Diary #365

Last week was such a busy one!  On Wednesday I flew to Chicago, on Friday I had a reception at which I spoke and sold some of my books, and on Saturday I brunched (lightly!) with the people working on a brand new escort advertising site I’m very excited about (and will tell you more about as things develop) before flying home.  And in between Wednesday and Saturday, I visited with several gentlemen in private.  See, y’all, that’s how you can get me to visit:  set up a decent-sized event for me (or even a couple of smaller ones), give me the time to set up a few appointments, provide me with lodging & meals and I’ll fly out to your city, where you can also see me in private if you like.  Interested?  Let me know!  On Sunday I also marched with the SWOP contingent in Seattle’s Pride parade (somebody has to represent sex workers since the mainstream LGBT organizations won’t), and I’ll have some good pictures of that for you later.

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Links #364

People die in these circumstances.  –  Darci Tierney

I saw this video pop up a few days ago; someone decided to compile all of the silly window cameo jokes from the old Batman TV series, and it seemed an apropos feature given Adam West’s recent demise.  The links above it were provided by Tim Cushing (“patience” and “bicycle”), Jillian Keenan (“happens”), Radley Balko  (“partisanism”), Cathy Reisenwitz (“whatsoever”), Kevin Wilson (“game”) , and  Lenore Skenazy (“lucky”).

• Pathological patience.
• I hate it when this happens.
• The deep stupidity of partisanism.
• Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever.
• Humans are so surprised when beaten at our own game.
• NOT FOR ANY REASON.  She’s lucky she isn’t in a cell or hospital.
• Crime: no bicycle light. Sentence wanted by prosecutor: life in prison.

From the Archives

• Massage parlors are popular cop targets because they’re low-hanging fruit.
• Prohibition turns people into “crime scenes”, to be violated by cops at will.
• So nice when “sex trafficking” bullshit is called out in mainstream media.
• Only parts not profoundly ignorant are those that’re profoundly obvious.
• “Cross-border trafficking of prostitutes” = “escorts driving across town”.
• At least Canadian media have the sense to put “rescue” in scare quotes.
• How “Walk Free Foundation” comes up with ridiculous “slavery” figures.
• Politicians realize cops’ scam is too obvious, pretend to be “concerned”.
• The truth of one fact doesn’t change the incoherence of 1st part of this.
• This wouldn’t “shock” anyone with the approximate timidity of a sheep.
• Should a sexually-traumatized man go to a whore to lose his virginity?
• The people prohibitionists want in charge of “protecting” sex workers.
• Cops, Don Martin, Patrick Macnee, Dolly Parton & Captain Kangaroo.
• Most people are so naive they don’t realize this is par for the course.
• “Residential farm” = “doing menial agricultural labor for their keep”.
• The key players in the recriminalization of sex work in Rhode Island.
• Another overly-broad and mindlessly-draconian “revenge porn” law.
• Another mainstream article tearing down “sex trafficking” hysteria.
• I’m not sure why this was controversial; nobody can deny it’s true.
• SCOTUS demolishes what little was left of the Fourth Amendment.
• A profile of sex worker Kitty Stryker, in Cosmopolitan of all places.
• Cops openly admit being lazy fascists; the public just stays asleep.
• It isn’t just whores who have power to grant demons “permission”.
• I’m not sure how working for free could be considered a “protest”.
• Cops claimed they didn’t know if this murder was hate-motivated.
• This looks like another case in which everyone involved is awful.
• Irish iterations of the “gypsy whore” myth are the silliest ones.
• What “legal but heavily regulated” actually looks like in action.
• Conner Habib wrote last year’s best essay about prohibition.
• Bindel can’t possibly be as delusional as she pretends to be.
• If a man wants an open marriage, what’s the wife there for?
• RAPING a whore is OK; it’s only paying her that’s an issue.
• Announcing SWOP’s sex worker comedy & variety show.
• Because ordinary English words can emit sex rays, too!
• Imagine American cops making a statement like this.
• You know that “negative secondary effects” bullshit?
• A ludicrous masturbatory fantasy from San Diego.
• Hortense Mancini was a whore down to her genes.
• My two previous columns for the summer solstice.
• Ignorance of the law creates train wrecks like this.
• Once in a while an insanely-broad law is defeated.
• Once again, actual figures disprove the hysteria.
• Cops, laws, toys, Picasso, 2001 and much more.
• Sexually exploitative prison guards of the week.
• What is probably the first report on Neal Falls.
• Cops say having sex is “as serious as it gets”.
• Those magical pimps work amazingly fast.
• Rapist cops of the week, 2015 and 2016.
• Another cop, another prostitution sting.
• The rapist of a sex worker is convicted.
• Definitely not a police state, no sirree.
• A sex worker’s murderer is convicted.
• Who are the “sex traffickers” again?
• Sex Addiction: A Critical History.
• More cops devouring their own.
• On the past exonerative tense.
• Self-care and whale-watching.

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In the News (#750)

“Sexual exploitation” sounds like you’ve got a woman in a cage in the basement.  –  John Tymczyszyn

A Broker in Pillage

Dear useful idiots:  I did tell you so:

Four U.S. senators have proposed legislation that would significantly expand the power of the federal government to seize citizens’ money when traveling in or out of the United States…The stated goal of the legislation is to make it more difficult for drug dealers, terrorists and other criminals to transport money and other “financial instruments” across the U.S. border, but several troubling provisions in the law could put law-abiding American citizens at risk of losing tens of thousands of dollars for doing nothing more than failing to fill out a government form…The Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Counterfeiting Act would expand “monetary instruments” covered under current law to include “prepaid access devices, stored value cards, digital currencies, and other similar instruments“…digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, are theoretically always transported by the owner of the digital currency account wherever he or she goes, which means digital currency owners with accounts valued at $10,000 or more must always report their funds or risk having them seized…the law treats all blank checks as though they are financial instruments valued in excess of $10,000 if the checking account contains at least $10,000, which means if a traveler accidentally fails to report a blank check floating around in his or her luggage, the account holder could face stiff penalties — even if there is no suspicion of criminal activity…

Yellow Fever

Reuters was once a respected news organization, but note the complete lack of evidence of any kind for these claims:

Children in the Dominican Republic are preyed upon by foreigners who visit the island to have sex with youngsters…a United Nations [bureaucrat] said.  Maud de Boer-Buquicchio…[used the faddish term] hotspot…[and claims] Poor children can be pushed into the sex trade by their own families and local pimps, taxi and motorbike taxi drivers…”I saw it happen with the taxi drivers [she said, without presenting any actual evidence]…A 2015 report by [religion-based prohibition] group, International Justice Mission…[claimed, again without actual proof] that one in four sex workers in the Dominican Republic…was under 18…

Sex Work is Work

A couple of short interviews with Australian escorts:

Lulu Valentine…was never of the belief that sex work was sex-free…[despite Hollywood] misrepresent[ation]…“when sex work is portrayed in media, it often smooths over the more arbitrary details of the job”…Sex, it seems from [TV shows]…is an optional part of the escort gig…Claudia Cadine…says despite Hollywood notions…she’s never had any misconceptions about the nature of her work – it’s to have sex.  Not fall in love…

Choke Point 

This could also go under “The Prudish Giant”, but I think the financial chokeout is more important:

…the US’s first ever sextech hackathon…had a lot of trouble getting the word out on Facebook…Andriy Yaroshenko, one of the event’s organizers, said he said he tried to submit his advertisement around 100 times and was denied…”I’m doing an educational hackathon.  It’s not porn.  It’s not entertainment,'” said Yaroshenko.  LinkedIn blocked his ads as well…Mal Harrison…of the Center for Erotic Intelligence…said Facebook suspended the [group]’s page a number of times….[others] said [they weren’t]…allowed to use PayPal…for sales…they would have to use their personal email accounts to take credit card payments through PayPal.  And Kickstarter wasn’t available to them either…it’s even difficult for companies in the sex industry to get the business name on checks from a bank…Bryony Cole, host of the Future of Sex podcast…said…it can be difficult to separate out the good from the harmful…

By buying into the false duality of “good” sexual content (education, tech, etc) vs “bad” content (such as porn), these holier-than-thou types assist the very censors they’re whining about. If you don’t want your sexual business censored or choked, you’re going to have to fight for mine as well.

Something Rotten in Sweden (#507)

Seattle politicians engage in a pompous display of virtue signalling directly against the advice of sex workers and allies, then pretend they didn’t know their posturing would destroy people’s lives:

Two years ago the city of Seattle changed the name of the misdemeanor crime of patronizing a prostitute to sexual exploitation…A 24-year-old…man did everything a judge ordered him to do after he took a plea deal last year…[but] criminal-background check erroneously shows he’s been convicted of a sex-related felony, making it virtually impossible for him to get a job…While the elements of the crime — and the punishment — remain the same, the name change is exclusive to the city.  No other jurisdiction in the state, or country, uses the same language…it has resulted in serious errors on criminal-background checks and led to significant fears that a conviction could have immigration consequences for foreign-born men here on visas…[defense attorney John] Tymczyszyn [said]…“They’ve renamed it to something that sounds like a felony…Misdemeanors aren’t supposed to render you unemployable”…Holmes, the [most vocal proponent of the dysphemistic name change], said his office has had discussions with the…Northwest Immigrant Rights Project…about ways to mitigate possible immigration consequences…

I have a simple way to “mitigate the consequences”:  change the fucking name back & stop your fucking anti-sex propaganda machine.  Oh, and don’t forget another example of Seattle’s hypocritical posturing: declaring itself a “sanctuary city” for migrants the feds want to deport.

Broken Record (#539)

Poor Nebraska; all panicked up & no place to go: “The College World Series starts this weekend in Omaha.  Sex traffickers are drawn to the event…But sex trafficking also happens…in small rural towns“…

First They Came for the Hookers… (#556)

Don’t think too hard about why someone would leave a job inflicting violence consensually for one where she can inflict it non-consensually:

A New Jersey sheriff’s [deputy] is undergoing a legal spanking after her bosses found out she once worked as a dominatrix and tried to boot her out of the department.  Kristen Hyman…is facing a disciplinary hearing where she will have to fight for her career against claims that her status as an ex-whip mistress disgraces the organization…

Yes, they’re claiming that being a sex worker disgraces cops, rather than vice-versa.

The Widening Gyre (#589) 

The “Facebook pimps” myth is one of the silliest of the whole panic:

…Jane’s daughter, Mary, was involved in a vehicle collision…and came out of it with a head injury.  For the next couple of years, she stayed home, spending most of her time on…Facebook…“She was targeted by a gang,” Jane says…[for a] year before the gang of pimps actually took Mary, they inundated her with attention through Facebook.  Then one night, she just up and left, getting into their car…“They didn’t physically force her, but they threatened her…She walked out the door under her own steam, but they were in the parking lot and took her”…

This woman actually believes that her inexperienced daughter had so much potential as a sex worker that an entire gang of pimps (who could apparently only afford one car) was willing to invest an entire year ensnaring her.  These people live in a completely different reality from the one actual people live, fuck & do business in.

The Public Morals

Every woman molested or raped by cops should file a federal suit:

Two San Antonio [cops] imprisoned for conning women to have sex with them in a fake undercover investigation face a federal lawsuit for civil rights violations and sexual assault…Emmanuel Galindo and Alejandro Chapa…tricked women into [submitting to rape] under the guise that it was for a secret police department operation…

The only way this will ever stop is for cities’ insurance companies to tell them they’ll no longer pay judgments against these filthy pigs.

To Molest and Rape 

STOP SAYING “FORMER” COP.  He was not a “former” cop when he committed the rape:

Jerry “Jay” Gragg Jr. was arrested…by a Pittsburg County deputy and special agents with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations at the OSBI McAlester field office.  Gragg is being charged with one count of forcible sodomy, two counts of sexual battery and one count of an officer accepting a bribe…[during] a Jan. 21 traffic stop…Gragg told the female driver she had a suspended license and unless she paid her fine in full he would take her to jail. When she didn’t have enough money, he [orally raped] her…the woman spoke to friends and her pastor, then came forward with the allegations, producing a blouse she was wearing during the traffic stop.  OSBI matched DNA from the woman’s shirt to Gragg…

Saying “former” implies that the department drummed him out before he raped anyone, when in fact it was his status as a cop that allowed him to commit the rape. This is just another way the media conspires with “authorities” to absolve police departments of responsibility for the myriad crimes committed by the thugs in their employ.

Cops and Robbers (#665)

The Swedish model eliminates prostitution!

A [prohibitionist group] has threatened to cause major traffic chaos ahead of next month’s U2 concert over protests against the area being “turned into a red light district”.  [Busybodies] on Dublin’s Dorset Street have repeatedly raised concerns about a number of premises in the area, which they [claim] are being run as brothels…[the malcontents] have threatened to cause severe traffic disruption on one of the city’s busiest streets ahead of next month’s U2 gig if their concerns are not acted upon…

Sex Rays (#707)

Be careful, the sex ray intensity on these items must be well into the danger zone:

BDSM porn establishment Kink.com will soon leave the massive Armory building in San Francisco to move its operations to Las Vegas…they are selling off furniture and props from their adult film sets…The sale started on Thursday, June 14 and resumes again on Saturday, June 17th from 12 PM to 5 PM…

The End of the Beginning (#718) 

More good news about bad laws:

…the Supreme Court unanimously overturned a North Carolina law that bans registered sex offenders from any “commercial social networking Web site” that is open to minors…every justice agreed that the law’s broad scope cannot be reconciled with the First Amendment…

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Testimonial

Regular readers know that I’m not usually one for giving testimonials, and never unless I actually try and like a product.  And that doesn’t happen all that often for the simple reason that I’m rather set in my ways, so it isn’t often I actually try a new product to discover whether I like it or not.  But when the product A) was developed by a very dear friend; B) is derived from cannabis; and C) is intended to intensify orgasms…well, obviously I was much more motivated than usual to try it.  The product, as most of you can probably guess, is Mistress Matisse’s new Velvet Swing, a cannabis-infused lube which enhanced orgasm in 80% of the women who tried it during the testing phase; I bought some at the official product launch three weeks ago, but it took until last week to try it because I really wanted to give it a fair test.

Many of you may recall that I don’t orgasm easily or often; I have a recessed clitoris (which makes external stimulation generally ineffective), plus most people aren’t willing or able to give me the kind of stimulation I need for long enough and hard enough to actually get me where I need to go.  And to make things worse, it’s extremely difficult to get my overactive brain to relax enough for me to actually achieve the proper headspace unless one or more of my kinks are engaged intensely enough to nullify my high distractibility.  So needless to say, I wasn’t sanguine about the possibility of any lube, cannabis-infused or otherwise, doing much for me; I’m used to being a statistical outlier in anything to do with sex, so I figured it was very likely I’d be in that 20% the product didn’t do much for.  On the other hand, cannabis tends to have very strong effects on me; 20 or 25 mg of edible and I’m good for the whole evening, and my trips are very intense and border on the psychedelic, including full audiovisual effects (visions and hallucinations).  So if any sexual product could enhance my orgasms, a cannabis-based product would probably have the best chance.  Given all those facts, I figured it was best I try the product with someone I’ve been with often, and whose primary interaction with me is vanilla instead of kink (so that I’d be able focus on what was happening in my genital region rather than on my endorphin high).  On the 31^st I spent the night with one of my favorite regulars, and I knew he wouldn’t mind (because SCIENCE!)

I used 10 pumps, the maximum regular dose, because I didn’t want there to be any doubt in my mind; I rubbed it onto my clitoris, between my labia and into my vagina, and then we kept ourselves occupied for 40 minutes to allow it to achieve maximum effect (as recommended).  By the 30-minute mark I experienced a distinct tingling, and when he started to touch me I found the sensation much more intense than it would normally be; he was able to give me six orgasms with manual stimulation alone, a feat which nobody (male or female) has ever achieved before.  The first orgasm was a fairly big one and the other five were just little ones, but given that external stimulation doesn’t normally result in any orgasms, big or small, that’s pretty damned impressive.  I didn’t really notice a lot of difference in the stimulation resulting from penetration, though my labia & vagina did seem “fuller”, more engorged.  As the old commercials used to say, Your Mileage May Vary; however, if you live in or can travel to Seattle (it’s not sold anywhere else yet), I’d definitely recommend trying it.  I plan to again at the next available opportunity; next time with a woman, I think!

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In the News (#745)

Criminal laws don’t deter hungry humans.  –  Kate McGrew

Welcome To Our World (May Updates)

Though various tit-related laws are covered in this video, the milk-sharing angle is the one that gets least press:

Follow Your Bliss 

Though it’s possible this guy’s telling the truth, I think it much more likely we’re actually looking at a McNeill Rule specimen who’s had a complete mental breakdown:

A London detective is claiming he is being punished for investigating a pedophile prostitution ring, which is being protected by members of Parliament, judges and senior police officers.  Jonathan Wedger…had been investigating cases in the London area since the early 1990s involving girls between the ages of nine and 17 who have been driven into drug addiction and groomed for prostitution…he discovered that police, judges and politicians have been aware of the problem and allowed them to continue…The website Funding Morality is raising money to help Wedger with living expenses and medical costs…his case has received only limited media coverage…

Micromanagement

This plan is supported by useful idiots who don’t understand the concept of “precedent”:

…Under new [Canadian] prostitution laws that…criminalized buying (or trying to buy) sex, the [moronically-named] operation [John Be Gone]…resulted in charges being laid against 27 men.  Police…held a press conference to name the men…and [publicize] their…addresses…three of the men charged…[were] found not guilty and three had…the charges against them dismissed, but the…public shaming…cannot be reversed…those men found guilty were ordered to supply samples to Canada’s National DNA Data Bank (NDDB)…Back in 2000, when the NDDB launched, there were only 37 designated offenses…By 2009…the list had “undergone significant expansion” to “more than 250 offenses…depending on how you count them.”  In 2017, it’s even more extensive…The rapidly expanding list of offenses connected to the DNA database might seem to a cynic like a backdoor way of achieving what police in the UK had hoped to achieve from the get-go — a database including the DNA of the entire male population of the United Kingdom…

Torture Chamber

“Correctional officer” is a term straight out of Orwell:

Twenty-five prisoners told a lawyer the same disturbing story:  Two armed correctional officers poured hot sauce into sandwich bags and forced inmates to stick their hands inside and lick the sauce from their fingers…It was not a mild Texas Pete-type sauce, but an “exotic hot” variety sold over the internet and stronger than police pepper spray…it was so toxic that it blistered their skin and mouths…[but] the [screws] wore surgical gloves…the two [screws] forced inmates to smuggle contraband into the prison…[in their anuses so the screws could make] thousands of dollars a week off the sale of cellphones, cigarettes and marijuana…Inmates [were] forced to kiss snakes and throw rabbits in front of oncoming traffic…authorities at the prison knew what was going on…If inmates refused…the [screws]…withheld water, gloves and vests while the inmates worked in the sun.  But what the inmates feared most was that the [screws] would kick them off the road crew, jeopardizing their early release from prison…

Schadenfreude (#404)

“Sex trafficking tours” are arguably the most vile, tone-deaf product the rescue industry has yet dreamed up:

Bored of the beach?  Done with mini breaks?  Time to take an “advocacy journey” and spend a blissful few days in the Caribbean fighting human trafficking…holiday makers can twin a visit to the colonial Colombian city of Cartagena with a…program aimed at [indoctrinating people in “sex trafficking” propaganda.  Rescue industry profiteers]…Ecpat-USA and travel company Altruvistas [colluded to profit from the moral panic.  The conspirators also]…run…similar [poverty porn] trips to Thailand…

All-Purpose Excuse

If you’re a politician in a city which likes to pretend to be noble and forward-thinking, but you still want to persecute whores & homeless people, the rescue industry has an excuse for you!

In October 2016…the Jungle, a homeless encampment in Seattle, was cleared out and people were forced to leave.  The city told some of those who left the Jungle they could safely stay in another encampment nearby.  Five months later, the city swept that camp too, citing alleged sex trafficking.  During these cleanups, the city allowed a religious organization, the Union Gospel Mission, to be the service provider.  UGM claims clients are not required to participate in religious practices to receive services, but the organization’s mission is known.  This means anyone who feels uncomfortable with UGM’s religious mission—including sex workers—is left without an alternative…

Moving Pictures 

In which an asleep-at-the-wheel editor allows a clueless reporter to publish a pro-censorship story lauding a propaganda film celebration of a court case which would cripple their publisher’s online business:

…child sex abuse and human trafficking are generally considered indefensible crimes.  So who’s defending them?  According to I Am Jane Doe, that would be Google.  And Microsoft.  And Facebook.  And Yahoo…the documentary advocates for [censorship] of online [advertising sites and provides propaganda for]…members of Congress working to [increase]…Internet [censorship by gutting]…Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act…

Only in the midst of a moral panic do so many so-called journalists bleat out pro-censorship idiocy.

Profound Mental Disabilities (#562)

Sadly, it’s never a good idea for a sex worker to transact with anyone who could be considered mentally disabled to any degree:

[Manchester, Connecticut] police arrested a…woman on prostitution charges after parents of a man with diminished mental capacity complained he had been duped out of his video game system in exchange for sex.  Veronica Arroyo…was being held…on bail [much too high for her to afford until] a court appearance on June 19.  Police [said] that a 19-year-old man, whose IQ is 80, had paid Arroyo $30 for oral sex…The man’s friend told him he could get “the whole experience” with the same woman if he traded his Xbox…

Though the young man is impaired, it’s not like he has his IQ tattooed on his forehead.  Arroyo didn’t “dupe” anyone; the guy offered her a trade and she took it.  Only the intervention of the parents, who obviously don’t think their son’s sexual needs are real or important, transformed this into a “crime”.  If they were decent human beings they’d have offered to buy the Xbox back from her, asked her not to do business with their son any more due to his disability, and then made arrangements themselves to have his needs cared for regularly.

To Molest and Rape 

Another pig claims a random woman he raped wanted to suck his filthy dick:

…Harris County sheriff’s deputy…Thomas Carl Pierson…[orally raped a woman on] Feb. 14, 2016…[after pulling her] over [on the pretext that she was allegedly] speeding about 1 p.m…He wrote her a warning and let her go, but pulled her over again five miles away [and raped her]…After that case made the news last year, two more women [reported similar incidents]…One said that on Oct. 20, 2015, Pierson pulled her over [and molested her]…then showed up at her…home the next day…The other woman said Pierson [molested her] after pulling her over on Sept. 12, 2015, then followed her to her grandmother’s home…“for the purpose of harassing and intimidating” her…Pierson’s defense is that the [rape] in 2016 was [actually] consensual…

Uncommon Sense (#676)

Because whores are morons whose lives and businesses must be micromanaged by governments:

ICRSE launches a briefing paper titled “Professed Protection, Pointless Provisions – Overview of the German Prostitutes Protection Act”…ICRSE has serious concerns about the ways the…Act…will significantly undermine many of sex workers’ fundamental rights. The mandatory registration of sex workers…limit[s] their right to freedom of vocational choice, and the extensive means of surveillance…infringes the constitutional right of the inviolability of the home.  The recording of personal data…about persons’ sexual life is a particularly serious issue…The “Prostitutes Protection Act”…only pretends to be a law for the protection of sex workers…What is labelled as protection is in large parts simply a law aimed at repressing sex work…

Worse Than I Thought (#707)

Wisconsin’s entry in the race to make the most mindlessly-draconian anti-sex laws:

A pair of bills proposed by [Wisconsin politicians]…would [attempt to destroy the lives of people seeking consensual sex]…One of the bills…would make the third conviction a felony…sponsor…Joel Kleefisch [vomited out disgusting “end demand” propaganda in the process of pushing his tyranny]…A second bill…would require people convicted of soliciting or patronizing prostitutes — or [having an incall]…to pay $5,000.  The money would be used to [spread propaganda & enrich the pigs]…The sponsors of both bills [masturbated to the fantasy] that Milwaukee is known as a hotbed of sex trafficking…

How long are you guys going to sit on your arses rather than supporting the fight against this evil?  Until you’re the one whose picture is in the news prior to your entry into the “sex offender” registry?

The Course of a Disease (#715)

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

On 27 March it became illegal to buy sex in Ireland – a law which legislators and campaigners said would change the industry for the better.  But for many women who offer sexual services throughout Ireland, the new laws have forced them to operate on their own – away from the women they leaned on not just for help with day-to-day activities but for emotional support and other issues…

Across the Pond (#744)

More harassment from another “safer neighborhood team” (ie vice pigs):

Police in Derby will be stepping-up patrols to [harass] communities during Ramadan celebrations…One of the actions being taken will see additional patrols to take action on the problem of prostitution and kerb crawling late at night…

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Diary #361

At last I can unveil the super secret project I’ve been working on since Christmas!  Last week, I completed the sale of my ranch in Oklahoma, and today I’m closing on a much smaller (but with more & better structures) property just a little over two hours from Seattle.  In other words, as of today I’m officially a permanent resident of Washington state.  It’s a bittersweet time for me:  on the one hand, it will be really wonderful to have Grace nearby, to have a country place I can reach without taking at least a week off of work, and to have a fully-built house with excellent outbuildings and no mortgage; on the other hand, it means giving up on a literally lifelong dream and the place in which I lived with Matt for years.  We poured so much effort and so many tears into that place, building it up from an empty tract that was so overgrazed it looked almost lunar into a lush, thickly-wooded ranch with its own road, shop, barn, fenced pastures, well system and house.  And I was trying to build another, bigger and better house, but that was not to be; too late I discovered that banks won’t give construction loans on rural property, no matter how good the borrower’s credit.  When I came to Seattle I still planned to finish that house, and then life happened; about a year and a half ago I had a vision that I’d never live there again, and I knew in my heart it was a true one (yes, I have visions when high on edibles; deal with it).  Then last summer I began to realize that there was really no way to make the economics of the situation work, ever; by autumn I began to understand what had to be done.  And once I had a plan and asked Grace if she was willing to move, everything fell into place within weeks (as it always does when I’m going the way Aphrodite wishes me to go).  The place I’m buying was the first one I physically looked at; we had discarded dozens from their listings, and this one looked so good I made sure it was the first we visited (on January 3^rd, while Grace was still here for the holidays).  Most of the time between then and now was taken up with getting my buyer’s financing straight and dealing with inspections, title work, etc, but finally all that’s done.  Grace and a friend of ours are already packing and soon they’ll load the new-to-us trailer and hitch it to the new-to-us one-ton truck I bought a few months ago, and set off on the first trip up here (Grace reckons it’ll take about four).  By the end of summer that should be all done, and…well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.  Goodbye, Avalon; hello, Sunset.  And may the pain I suffered while resident at the former purchase me some peace at the latter.

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In the News (#742)

Sex work is a highly complex experience and must not be reduced to sensationalised fictions that do nothing to capture the lives of the very people being depicted.  –  Kate Lister

Profit from Panic 

Nice lady goes to slums and is horrified by poor sex workers; guess why she stayed:

…I set out to write a sex worker diary…out of [lurid] curiosity.  I had heard stories that in Bwaise, a slum in northern Kampala, women were selling themselves for as little as 500 Uganda shillings (US$0.14).  I wanted to get a first-hand view of the situation…Some…questioned my motive…I almost gave up…It was the encouragement I received from [“rescue”] organisations that…propelled me to continue writing.  Not for Sale Uganda…[blathered about “providing] them with alternative dignified work”…Divine Hearts, a Christian organisation…pledged…[to] pay school fees for two of the sex workers’ children…

I would be interested in seeing a comparison of these NGO executives’ salaries with the cost of sending a child to school in Uganda.

The Widening Gyre 

It’s really hilarious that cops are now starting to believe their own wanking fantasies:

Seattle police are investigating a purported prostitution ring said by one escort to service “persons in positions of power” in the city.  Detectives have searched a Capitol Hill home belonging to the suspected pimp…one former escort told investigators the Capitol Hill man named notable Seattle community members as his clients.  Police now have custody of electronic devices and records that may prove that claim…

In other words, a chickenshit pimp brags to somebody to make himself look good, Seattle’s Keystone Kops think they’ve stumbled upon an escort service catering to big wheels, and reporters breathlessly repeat the cops’ fantasies.  If you made this a TV show plot, people would say it was unbelievable.

Fever Dream

Tennessee “authorities” say it isn’t important what sex workers think; we’re “victims” whether we say so or not:

Law enforcement in Tennessee has altered the way it describes prostitution.  Now the preferred language is “sex trafficking”…[even though] big [pogroms]…have yielded few trafficking charges…Josh DeVine, a spokesman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, [denies sex workers’ agency & vomits out a lot of propaganda]…Vanderbilt University professor Jill Robinson sees both sides of the argument, recognizing that it can “be problematic to expand the term so much that it includes everything”…[but she hates whores so she’s happy with policies that infantilize us & deprive us of income]…

Moloch (#342)

Is this enough blood yet? Can we please stop now?

Corey [Walgren] was at lunch…in his high school this past January when he was called into the office.  Waiting for him was the campus dean and a [cop].  They questioned him about what was alleged to be an image on his phone of a consensual sexual encounter with a female classmate, also 16.  The accusation was possession of and possibly sharing “child pornography.”  Evidence strongly suggests that [they threatened him with] being registered as a sexual offender…Only at that point were attempts made to contact his parents.  Corey was told that his mother was on the way to the school, and he was left alone to wait for her.  At some point before she arrived, Corey left…walked a mile and threw himself off of a six-story parking garage.  His death was not instantaneous, but it came before his mother could get to him…the images on the phone were so black that nothing could be seen.  Even though audio of the encounter was discernible, police records indicate that they would not have pressed charges after all…

A pig and a prude though it was a good idea to threaten a boy with a lifetime of ostracism because he had sex with a girl.  I hope the image of his shattered body is indelibly impressed on their brains; I hope it tortures them both until they end it the same way he did.  And I hope this story comes up every time some self-important wanker of a judge declares that the “sex offender” registry isn’t a punishment.

Innocence Never Had

So much fantasy, so many contradictions:

A 17-year-old girl has allegedly been used as bait to ensnare younger girls in a human trafficking ring operating out of [Johannesburg, South Africa]…This is according to the mother of a 14-year-old…girl whom police took from a barber’s shop that allegedly doubled as a brothel…five girls were [supposedly] found drugged…The 17-year-old and the [shop owner] were both arrested and…charged with human trafficking, kidnapping, rape, sexual exploitation and possession of drugs and pornographic material…the 17-year-old…was a “problem child” who had repeatedly run away from home since the age of 15…Prostitutes working in the area are not convinced that…the girls the police have taken from the premises were forced into the trade…

The Monsters Are Due 

The ugliest part of a peak moral panic: lynch mobs:

In the last photographs taken of him, Mohammed Naeem is pleading to a group of villagers as blood trickles down from his head.  Half of his body is soaked in red.  His shirt presumably ripped away, and dirt marks on his pants suggest he was kicked repeatedly…Naeem was the last of four people to be beaten to death…by villagers in Sobhapur, [India]…Naeem’s last moments became the face of a string of attacks…triggered by rumours…that child abduction gangs are on the prowl.  Villagers…picked up weapons such as sticks and bats, and were attacking strangers…Two people were killed over similar suspicions earlier in the week.  None of the victims were involved in kidnapping…Naeem and his cattle trader companions were passing through Sobhapur early in the morning on [May 18^th when]…Villagers…stopped their SUV, dragged the four people out and tortured them for four hours before killing them…

This is the price of inventing myths to justify controlling other people’s private sexual behavior.

Broken Record (#643) 

Canadian prohibitionists are still desperate to cash in before the panic implodes:

The recruitment of young women in the weeks surrounding Montreal’s Formula 1 weekend isn’t new, according to [prohibitionists]…“We plan to…gather the already-existing information from various organisms [sic] who fight the human trafficking of women and girls,” said [prohibitionist] Cathy Wong…demand is so high during the Grand Prix, that women and girls are brought in from Ontario, and even the U.S…“In the end, it’s prostitution,” said Martine B. Côté, [another prohibitionist]…“You can pay for sexual services just by clicking your fingers”…

I’d like to reassure Martine that A) touring escorts are able to make their own travel plans without having to be “brought in” like cargo; B) escorts already know that what we do is prostitution, but thanks for telling us; and C) I’m afraid it takes just a bit more to pay for sex than just “clicking your fingers”, even if the escort accepts online payments.  But please, let Cathy tell us more about these organisms who “fight sex trafficking”.

Too Close To Home (#664)

This is especially ignorant in Seattle, where nobody can claim they don’t know of any sex workers to consult on the subject:

…as human trafficking rates continue to soar and the demand for paid sex grows…Seattle…decided to adopt the “Nordic Model”…It seems to be working well for Sweden, which has seen a dramatic drop in sex work since the law was implemented in 1999…an overwhelming amount of [sex] workers are poor women with few alternatives…[who] are lured or forced into “the life” through a history of sexual abuse, substance addiction, and severe poverty…the alternative, making prostitution legal, has failed time and time again…

Nearly every single sentence in this pile of shit is wrong; it’s actually quite an achievement.

Send In the Clowns 

Now, this is an interesting twist:

A 29-year-old man was slashed to death in the parking lot of Torchy’s Tacos in downtown Denver…[very early] Tuesday morning.  Witnesses referred to the suspect as a man in “white, clown-type makeup with black streaks on his face…[wearing] a glove with blades on the end of each finger”…the clown-faced man was seen hopping aboard a scooter and riding away into the night.  Shortly thereafter…the attacker…was spotted on a [surveillance]…camera a few blocks away…throwing what looked to be a knife in the bushes…police discovered that knife covered in blood…[the suspect] was subsequently arrested…[and] identified…as…Christian Lee Gulzow, a local death metal vocalist…[who] frequently posts photos and videos of himself wearing makeup and sporting gloves with extended and pointed fingertips—both of which seem to match the descriptions made by the witnesses…

The Notorious Badge (#726)

Kate Lister of Whores of Yore on the background history of the Harlots TV show:

Harlots has gone beyond simply dusting off the tit crushing corsets and has deftly woven historical facts into the warp and weft of this bloomer dropping, gin swilling, cinematic trupenny upright, and I love it.  But, I’m not here to tell you how much fun the show is (and it really is!) I’m here for the history.  Harlots tells a hell of a story, but there is more to consider here than a corseted dose of how’s your father in a sepia filter.  That Harlots so clearly uses historical truth to embellish the show is what really piques my interest… 

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