Links #428

Stand up and act like a lady.  –  “Officer” James Brooks

I first discovered this song when it was performed by Harley Quinn in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series; those of you who remember it from that show may appreciate seeing the original, and those who are unfamiliar with it may want to watch Harley’s version too.  The links above were provided by Franklin Harris,  Elizabeth N. Brown, Emma Evans, Amy Alkon, Phoenix Calida, Tim Cushing, and Emma Evans again, in that order.

• R.I.P. Burt Reynolds.
• Snake Mama is pleased.
• Color Maggie unsurprised.
• Just protecting and serving.
• Not a police state, no sirree!
• Americans suck at protest in comparison.
• Rent-a-pig robs & murders unconscious man.

From the Archives

• When migration control disguised as “sex trafficking” law is very apparent.
• Even credulous reporters now feel compelled to at least mention Amnesty.
• The “money is a magic mind-control spell” idiocy expanded to a new level.
• It’s “baffling and perplexing” that websites don’t want the web destroyed.
• Why does Gay, Inc never speak up for sex worker rights until it’s too late?
• The prosecutor couldn’t exercise his discretion & decline to press charges.
• Emily Yoffe takes a deep dive down the “campus rape crisis” rabbit hole.
• Maybe if we keep repeating this, it’ll eventually sink into the public skull.
• Remember this next time you hear pigs oinking about arresting “pimps”.
• Prosecutors have the magical ability to transform a “child” into an adult.
• Cops, Antarctica, bad marketing, Band of Gold, the Voynich MS & more.
• They realized they could expand the panic by adding male “sex slaves”.
• Picture what you’d think of as “sex trafficking”, then compare it to this.
• IWW was the 1^st major union to support sexworkers; won’t be the last.
• A better monument: abolish the bad laws that enabled their murders.
• Dysphemisms are used to conjure a story out of nothing but rumors.
• Interesting that this article doesn’t mention the anti-Backpage mob.
• Is it wrong to be bothered by professionals trading services for sex?
• Cops, fascism, good deeds, clowns, poor judgment and much more.
• How does one who lives in a small town or rural area find an escort?
• Reminder: Grady Judd is an utterly loathsome excuse for a human.
• Just another example of “authorities” paying men to rape whores.
• In the US, the government would’ve “helped” by prosecuting her.
• Let’s hope other ACLU chapters start following New Jersey’s lead.
• Why people view sex work as an “unacceptable” risk for women.
• Serious question: How do we nominate Liz Brown for a Pulitzer?
• A new twist in Everett, WA’s absurd “bikini barista” melodrama.
• Another sex worker turned performing artist, this one a rapper.
• ACLU says too little, too late about “sex trafficking” hysteria.
• Sex work is work, and there is no specific “sex worker type”.
• This is why sex workers shouldn’t “debate” prohibitionists.
• The anti-porn loons are completely losing their minds.
• What exactly is the rationale behind this prosecution?
• Surveillance beyond the wildest dreams of the Stasi.
• What a column written on diazepam looks like.
• Another victory against a political witch hunt.
• Dayton, Ohio joins the “Dear John” letter fad.
• Censorship in the name of “THE CHILDREN!”
• I really hate being right all the fucking time.
• The Swedish model protects sex workers!
• Brooke Magnanti on sex, lies & statistics.
• Clients of Sex Workers Allied for Change.
• Rapist cops of the week, 2016 and 2017.
• Chester Brown discusses his new book.
• “Sex robot” hysteria gets ever sillier.
• A step in the right direction, at least.
• Child-raping politician of the week.
• Alas, the victory was short-lived.
• A strange, unwholesome week.
• Five million pageviews.
• The stupidity defense.
• Travel, travel, travel!

In the News (#871)

Social morality cannot be used to violate the fundamental rights of even a single individual.  –  Dipak Misra

Maggie in the Media 

Peeping Toms

While the US increases interference into private lives, India goes the other way:

India’s Supreme Court…struck down a colonial-era law that made gay sex punishable by up to 10 years in prison, a landmark victory for gay rights that one judge said would “pave the way for a better future.”  The 1861 law, a relic of Victorian England that hung on long after the end of British colonialism, was a weapon used to discriminate against India’s gay community, the judges ruled in a unanimous decision…the court said sexual orientation was a “biological phenomenon” and that discrimination on that basis violated fundamental rights…

Banishment

I’m sure you feel safer now:

Olivia Munn’s new film, The Predator, is making headlines not just because of its premiere but because Twentieth Century Fox pulled a scene from the film after it was revealed that director Shane Black had cast a registered sex offender to play a small part.  Munn [complained] to the…studio and has now [bragged] about it on social media…Steven Wilder Striegel…pleaded guilty in 2010 to allegations that he attempted to lure a 14 year-old girl into a sexual relationship via the internet…Munn wrote…”excerpts from the arrest affidavit are beyond disturbing and completely contradict Wilder’s version of how he was convicted”…

Try not to throw up when you read all the bootlicking statements about how everything pigs and prosecutors say is unquestionable holy truth.

Monsters 

This brings the toll to 19 so far this year:

Vontashia Bell, an 18-year-old transgender woman was fatally shot multiple times in Shreveport, Louisiana, on August 30…Later that day, Dejanay Stanton’s body was found in an alley on Chicago’s South Side…Like Bell, Stanton had been shot to death…In Philadelphia, police are looking for the person or persons behind the murder of Shantee Tucker, a 30-year-old trans woman who was found shot in the back [on August 29^th]…With their deaths, there have now been 19 known killings of transgender or nonbinary people this year, with 13 of them being black…

Whither Canada? (#813)

A new challenge is only necessary because Liberals lied about repealing the law:

Across Canada, sex workers are still regularly being charged with crimes because of their profession.  Their clients, too, are being targeted by police…Canada’s new laws…have only made things worse…Bill C-36, came into effect in 2014 under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, and it was opposed by all opposition parties at the time, including Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, who contended that the legislation was unconstitutional and failed to comply with th[e] Supreme Court ruling [which decriminalized sex work].  During the 2015 federal election campaign, Trudeau vowed to undo or fix various criminal justice reforms brought in by his predecessor, painting the Tories’ tough-on-crime agenda as heartless and damaging…But now—three years after the Liberals won a majority government, four years after C-36 came into force, five years after the Supreme Court ruled that Canada’s long-standing prostitution laws were unconstitutional…any plans for reform appear to have stalled…After years of patience with the Liberals, sex workers are beginning to speak out again…A constitutional challenge to the Harper-era laws is facing a Charter challenge in a London, Ont. courtroom, which promises to extend into years of further legal wrangling.  The Pivot Legal Society, an intervenor in the Bedford case…[is] considering another challenge…

Pyrrhic Victory (#854)

The problem with facial recognition isn’t that it’s inaccurate, which would give victims a way to fight it legally.  The problem is that it won’t stay inaccurate for much longer:

Sixteen states let the FBI use face recognition technology to compare the faces of suspected criminals to their driver’s license and ID photos…at least 26 states allow [in-state pigs] to run or request [such] searches…Roughly 50 percent of American adults have their photos searched this way — meaning that 117 million adults are included in law enforcement face recognition networks…But critics question the…[use of] software which is known for problems with accuracy — especially in…people of color…At a time when artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly [sold to the deeply stupid] as a tool to keep us safe, experts are beginning to sound the alarm…for privacy…Clare Garvie, an associate with the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law [points out that] other police investigative tools — such as wiretaps and fingerprints — are heavily regulated, requiring a judge to issue a warrant for use.  But only a handful of state laws touch on face recognition…Garvie compares the presence of police video cameras enabled with face recognition technology on every corner to the act of a [pig rooting] through a protest demanding to see identification of everyone…face recognition cameras do the same thing — while capturing faces and identifying people remotely and in secret…

Full of Themselves (#860)

Let’s hope this attempt to harass Asian massage parlors out of business harms licensed masseuses even more:

Coralville and Iowa City joined the growing number of local city governments in passing ordinances that target…massage parlors since the Iowa Legislature gave cities the ability to regulate requirements last year.  [Prohibitionists pretend] human trafficking in massage parlors is an issue in Iowa City…

As long as politicians can successfully draw lines between adult businesses and others, they will continue to.

Business As Usual (#868) 

Rapists and murders say they want to “regain public trust” by not raping and murdering as much for the next few weeks:

Columbus Division of Police is temporarily suspending routine vice operations in part to regain public trust in light of two high-profile [abuses of power by] vice [cops] in the last 45 days.  The vice [pen], which includes about 20 [pigs], will spend the next 28 days providing command staff with information on how [raids] are conducted, Deputy Chief Tim Becker said…On July 11, vice [cops] arrested adult film actress Stormy Daniels and two other women following Daniels’ performance at the Sirens strip club…City Attorney Zach Klein…said he would no longer prosecute cases involving inappropriate touching by dancers.  Becker also issued a memo…barring vice and narcotics [pigs] from [rooting] into strip clubs without a specific complaint and permission from Becker or Chief Kim Jacobs…On Aug. 23, [disguised pig] Andrew Mitchell…[murdered] 23-year-old Donna Castleberry while he was [trying to rape her]…Mitchell…had a citizen complaint filed against him less than a week before the [murder]…During the 28-day vice review, only the “most critical” vice cases will be investigated, Becker said…

What, pray tell, constitutes a “vital” intrusion of armed thugs into people’s consensual acts?  Because that’s exactly what “vice” policing is.

The Widening Gyre (#870) 

Cops are trying to regain control of the runaway moral panic by releasing even more hysterical exaggeration than the Facebook loons:

You may have seen the Facebook posts…A young woman fears being followed by “strange” men, in the store or the parking lot…she believes that she was being followed as part of an attempt to kidnap her for a human trafficking sex ring.  However, local authorities say, the posts are reinforcing a common misconception:  real life bogeymen waiting in parking lots, snatching young women off the street and forcing them to have sex with others.  Unfortunately, the truth is far worse: a human trafficker can be anyone you know…And victims of human trafficking can be anyone — human trafficking victims look just like you or me, a child or an adult…

Hide under your bed!  Trust no one!  Don’t form personal relationships!  “Sex traffickers” are EVERYWHERE!!!!!!

Caste System

Prohibitionists love wanking to the Neomarxist fantasy that sex workers and managers are separate and wholly distinct feudal classes, just as they imagine industrial labor and management to be.  They pretend sex workers don’t move in and out of management roles (escort service owner, house mother, jack shack manager, etc) over the years as the need arises.  This lets them conveniently slur women like me (who ran a service for six years but has been independent since ’06) as some kind of nobility who are completely out of touch with their peers and friends who made different choices.  It’s a fairy tale, which is appropriate considering their childish beliefs about sexual purity, mustache-twirling “pimps” and bogeyman clients.  Loons like Julie Bindel even salivate over fantasies of an all-powerful “Pimp Lobby” (that I’m supposedly a Big Wheel in), basically the “Elders of Zion” in drag designed by pearl-clutchers, who bizarrely fight to defeat the black market despite the fact that black markets are what make criminal organizations rich.  People who believe this stuff are all bat-shit crazy.

Empty Set

Why don’t the people who support decriminalization work together with those who support legalization to fight criminalization?

The answer to that is simpler than you might think:  it’s because nobody supports legalization.  You may think that’s a bit glib, but it’s basically the truth.  Every sex worker rights organization, human rights organization (including Amnesty International), health organization and academic who has actually made a proper study of sex work agrees that decriminalization (in which sex work is treated as a form of work rather than a type of criminal behavior to be “controlled”, and sex workers are treated as adults with agency rather than broken children to be managed by the state) is the best framework for everyone involved.  Studies from New Zealand and New South Wales demonstrate that the decriminalized sex industry in those places is far healthier than in any place with heavy-handed government “regulation” of women’s sexuality by police.  The number of sex workers who want themselves declared moral imbeciles in need of management by the state is vanishingly small; nearly everyone who supports “legalization” is a politician, cop, moralist or crony who stands to profit from the “legalized” system (such as Nevada brothel owners or the owners of STI testing services).  In other words, the only people who support women being paternalistically treated like imbecilic disease vectors who need others to make decisions about their bodies for them, are those who stand to gain power (including the power to rape women who color outside the lines) or money from such a system.  And many such people, such as Dutch “authorities” and pimps like Dennis Hof, are perfectly happy to spread “sex trafficking” propaganda and other lies in order to ensure that women are denied control over our own sexual and economic behavior.

Does that answer your question about why we can’t work together?

(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.)

In the News (#870)

We didn’t think it was good idea to have [rapey cop] conduct aired publicly in a prosecution.  –  Scott Perrilloux

To Protect and Serve

Strip club raids exist only for pigs to get their jollies:

Prosecutors have scuttled a multi-agency investigation into a…strip club in St. Helena Parish [because a disguised pig]…committed a crime – by digitally penetrating a woman during two private dances.  The month-long sting operation included another [cop] asking a dancer at The Mansion to lactate on him “because he was curious”…The [sexual assault] of the dancer was described in a lengthy affidavit…by Scott Jarreau, a Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s…deputy who recounted the…actions in graphic detail [because he idiotically thought it would]…support…a civil asset forfeiture case against the club’s owner that was ultimately dismissed.  The [pigs’ disgusting] conduct was among the reasons prosecutors decided not to pursue charges against 13 people arrested in the raid, including the club’s proprietor…It’s not clear why Shreveport, which is more than four hours away, lent officers to the effort…

It’s “not clear” to people whose heads are so far up their own arseholes they don’t know what pervert cops look like.

Droit du Seigneur 

Though pimps are not common, a disproportionate number of the ones who do exist are cops:

A…Newark [cop] was charged…with…soliciting and accepting cash payments from brothel owners in exchange for protecting the brothels from police action and…failing to report those cash payments on his…income tax returns…Julio Rivera…[extort]ed more than $100,000 in cash payments from three brothel owners [?] in Newark…

I’m guessing that by “brothels” these prosecutors actually mean massage parlors.

The Clueless Leading the Hysterical 

Hysteria over “dangerous teen fads” is much funnier when cops are its primary vectors:

…“Momo”…is the face of a viral Internet game, [fantasized] to be spreading via…WhatsApp and sparking worldwide warnings…by [authoritarians] about its potential to harm young people who may be lured into playing…references to “Momo” also have circulated on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  The…“Momo Challenge”…requires players to complete escalating tasks that are [supposedly] dangerous…But…it’s simply another one of the many hoaxes that breed on the Internet.  Officials in multiple countries [fantasize] Momo’s final challenge is suicide and the game is rumored to be linked to at least three recent cases of minors who killed themselves in Argentina, Colombia and India…None of these circumstantial reports tying the game to suicides have been proved…[people who aren’t cops or hysterics] are calling it an Internet hoax designed to generate paranoia among adults…

Finding What Isn’t There

Trying to manufacture data to “prove” a problem exists when existing data says it doesn’t is not science:

…David Cohen…of Stanford’s…Center for Human Rights…has created a set of resources to help NGOs and government agencies working in the anti-trafficking field gather data [for] policymakers…about the nature and scope of the problem they face.  “Sectors in the anti-trafficking field [do] not always cooperat[e] in a way that…allow[s] us to understand that data”…said senior program manager Jessie Brunner…“After decades of work…there is still no [politically popular] answer to “what is the problem and why is it happening”…That scares me, that after all these efforts and money spent we still aren’t able to figure that out.  And we need a solid answer to that question so that we can actually stop the problem”…Brunner…that the data that exist are often limited…of low quality or outdated…

When an article about the lack of good data about a phenomenon refers to that phenomenon as a “problem” and a “scourge” while admitting that the hysterics don’t even know that there is a problem, it’s a safe bet that any forthcoming data from the announced project will be worthless.

Chauvinism (#335)

Instead of purging sex workers with police violence, Argentina negotiated with them as citizens:

…For two months, transgender sex workers will move from the red light zone in Plaza Florencio Sánchez…in…Palermo…to another space, a few blocks away…The move [was agreed upon in meetings between]…the Argentina LGBT Federation and the Association of Women of Argentina (AMMAR)…sex workers in the area, the Undersecretary of Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism of the Buenos Aires Government and the Ombudsman of the City…The reason is that Florencio Sanchez square is being converted to volleyball courts, while the neighboring Lago de Regatas is being conditioned for the Olympic Triathlon swimming competition…[for] the Youth Olympic Games, which will run from October 6 to 18…until October 31, the trans girls will leave their usual area…to…offer their services in…a temporary red light zone…the City Government also agreed to make improvements in working conditions that they had committed to when the red light zone…was created in 2008…

Allied for Change

This announcement is definitely flawed, but I applaud any client who comes out:

Lily Allen has revealed that she slept with female escorts because she felt “lost and lonely” during the tour for her third album Sheezus in 2014…explaining her decision was made after learning that some details of her upcoming book My Thoughts Exactly had been leaked to the Daily Mail.  “I slept with female escorts when I was on tour, cause I was lost and lonely and looking for something.  I’m not proud, but I’m not ashamed…I don’t do it anymore”…

Follow Your Bliss (#698) 

Yet the government still won’t admit that the TSA attracts pedophiles:

A…Transportation Security Administration supervisor has been sentenced for having child pornography at his home.  Devin David Jutilla…resigned from his job at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport after his arrest April 25 [and]…pleaded guilty last month to second-degree child pornography possession as part of [a plea bargain] with Pierce County prosecutors…Judge Bryan Chushcoff sentenced Jutilla to six months in jail…

The Widening Gyre (#825) 

Cops are trying to regain control of a runaway moral panic by using their favored tool, violence:

An Ohio mom’s Facebook video about the attempted abduction of her child in a Walmart parking lot was [like] all [sex trafficking scare tales] made up…Chelsie Hendel was arrested…after…Marion County Sheriff Tim Bailey…[reviewed] security footage [that]…showed no such incident happened.  Bailey also said Hendel never reported a crime to police.  When police questioned Hendel…she admitted to making the story up and was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of inducing panic.  Her video…has been taken down from Facebook…

Banishment (#848) 

This Orwellian tyranny is part of how governments are getting around the push to reduce prison populations:

…civil commitment allows a prosecutor to subject those convicted of sexual offenses (and sometimes, those with no conviction at all) to an indefinite period of civil punishment at the end of their criminal sentence.  Civil commitment can mean years of additional detention under the guise of psychiatric treatment meant to reduce a person’s risk of committing another crime, with an often-illusory promise of freedom.  Statutes that [supposedly] constrain the power of authorities to civilly commit people…are  broad and ambiguous…and…rates of reoffending are far lower than would be believed—potentially imperiling the justification for civil commitment itself…In California, there [are] 345 people trapped in…“pretrial” detention for more than three years.  More than a quarter of those have been held without trial since 2006 or earlier.  In Florida…89 of the 489 detainees at their civil commitment center are pretrial.  Fourteen have been held for more than a decade; five for nearly 20 years.  In Washington State, Jesse McReynolds spent nine years civilly detained on McNeil Island without trial before a judge ordered his release…McReynolds’s case was…not an anomaly, and…multiple [Washingtonians] have been civilly detained pending trial, sometimes for decades…

Soap Opera (#853)

They’re “certified” in making up absurd stories and spreading moral panic:

…in Deschutes County, a local response team comprised of 16 experts in their various fields follows up on all human trafficking leads.  The Deschutes County Commercially Sexually Exploited Children (CSEC) Response Team then coordinates a continuum of care, helping victims become survivors…

In Bend, Oregon, home of this “team”, this “continuum of care” includes posting magic “sex trafficker” detecting stickers (subtitle link), turning people in to the pigs for being injured, and claiming that eclipses cause “sex trafficking” by magic passes involving poker chips.

Diary #428

I really like sharing my nice things with those who appreciate them.  That includes the fresh eggs my chickens are churning out at a truly stupefying rate, which I’m sharing with my friends and neighbors; it also includes space on my Amazon wishlist, which sometimes contains things for Grace to use in working to fix up Sunset, like the miter saw table sent to me this week by the extremely generous  Square Peg!  I also received a new can opener and one of my favorite varieties of tea from Akalalalalamala.  Thank you both so much!  I’ve asked Jae to make a list of things I should get for Shiloh, because she is a pretty pony and therefore needs pretty pony stuff; if you’re of a mind to give me stuff like that, please keep an eye on my wishlist over the next week or two.  Also, have a listen to the most recent episode of Thaddeus Russell’s podcast, in which Thad interviews Joshua Childress, who resigned from the US Border Patrol after listening to the previous episode of the same podcast featuring yours truly.  At one point he tells Thad, “Maggie McNeill has more courage than I will ever have. She’s my hero.”  And that kind of testimonial, y’all, is exactly what gives me the strength to keep doing this.

Winnowing

It’s no secret that I do not suffer fools gladly, and never have.  In the past few years my reaction to imbeciles online has resulted in my being compared to a Western gunfighter, various warriors, a wronged wolverine, and even a psychic mutant (sorry, I can’t find that column); earlier this year, Matisse said I was like a “flaming sword of doom on Twitter”.  But while at one time I had a great deal more patience with work calls, the events of the past few months have necessitated a change in that department as well.  Up until this year, a large enough fraction of the texts and phone calls I received led to paying work to justify my taking at least a few minutes with each caller.  But now that Backpage is gone and the guys who used it have flooded into all the other sites, and Eros has made the incredibly asinine decision to remove all advertiser’s website links (thus driving browsers to contact providers by phone or email), I’ve been forced to improve my phone-screening skill set so as to eliminate the > 80% of phone callers or texters who are time-wasters, clowns, or cheapskates.  Even if I’m awake, I’m unlikely to answer a voice call before noon or after midnight, because those guys are most likely looking for a session nownownow and I don’t work at any AM hour (if they really want to see me, they can text or email).  Texts from any number not already in my phone book receive a short reply with my website link (and I wish I had a way to save that as something like a macro), and most of those don’t reply once they see my rates (or else they’re too lazy to even visit the site).  Guys who voice-call and mumble, ignore my questions, make stupid comments or just keep saying “hi” are going to be hung up on, and those who then try to pursue by texting are likely to get their feelings hurt.  Some of you reading this may not understand why this strictness is necessary, but I know the sex workers get it:  if I spent just five minutes with everyone who contacts me I’d be on the phone for about two hours a day, and less than a fifth of that effort would actually lead to any money.  So it’s absolutely imperative that I quickly separate the grain from the chaff so as to concentrate on the former rather than wasting my time and emotional energy on the latter.

Still, I recognize that there may be some men who want to be good clients, but simply lack the phone skills to present that way; maybe English isn’t their first language, or they’re painfully shy, or nervous about contacting an escort because they never have before.  To those guys, I advise doing what a new client I saw last week did:  use email.  All the emails I received from this gent were clear and polite, and I had no trouble screening him, but when we chatted so I could give him directions I noticed he wasn’t very verbal, and when we actually met I don’t think he said 40 words in the whole hour.  The reason it worked out anyway was that he made a realistic assessment of his competence in spoken English, understood that his written English was much better, and so followed his strong suit.  So unless you’re both eloquent and confident, and quite familiar with my rates and such, email is probably the best approach; not only does it give you the opportunity to put your best foot forward, but it also allows me to answer when I’m in the proper frame of mind.