before, one of the things I’m not good at is keeping up with advertising, especially in the post-FOSTA world of ad malls playing stupid games with women’s livelihoods and unschooled clients wasting my time in a way I’m not temperamentally equipped to handle. In “Diversification” I talked about creating new income streams and farming out some of the tasks I’m not good at, but there’s another strategy I plan to implement that I’m sure y’all want to know about: by the end of the year (if possible) I’d like to be off of formal escort advertising sites entirely. This doesn’t mean I’m going Under the Radar, which would be impossible anyhow; it just means I want to increase the fraction of my business which does not come from traditional ad malls such as Eros and Slixa to 100%. I am moving toward all of my business being either regulars or people who approach me via my blog, Twitter, other writing, my public speaking, TV interviews, etc. Then next year, I want to tighten it up even more so that by the end of 2020 I’m no longer taking new clients without a direct recommendation from one of my friends. I have no plans to stop working any time soon; I enjoy my work and I like making people happy. What I don’t like is having to constantly deal with advertising, screening and all that jazz. If you’ve already seen me or plan to soon, you’ve got nothing to worry about; once you’re a proven client you are “in” unless you start acting like a flake or a danger. But if you want to be in that select group, I suggest you not wait much longer; I have a good special going for five more days, which you can take advantage of as long as you book by Tuesday (even if the actual session is later). I’ll also be trying out a new newsletter-type system for touching base with my gentlemen; if you’ve already seen me professionally you should be getting an email from me soon. And if you haven’t, there’s only one way to get onto the list.
I was a sex worker in the 1980s. My abusive ex-husband used this against me to legally kidnap my two daughters, and of course poisoned them against me. Well, my now-middle-aged daughter contacted me recently after many years; she is angry at me for “bringing disgusting men into our apartment” and wants to know how I could “do such a thing”. At the same time, she expressed concern and compassion and practically apologized for hurting me. I know this comes from my ex and the cultural stigma around sex work, but I don’t know what to say to her. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
This is a very tough situation, and I’m sorry you are having to go through this for a chance at healing the rift with your daughter. I think the best way to start a dialogue with her would be to write her a letter or email, briefly explaining that because of stigma a lot of lies are told about our work, and it’s actually not the horrible thing she imagines. You can then include some links to a few good resources, so if she really wants to understand she can read or watch those resources in her own time and without all the emotion that would certainly result if you tried to explain it yourself, especially since she does not trust you. Tell her that you have never stopped loving her and would like a relationship with her, and that you think this is the best way to help her understand. If you try to explain it yourself, she’ll just keep interrupting and you will get upset, and nothing will be accomplished. But if she is at least introduced to the idea that sex work is not what she thinks it is, I think you’ll have a lot better chance of getting her to listen to you. The initial message has to come from someone she doesn’t know, who has no motivation to lie. My blog is one resource, but I’m sure you can find others (videos and such) which will help. If you need, I can suggest resources that specifically focus on the issue of courts abducting sex workers’ kids. Also: this has got to be stressful for you; do you have any friends who know your past, who can support you through this? You need to have someone you can trust close by.
Good luck, and please let me if I can help in any other way.
Be wary of people in the media trying to sell you on the idea that sex traffickers, hate criminals, migrant caravans, and Momo are coming to get you. – Robby Soave
A [North Carolina] jury sentenced Seaga Gillard to death…for the hotel-room fatal shootings of a pregnant woman and her boyfriend…Gillard…and co-defendant Brandon Hill targeted [sex workers]…robbing and sexually assaulting them…across the Triangle…prosecutors placed a long string of victims on the stand, nearly all of whom described the same scenario: advertising themselves on Backpage or PlentyOfFish, expecting a single customer but finding two at the door, being tied up with phone cords, robbed and sexually assaulted…Details that spun out of that testimony painted a cruel picture of Gillard: ordering a woman to remove her clothes and then twirling a gun inside of her, instructing another women to show her teeth and then putting his gun to her mouth…
For just the second time…a patient appears to have been cured of infection with H.I.V…The news comes nearly 12 years to the day after the first patient known to be cured, a feat that researchers have long tried, and failed, to duplicate. The…success now confirms that a cure…is possible, if difficult…Both milestones resulted from bone-marrow transplants given to…treat cancer…Bone-marrow transplantation is unlikely to be a realistic treatment option in the near future. Powerful drugs are now available to control H.I.V. infection, while the transplants are risky, with harsh side effects that can last for years. But rearming the body with immune cells similarly modified to resist H.I.V. might well succeed as a practical treatment…
…What became very apparent to me is that the girls they were calling prostitutes were children…the women we were…actually children…we need to stop calling them women…they’re children….[and] victims…We want…to…help prosecutors go after these guys and…put [sex workers] away for good…
For years, a group of outcasts in Beatrice, Neb., were convinced they had brutally raped and murdered an elderly woman named Helen Wilson one night in February 1985, even though they couldn’t remember any of it. That was only [the fantasy dreamed up] by the detectives and [pushed on them by] the police psychologist at the Gage County Sheriff’s Office…[who claimed the group had magically] repressed the traumatizing memories. The [pig-enabling] psychologist, Wayne Price, assured them the memories of the murder would probably come back in dreams…[eventually he brainwashed] three of the six suspects — [Ada] Taylor, Debra Shelden and James Dean [into] wholeheartedly believ[ing] in their [nonexistent] guilt. But for at least one of them, Joseph White, it was a different story. Convicted on nothing more than his friends’ false memories and dreams, he would spend the next 20 years seeking to prove his innocence — a pursuit that finally came to an end [last] week [when]…the Supreme Court upheld $28.1 million in damages to the wrongfully convicted, now known as the Beatrice Six. The judgment comes as a result of a civil rights lawsuit that White filed in 2009, the same year the group was pardoned and declared innocent beyond all doubt after DNA evidence exonerated them. They had collectively served more than 70 years in prison…
The GMB union has launched a new adult entertainment branch, which will invite members from across Scotland…The sex workers who fought for the creation of the branch now hope to shape future prostitution legislation…Rhea Wolfson, GMB organiser for Glasgow, was instrumental in setting up the branch. She [said]…”Sex work is work and it should be safe…People are waking up to the reality that if sex workers are treated differently then that is discrimination”…The GMB’s adult entertainment branch is open to anyone in the adult entertainment industry, including strippers, burlesque and go-go dancers, video cam workers, people who make pornography – any form of sexual labour…
…Sandipkumar Patel was wrongly accused of soliciting sex from a massage parlor during [the recent]…prostitution…busts in South Florida….the Martin County Sheriff’s Office [maliciously pretended] Patel…was connected to the operation because [they claimed] he owned a blue, four-door Porsche [parked] in the parking lot…Patel…doesn’t own a Porsche. Later [pigs admitted] the car actually belonged to a woman with the same last name….Patel…says his life, and his family’s life, has been turned upside-down [due to pigs’ releasing names and pictures for the specific intent of publicly shaming people who by law are presumed innocent]…The David Golden Law Office [is representing Patel] to sue the Martin County Sheriff’s Office…
Adrian Trevor Moore was a [cop in Western Australia who]…pleaded guilty to 180 charges of using a secure police database to access the information of 92 women he had met, or interacted with, on dating websites including Tinder and Plenty of Fish. A third of the women were checked by Moore multiple times over several years…Defence barrister Mark Andrews [claimed]…Moore[‘s violation of almost a hundred women’s privacy was OK because he] was motivated by “curiosity”…But…Magistrate Geoff Lawrence…said a jail term was necessary…”people can’t trust the public officials…they [should] lose confidence in the system”…
…a bill that would [offer prosecutors less punitive charging options for]…teen sexting passed off the floor of the Washington State House, but not without resistance from Republican representative Brad Klippert, who spent a lot of his time screaming about the depravity of anal sex and other acts after legislators rejected his amendment…Noel…Frame’s bill would prevent kids from being charged with a felony for possessing naked photos of themselves. Minors sharing..photos…could [still] be charged with a…misdemeanor [unless the subject is]…12 and under [even if the sharer is the same age]…Brad Klippert, a school [pig] and Pentecostal preacher…[wanted to] only…protect…kids who sent nudes that didn’t offend his delicate sensibilities…
Take a look at the video, and consider that this screaming lunatic is both a fundie preacher and a pig, whose job is (no surprise) spying on and lording it over high schoolers. McNeill-Rule examples like this are the ones who decide whether to hurl life-destroying charges at teens for normal adolescent sexuality:
Palm Beach County finally unblocked Youtube on its school computers…after falling for the…Momo…hoax…[that] a shocking number of journalists are guilty of spreading…but this should surprise no one…people of all ideological persuasions should beware the frequent spread of nonsensical, sensational, conspiratorial, and utterly false news stories—everything from obvious fakes like Momo to the slightly more robust yet equally absurd contentions that sex trafficking and hate crimes are ever-worsening epidemics…the media, particularly local media, falls for these kinds of hoaxes all the time. Every year around Halloween, news outlets prey on parents’ unreasonable fears of sex offenders abducting their kids, or malicious strangers feeding them poisoned candy, even though neither of these things ever happen…Sometimes the hoax gets an assist from the police or schools…Trump promoted a Washington Examinerarticle about ranchers finding prayer rugs at the souther border, an indication that…Muslims…were entering the country illegally…At the Conservative Political Action Conference…Sara Carter…[repeated] a reboot of something called a pharming party; Politico‘s Jack Shafer has debunked its existence over and over again…the so-called sex-trafficking epidemic…has been carefully refuted…over and over again…
Could it be that sex work decriminalization will actually be an issue in the next presidential election? Though Swedish model devotee Copmala Harris is lying through her teeth when she claims to support decriminalization, the very fact that she thinks claiming to support it will get her votes says something. Believe it or not, the chronically-stoned Rolling Stone actually seems to have hit on one of the reasons:
…Given the newfound visibility of sex workers’ rights, and the overlap the movement has with women’s rights and workers’ rights as a whole, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are in the position of having to address an issue that has previously been on the margins of the national conversation. But it’s unclear how many of them plan to do that…A major driving force behind this increased visibility has been the backlash to SESTA/FOSTA, a controversial piece of legislation that was [pre]tended to combat sex trafficking on websites like Backpage…[but] had the opposite effect…
…you can’t be upset at people for being single-issue voters when that issue is their literal survival. If Democrat[s]…are worried about our complaints, they would be better served by making sure there is better policy around sex work in the Democratic platform than by asking sex workers to stop fighting for their survival. We are asking to stop the bleeding. Hell, we are asking for people to even acknowledge the wound. This shouldn’t be considered a high bar…a Democrat who believes in increased criminalization will sign the death warrant for countless sex workers. A Democrat willing to examine their mistakes and work towards decriminalization, decarceration, and destigmatization will help just as many people survive…
No sooner was SASS over than my travel schedule began to populate! As of right now, the next two public screenings of The War on Whores that I know of are 7:30 PM March 20th at 151 W Cordova St in Vancouver, BC; and 4 PM April 29th at the Centennial Student Union, Minnesota State University, Mankato MN. For the Vancouver show, tickets are $15 at the door and you can reserve seats by email. I don’t know the details for Minnesota State yet. Immediately after that appearance I’ll be speaking at the Libertarian Party of Illinois convention on May 4th; while in Chicago I’d like to do a screening, so if you can help with that please let me know. We’ve also got irons in the fire for Washington, DC; New York City; Providence, RI; Orlando, FL; St. Louis, MO; and some other places, and if you’d like to see a screening in your city please let me know so we can get working on it. Well, so Paul Johnson can get working on it, anyhow; he’s better than I am at that sort of thing. In case you’re wondering what this picture has to do with all this, the answer is “nothing”; it’s just a picture Grace took of me with my late, beloved Friday in late June, 2012. I was thinking about her last week, so I decided to share it.
If you aren’t already familiar with “Ode to Billie Joe”, the song I featured in yesterday’s column, do yourself a favor and listen to it before continuing to read this one. For over fifty years, listeners have speculated just what it was that the narrator and Billie Joe threw off of the Tallahatchie Bridge, and Bobbie Gentry – a woman almost as enigmatic as the song that made her famous, who abruptly stopped performing at the height of her fame forty years ago and has barely been heard of since – has steadfastly refused to explain it, or even to comment on the disappointing “solution” used by screenwriter Herman Raucher in the 1976 movie inspired by the song. Given that she is approaching 80 and is more reclusive than ever, it seems likely she will take the secret to her grave, just as her character in the song apparently did; rather than share her grief with others, the narrator “spen[t] a lot of time pickin’ flowers up on Choctaw Ridge/And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge.” As a young teen, the general consensus among the girls in my circle was that the object thrown into the water was a self-aborted fetus which had resulted from the narrator’s relationship with Billie Joe, and that the overly-sensitive boy had killed himself in a fit of inappropriate guilt, possibly due to being seen by the “nice young preacher, Brother Taylor”. And while a number of other possibilities have been proposed, and good arguments could be made for some of them, it’s the one from my adolescence that inspired this essay upon my re-listening to the song last week.
Not everyone wants to “shout her abortion” as the activists urge; some prefer not to talk about it, and some may feel shame, sorrow or some more complex mix of emotions and prefer not to discuss the subject at all. Similarly, while sex workers like me are almost belligerently open about it and others are only out with close friends, still others prefer not to admit their history of sex work to anyone. Some LGBT people are “out and proud”, some more quietly queer, and some still deeply closeted. The same range of coping strategies (if that’s even the right phrase) can be seen in relation to kinks or fetishes; mental health issues; a history of rape or sexual abuse; drug use; a criminal record; family issues; and nearly anything else for which guilt or shame, appropriate or not, can be heaped upon an individual by society, family members, or even one’s own psyche. And while it’s certainly true that repressed shame can lead to all sorts of harmful outcomes (like jumping off of bridges or letting one’s life be consumed by bottled-up grief or anger), and that talking about taboo subjects certainly helps to normalize them, not everyone has the psychological mechanisms or social tools required to “shout” her abortion, discuss her whoredom on television, march in pride parades or display family skeletons in the front yard. Some people have the psychic anatomy necessary to be honest about subjects that were or still are considered shameful, and some don’t; some may feel comfortable displaying some skeletons and not others (for example, being open about queerness but not about sex work). And the only person who is qualified to make decisions about which laundry to air and which to pack away in the cedar chest is its owner. While I would like it if more sex workers were “out”, I have no right to pass judgment on anyone who isn’t; their lives are theirs to live, not mine, and they are the ones who will reap the benefits or suffer the consequences of their decisions. And the exact same thing is true of every other such secret. To drag someone’s secrets into the open against their will is an act of psychic violence which could potentially trigger physical violence in some circumstances, which is why outing, “doxxing”, and tattling are condemned by all ethical adults. Minding one’s own business is a virtue, locked closets should be respected, and sometimes silence really is golden.
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