Links #445

If your dog gets aggressive, I’m going to shoot it.  –  “Officer” Keenan Wallace, referencing a 9# animal

Lovecraft-inspired pop culture stuff is often very gimmicky, but I quite enjoyed this little concerto inspired by “The Call of Cthulhu” (which was called to my attention by The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, natch).  The links above it were provided by Tim Cushing, Scott Greenfield, Brooke Magnanti, Popehat, Mistress Matisse, and Jesse Walker.

• But for video.
• MUCH more of this, please.
• How a wealthy Florida man behaves.
• A primitive form of Keynesian economics.
• Disembodied feet of the Pacific Northwest.
• And now for something completely different: New Jersey man.

From the Archives

• “Rescuers” invariably want to push sex workers into menial crafting work.
• “Ally” parrots Swedish propaganda, pretends human rights are debatable.
• Amateurs: a menace to public health who should be licensed & regulated.
• I don’t think I‘ve ever seen the word “molest” used in this context before.
• Always good to see a sex worker run for office, especially when she wins.
• This will continue until people recognize that “filtering” is just censorship.
• How many fakumentaries there will be before “trafficking” hysteria ends?
• Florida “authorities” don’t think their magic posters cage enough people.
• Mistress Matisse offers advice on the “how do I find an escort” question.
• “We did not believe it should be legal for adults to have consensual sex.”
• Another court continues the trend of classifying strippers as employees.
• Fascism, futurism, progressivism, Florida, cops, celibacy & much more.
• It’s always “gangs”; women are too stupid to use AirBnB for ourselves.
• Pompous men taking it upon themselves to “disrupt” women’s income.
• Declare anything a “public health crisis” and it can be harassed at will.
• To hear these yo-yos ranting, you’d swear this film had magic powers.
• India eliminated high-denomination currency; guess who it hurt most?
• Gentrification is a common motivation for persecution of sex workers.
• 80% of all violence vs sex workers in Hong Kong is inflicted by cops.
• Is anything narrower and meaner than the mind of a prison official?
• The “sex trafficking” myth is rooted in Protestant Christian dogma.
• Pigs harass migrant sex workers no matter how they’re portrayed.
• “People who need money do lucrative work to get it!” is not news.
• The subjects of moral panics continually grow “worse than ever”.
• Propaganda for the rebranded “Operation Northern Spotlight”.
• My two previous columns for Epiphany (AKA Little Christmas).
• The primary customers for male sex robots will also be male.
• How many moronic prohibitionist plays can the market bear?
• I’m sure useful idiots will cheer this expansion of censorship.
• Cops, dates, partisans, childhood, rainbows and much more.
• If only amateurs realized how common this sort of thing is.
• In the US, she would’ve been arrested if she reported this.
• “Sex trafficking” hysteria is now almost pure self-parody.
• Losers try to cash in with debunked bullshit a year early.
• Enterprising pervert invents a spooge-squirting system.
• Slowly but surely, public opinion is turning in our favor.
• It’s so nice to watch them feeding on their own.
• Facebook can’t even follow its own “standards”.
• Tit-for-tat non-monogamy can never work.
• I’m afraid this might be too little, too late.
• Rapist cops of the week, 2017 and 2018.
• I meet a pro-decriminalization politician.
• What wonderful company the US is in!
• I head for Mexico with Lorelei Rivers.
• Hypocrisy, thy name is Washington.
• I’m sure he did it to “protect” them.
• In which I leave for my 2017 tour.
• A list of alternatives to Backpage.
• Another setback for due process.
• Cows still cause “sex trafficking”!
• The end of my annual reviews.
• Rapist judge of the week.
• Preparing for FOSTA.
• Whores of Yore.
• 2016 in review.

Read Full Post »

In the News (#899)

Facial recognition…will turn members of the public into walking ID cards.  –  Silkie Carlo

The Red Umbrella 

As tourists shopped for Christmas gifts in the brightly lit Westlake Center, sex worker and performance artist Vee Chattie sat half-naked in the rain on a towel…[covered in] fake blood…poured…from a vessel marked “FOSTA-SESTA“…A few bicycle cops rode up to make sure they weren’t actually bleeding.  A passerby asked if they were okay.  Another stopped by to voice his agreement…these Seattleites showed more human concern for Chattie than many show for sex workers on a regular basis.  It was effective performance art…

Real People 

A good profile of veteran trans & sex worker rights activist Ceyenne Doroshow:

…As a Black trans woman I see progress, but not that much…we have a government fighting against our very existence…Are we gonna go back to the Stonewall days where you need to have on two male articles [of clothing]?…I will never go back to those times, I’m sorry.  When I had to be Eddie Morales, it was for survival.  When I had to do sex work, it was definitely survival.  Because even working a part-time job for a non-profit where I’m saving lives was not paying me enough to sustain in life…And we’re still seeing that today in not-for-profits.  We’re being tokenized…We can systematically turn people off when we let a government ordain what femininity looks like, what women’s rights looks like, what protection looks like…

Above the Law  

Even being related to a cop may be enough:

Rape and sodomy charges against the son of Franklin County Sheriff Pat Melton were dismissed by a…grand jury…Patrick Melton…[raped the drunk] victim on July 7 at his residence on University Avenue in Lexington [Kentucky]…The woman…tried to squirm, push and kick Melton…[and] multiple witnesses confirmed the victim’s statements that she was intoxicated and passed out prior to the [rape]…

Watershed

When the magazine founded by Gloria “Body Invasion” Steinem publishes an anti-Swedish model article, the handwriting is on the wall for “feminist” prohibitionism:

…the “Nordic Model”…is often touted as a compromise between the criminalization or decriminalization of sex work, and one that decreases prosecution against sex workers—but, like all criminalization approaches to the regulation of sex work, the Nordic Model is underpinned by a moralistic framing of sex work that is inherently harmful, to sex workers and to society at-large…it applies an oversimplified macro-economic framing of supply and demand to an industry that consists of fundamentally discrete, personal and often isolated or irregular interactions.  December 17 is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers—and we’re demanding an end to “End Demand”.  Here are three reasons why…

Japanese Prostitution (#435) 

More accurate headline: “Enjo kosai girls get better at protecting themselves from busybodies”:

More than half of youths involved in [what is now labeled] child prostitution in Japan’s three biggest metropolitan areas last year had shown no signs of delinquency, attending schools normally and having never had criminal records, a survey shows.  The finding suggests it has been increasingly difficult for parents and teachers to detect a change in the attitude of juveniles, the National Police Agency said…[yet still insisted on describing them as]…victimized…[even though] most…were involved in [sex work]…for financial reasons, with 84.5 percent saying they wanted “money for leisure and other activities,” while 5.7 percent and 2.6 percent pointed to “living expenses” and “tuition,” respectively.  Other reasons included “out of curiosity” and “invited by friends”…

“Compensated dating” has existed in Japan for decades, but Japanese “authorities” have only started imposing a “crime and victimization” narrative on the activity within this decade.

The Prudish Giant (#789)

People sometimes ask why I’m not on Facebook:

Facebook gave more than 150 companies, including Microsoft, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, and Yahoo, unprecedented access to users’ personal data…[the] New York Times…obtained hundreds of pages of Facebook documents, generated in 2017, that show that the social network considered these companies business partners and effectively exempted them from its privacy rules.  Facebook allowed Microsoft’s search engine Bing to see the names of nearly all users’ friends without their consent, and allowed Spotify, Netflix, and the Royal Bank of Canada to read, write, and delete users’ private messages, and see participants on a thread.  It also allowed Amazon to get users’ names and contact information through their friends, let Apple access users’ Facebook contacts and calendars even if users had disabled data sharing, and let Yahoo view streams of friends’ posts “as recently as this summer,” despite publicly claiming it had stopped sharing such information a year ago…

The article then goes on to list the denials & prevarications of Facebook and many of its “partners”.

Stupor Bowl (#811)

Prohibitionists are trying to subvert our debunking of the gypsy whores myth by pretending the reason there’s no surge is that the “demand” for “victims” is always sky-high:

[Prohibitionist profiteer] Bob Rodgers [said] “The Super Bowl doesn’t cause sex trafficking…Conferences and conventions, like so many we have in Atlanta, don’t cause sex trafficking.  It is already occurring in every metro Atlanta county and it will still be happening when the Super Bowl leaves”…

Pyrrhic Victory (#871)

The biggest problem with this ridiculous failure rate is that it won’t stay inaccurate for much longer:

London cops have been slammed for using unmarked vans to test controversial and inaccurate automated facial recognition technology on Christmas shoppers…in…Soho, Piccadilly Circus, and Leicester Square…the tech will be attached to vans and run for eight hours on each day…In May, a Freedom of Information request from Big Brother Watch showed the Met’s facial recog had a 98 per cent false positive rate…a subsequent request found that 100 per cent of the so-called matches since May have been incorrect.  A recent report from Cardiff University questioned the technology’s abilities in low light and crowds – which doesn’t bode well for a trial in some of the busiest streets in London just days before the winter solstice…

Disaster (#895) 

Never forget that “filter” is merely a euphemism for “censor”:

According to Tumblr, its new adult content ban doesn’t effect [sic] images of “female-presenting nipples” that involve medical situations, are related to political speech, or appear in artwork.  Tumblr itself, however, apparently can’t come up with four examples of [nipple pictures]…its porn filter actually allows…Tumblr’s staff account published a message  aimed at “clarify[ing]” the new policy…[including] a gif providing several examples of nudity that is “still permitted within our policy”…but…when Gizmodo posted the gif to Tumblr ourselves, it was immediately flagged as a potential violation and hidden by the…filter.  When the images…were uploaded individually, two of the four examples…were similarly flagged and hidden…In recent days, the platform has allegedly flagged a picture of a finger, historical bus photos, and Great British Bake-Off gifs…

Read Full Post »

Links #441

Babies have shit taste in music.  –  Clickhole

What better way to celebrate the Yuletide season than with William Shatner’s legendarily-bad singing?  The links above the video were provided by Franklin Harris (“does”), Scott Greenfield (“karma”), Sola Love (“nightmare”), Emma Evans (“justice”), and Tim Cushing (“evidence”).

• As one does.
• Instant karma.
• Nightmare of the week.
• Once in a while, real justice is done.
• Funniest thing I’ve seen in quite a while.
• Cops invent evidence to excuse attempted murder of bystander.

From the Archives

• Next they’ll wonder why women working “illegally” increases dramatically.
• Cops, Sweden, the Pope, dinosaurs, Louisiana, Doctor Who & much more.
• Even prohibitionists are growing disturbed by this megalomaniac’s antics.
• This is finally getting attention outside of libertarian & sex worker circles.
• If a cop rapes you, say he paid you instead. THAT he’ll get in trouble for.
• “Feminist” reporter says women are too stupid to manage our own lives.
• Think prosecution would’ve done this if the accused weren’t a politician?
• This popular cop masturbatory fantasy has made it across the Channel.
• I honestly couldn’t think of what other category I could put this under.
• “Expert sex therapists” have never labelled “sex addiction” a disorder.
• Yet the government still won’t admit that the TSA attracts pedophiles.
• Eva Keene on the larger implications of the persecution of Backpage.
• “Pizzagate” was a predictable outgrowth of “sex trafficking” hysteria.
• No other “crime” gets this treatment merely on a busybody’s say-so.
• The many times I’ve been stalked and sexually harassed by cops.
• Indian feminists’ enlightenment puts American ones to shame.
• Despite the glaring absence of any escorts, this is good to see.
• The truth about “sex trafficking” dawns in the mind of a judge.
• Cops, chants, train stunts, sauce, weaponry and much more.
• Liz Brown is as suspicious of the Sherri Papini case as I am.
• Prohibitionists don’t really give a shit about Cyntoia Brown.
• While US politicians are marching along with a witch hunt.
• Reflecting on three years of dramatic changes in my life.
• Deportation is euphemized as “sending migrants home”.
• A disproportionate number of actual pimps are cops.
• No matter what prohibitionists claim, sex is a need.
• I’m sorry, but I find this both funny and satisfying.
• The “police explorer” rape trap for underage girls.
• An American sex worker on working in Europe.
• A judge agrees that the law says what it says.
• My annual Toys for Tots drive wraps up.
• When will journalists grow up?
• My January 2017 tour dates.
• Rapist cops of the week.
• R.I.P. Christine Keeler.

Read Full Post »

In the News (#896)

In the minds of the regulate-and-incarcerate crowd, it is much better to treat unsolicited butt or genital sightings with the same intensity as we do matters of national security.  –  Elizabeth Nolan Brown

The Course of a Disease

The Swedish rot has reached Spain:

The Spanish government is proposing a spate of new legal measures to [persecute] prostitut[es].  These include penalizing clients who solicit for sex and punishing landlords who make properties available to sex workers.  Further measures would also look to prosecute [people cops decide to label] traffickers…and…decriminalizing [sex workers, even though they are not currently criminalized]…Sex work is…neither illegal nor regulated [in Spain] but Prime Minister Sanchez came to power in June with a strongly [misogynist] agenda and promising to fight the e[mployment and sexual autonomy] of women…

Traffic Jam (#694) 

24 years of state-inflicted torture finally end for the San Antonio 4:

…Judge Catherine Torres-Stahl handed out orders…expunging the records of Elizabeth Ramirez…Cassandra Rivera…Kristie Mayhugh …and Anna Vasquez…all government agencies that house information on criminal charges, indictments, arrests or convictions related to the cases in which the women were found innocent must seal or destroy the records.  The women consistently maintained their innocence from that day 24 years ago when Ramirez’s nieces, then ages 7 and 9, accused the women of brutalizing them while on a weekend visit…After the women served nearly 15 years in prison, one of the nieces publicly recanted.  She said family members upset that her aunt had come out as a lesbian told her to lie.  So did her father, who…was upset that Ramirez had spurned his advances…it was also shown that [bogus] science helped support the charge…each of them…[has] receive[d] state compensation of about $80,000 for each year they were imprisoned — a little more than $1 million apiece…

Too Close To Home (#760)

Another exercise in cop-fellation and myth-regurgitation masquerading as journalism:

…Charles Peters…[of] the self-titled “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”…was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison and ordered to pay a $3,000 fine after a jury convicted him in October of nine counts of second-degree promoting prostitution.  Peters…is appealing his conviction…[and free on] $75,000 bond while his appeal is pending…

Though she didn’t write that moronic headline (“Ringleader”?  Who the fuck uses that word with a straight face any more? Has the editor been watching ’30s gangster movies?), Sara Jean Green still needs to be ashamed of herself for this garbage, especially considering that I know for a fact she has the phone numbers of several prominent Seattle sex workers (including mine).  Prohibitionists claim what I do for money is “demeaning”, but I don’t have to infantilize peaceful women, demonize peaceful men, or lionize violent thugs.

Check Your Premises (#809)

Despite some conciliatory language and ground-ceding, this is a good article:

…the Tucson Weekly accessed a spreadsheet of all [Southern Arizona “sex trafficking”] investigations in the three years since the beginning of the grant and found 10 people who were convicted of trafficking and related crimes.  Out of 516 investigations…[only] 23 people were categorized as arrested for trafficking…of those 23…[only] 14 were [actually] charged with trafficking [or] other sex crimes…Of the 14…10 people were convicted or took plea deals, three have ongoing court cases and one committed suicide after being released on bail…[only] two cases resemble the mainstream narrative of a…[woman] forced to commit commercial sex acts against her will…In one case, a drunk, 71-year-old registered sex-offender in a wheelchair persistently and crudely offered a 14-year-old girl money for sexual favors at a bus stop…In another case, a man offered to pay three 15-year-old boys and one girl to [perform] sex acts in front of him.  Some of the cases involve runaways…In other cases, the…[so-called] trafficker [was the sex worker’s] friend or boyfriend…The spreadsheet indicates 52 misdemeanor arrests related to prostitution or not having an escort license…

Traffic in Nonsense (#831)

Anti-whore indoctrination has wholly infested the US trucking industry:

…Kendis Paris…of Truckers Against Trafficking…is one member of the 15-person Advisory Committee on Human Trafficking, which was developed by the U.S. Department of Transportation in October.  The group’s goal is to develop strategies for [encouraging truck drivers to snitch on sex workers]…The committee includes leaders of [rescue industry] organizations…[anti-whore propagandists] and representatives of the trucking, bus, rail, aviation, maritime and port industries…Truckers Against Trafficking leads [indoctrination] programs and distributes [propaganda] materials to various sectors of the industry…About 40 states have adopted aspects of Truckers Against Trafficking’s [indoctrination] model.  The group has worked with [pigs] who give [propaganda] wallet cards to truck drivers…

Imaginary Victims (#839)

Even by despicable modern US standards, this is an incredibly evil ruling:

A woman who was 16 when she killed a Nashville man who [assaulted] her…must serve at least 51 years in prison before she’s eligible for release, according to the Tennessee Supreme Court…The court’s five justices were unanimous in their decision against Brown, who was convicted of killing a…[client] in 2004 when he [roughed her up and]…she feared he would kill her…Brown argues her sentence is unconstitutional, citing a 2012 opinion by the US Supreme Court that said mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders violate the US Constitution…

Brown’s only chance now is the outgoing Tennessee governor, who can pardon her and commute her sentence.

Shame, Shame (#853)

New York just won’t stop trying to subject nude-pic-posters to police violence:

Under [New York politician Joseph] Borrelli’s measure, it would be a misdemeanor offense “to send an unsolicited sexually explicit video or image to another person with intent to harass, annoy, or alarm such other person,” punishable by up to a year in jail or a $1,000 fine.  Sexually explicit means anything showing “genitals, pubic area or anus of any person”…It’s already illegal for adults to send sexually explicit images to minors…[and] already illegal…to harass someone, stalk them, or threaten them.  So sending sexually explicit images “with intent to harass, annoy, or alarm” could already be prosecuted under another statute, provided there actually is evidence of harassing or threatening intent.  What that leaves us with is basically a way for anyone to press charges against anyone who sends them a sexualized image…The measure would provide plenty of opportunity for jilted lovers to get even with criminal charges…The opportunity is also ripe for abuse against sex workers who advertise online, whether by those who enjoy harassing them for sport (as with last week’s so-called ThotAudit), by customers who feel slighted, or by law enforcement…

A Broker in Pillage (#858)

With any luck, SCOTUS will shut down this extortion scheme and others like it:

A Detroit woman [named Crystal Sisson] is suing Wayne County, Michigan, after police [stole] her car [because she bought] $10 worth of [legal] marijuana…[from] a [licensed] Detroit medical marijuana dispensary…the sheriff’s deputies cited her for “illegally occupying a place where controlled substances are sold” and seized her 2015 Kia Soul…To get her car back, Sisson had to pay the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office $1,200 to settle the forfeiture case, a typical practice in the county…the Supreme Court is currently considering a similar asset forfeiture case, Timbs v. Indiana, that revolves around the case of Tyson Timbs, whose Land Rover, worth $41,000, was seized after he sold two grams of heroin to a [narc]…Court watchers strongly suspect the Supreme Court will incorporate the Eighth Amendment, making the Excessive Fines clause apply to states.  Sisson is only one of hundreds of Wayne County residents who’ve been surveilled, pulled over, had their car [stolen], and been forced to pay out more than $1,000 to get it back, all for visiting legal, state-licensed medical marijuana dispensaries…

Banishment (#870) 

Caging people permanently, without trial or sentence:

…William Welsh has a number of convictions for child molestation and sexual abuse dating back to 1979.  In 2011 he was no longer in custody, having served his required prison and probationary sentences. He was, however, required to register on Oregon’s Sex Offender Registry because of his prior convictions.  When he traveled to Belize in 2011 and failed to update the address listed on his registration, he was charged, and pled guilty, to violating…registration requirements – a felony – and he was sentenced to 673 days in prison.  A few weeks prior to his release, the Attorney General designated him a “sexually dangerous person”; the reviewing court agreed, and he was [indefinitely] committed…In 2016, however, his conviction (for having failed to update his registration) was vacated, after the Supreme Court, in US v. Nichols, 136 S.Ct. 113, held that SORNA did not require a person to update his registration when he was traveling to a foreign country.  So he petitioned for a release from custody, arguing that because he had not lawfully been “in custody” of the Bureau of Prisons…he could not, lawfully, have been subject to the commitment proceeding for “sexually dangerous persons” in the first place.  But his request for release was denied, first by the federal district court and then by the 4th Circuit…

Surplus Women (#873) 

Let’s play a game:  Is this a rationalization of cop behavior or serial killer behavior?

A U.S. Border Patrol agent has been charged with capital murder after telling investigators he killed four female sex workers because he considered them worthless and that he thought he was doing something good for his Texas border city…[the] prosecutor said…he will seek the death penalty if Juan David Ortiz is found guilty…

Feminine Pragmatism (#892) 

“Dreams“. How old is the imbecile who writes this shit? Eight?

…Escalona was one of at least 41 Venezuelan women murdered abroad from February 2017 to this November.  They had fled Venezuela’s economic turmoil. They left their homeland with dreams.  Some were forced into prostitution.  All met death…

No.  These women weren’t “following dreams” like refugees from a fucking Hallmark card; they were trying to survive by fleeing a collapsing socialist dictatorship.  They were not naive children like so many American women; they were adults who had to take risks thanks to authoritarians criminalizing their pragmatic choice to cross borders to work.  And since criminalization attracts criminals, sometimes they lost those gambles.  The villains here aren’t imaginary “trafficking rings”; they’re the fucking politicians who force desperate people to deal with criminals to have a chance to escape hell.

Disaster (#893)

I’m not sure how much this will help, but it certainly can’t hurt:

…the new platform Tribunus has allowed web users to weigh in on critical issues when petitions and digital comments are no longer viable steps.  On Tribunus’ simple site, US residents can contact legislators directly by placing a phone call, sending them a fax, or — if their fax machine is turned off — quickly sending them a paper letter instead.  Tribunus’ creator, a Bay Area programmer who asked to be identified as Michael, said he first launched the platform to help defeat a legal measure threatening California sex workers (successfully, after protests and hundreds of letters).  Later on, he added pages addressing immigrant family separation and net neutrality…

The Prudish Giant (#895) 

Facebook turns the dial on its anti-sex “standards” up to 11:

Facebook just…adopted…new “sexual solicitation” rules…[that] ban “implicit sexual solicitation”, including the use of sexual slang, the solicitation of nude images, discussion of “sexual partner preference,” and even expressing interest in sex…the new policy [even] bars “vague suggestive statements, such as ‘looking for a good time tonight’”…discussion of sexual exploitation is allowed, but discussion of consensual, adult sex is taboo.  That’s a classic censorship model: speech about sexuality being permitted only when sex is presented as dangerous and shameful…such…rules can incentivize abuse from…bad actors…[including] state actors…This process gives the user no meaningful opportunity to appeal a bad decision.  Given the rules’ focus on sexual interests and activities, it’s easy to imagine who would be the easiest targets:  sex workers…[and] members of the LGBTQ community…

From the way these rules are worded, they seem to even ban bland statements like “I’m lesbian” (which is “expressing sexual partner preference”).

Read Full Post »

Links #439

Uranus is truly a mystery.

I ran across this video last week and decided to share it, despite one of them being basically wrong (an asteroid needn’t be a world-killer to wreak serious havoc) and a couple of “Yeah, but..” entries.  The links above the video were provided by Dan Savage, Lucy Steigerwald, Jesse Walker, Mistress Matisse, Mark Bennett, and Popehat, in that order.

• Instant karma.
• More of this, please.
• The gingerbread zoetrope.
• When teen boys write headlines.
• H.P. Lovecraft’s recipe for turkey.
• STOP CALLING THE FUCKING COPS!

From the Archives

• This wasn’t a “mistake”; it was both deliberate and government-approved.
• A better memorial: eradicating the awful laws she fought so hard against.
• One day: similar headlines on people framed on “sex trafficking” charges.
• Our descendants will be confused about why we thought this noteworthy.
• It’s quite nice to see my ideas quoted positively in the mainstream press.
• Huge UK raids have never found more than a few “sex trafficking” cases.
• Man’s garbage will have a more lasting effect on this planet than he will.
• Are politicians stupider than other people, or does it just seem that way?
• He could’ve copied this from other parrots without even leaving London.
• Delusional anti-drug nonsense sounds like delusional anti-sex nonsense.
• Everett defends its sick need to control women’s clothing as “feminism”.
• It’s no surprise conservatives like sleazy entrapment schemes so much.
• It’s good to see so many questioning the “human trafficking” narrative.
• Scumbag gets comeuppance thanks to Sydney Brownstone’s diligence.
• The definition of “sexual predator” used here is too broad to be useful.
• Declare anything a “public health crisis” and it can be harassed at will.
• My regular escort suggested dinner off-clock; should I tip her anyway?
• Only 3 years from the time I predicted this to actual implementation.
• Cops, Washington, ghost ships, Japan, commercials and much more.
• What “legalized and heavily regulated” actually looks like in practice.
• Not for any reason whatsoever. No, your reason is not an exception.
• lawsuits are for the present our best weapon against prohibitionists.
• Enjoy the rest of your life on the “sex offender” registry, “officer”.
• Reporter mysteriously drops talk of “sex trafficking” and “slaves”.
• Are there still people who believe the French are sexually liberal?
• How many fakumentaries there will be before the hysteria ends?
• One of the more predictable uses of the “sex trafficking” excuse.
• A retrospective of my blogging from November 2013 and 2014.
• There’s so much disinformation here it’s almost mind-boggling.
• The Daily News mocks the brutal murder of a young woman.
• A call for decriminalization in Australia’s Northern Territory.
• Weeping quietly over memories of beloved things now lost.
• Did he really think more than 30 bodies would stay buried?
• Well, if Wonder Woman can teach breast self-examination…
• It’s a little reassuring to see somebody else recognize this.
• Cops, robots, MDMA, amnesia, politicians and much more.
• A good criticism of “slavery” talk on Laura Agustín’s blog.
• You mean pictures don’t have magic anti-love powers?
• How do escorts command more respect from clients?
• Co-workers mind woman’s children while she works.
• Presenting the tenth member of my Hall of Shame.
• It’s good to see this getting more attention lately.
• Protip: suing your own offspring rarely ends well.
• And this is different from the US…how, exactly?
• Another attempt at library internet censorship.
• Good riddance to bad anti-whore rubbish.
• Rapist cops of the week, 2016 and 2017.
• OK, so maybe she was listening after all.
• The New York Pot calls a kettle black.
• I called this one three years earlier.
• Essentially, a mobile tippelzone.
• Prohibitionists call this “rescue”.
• What could possibly go wrong?
• Much more of this, please.
• An odd Thanksgiving.

Read Full Post »

In the News (#889)

With all the legitimately pressing problems facing America today, it’s astonishing that anyone could earnestly advocate for more obscenity prosecutions.  –  Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Above the Law  …

We’re so lucky to have these brave heroes to protect us from refugees:

Police in Alpine, Texas, have charged a National Guardsman stationed near the Mexico border with sexual assault after…he drunkenly tried to rape a woman in a hotel.  Luis Ontiveros…is accused of assaulting…[another] member of the National Guard…[who] had…thrown up from drinking too much…He took her clothes off before she was able to get out of the hotel room…and knocked on the hotel room door next to hers, telling the man who answered that Ontiveros had tried to rape her…

A Mound of Filth (#506)

More “sex slave” fantasies from Dominique “Body Fluids” Roe-Sepowitz:

The latest numbers from the FBI show in 2017 Arizona was third in the nation for human trafficking offenses…[Ignorant prohibitionists fantasize] it is impacting people from all walks of life.  “It is anybody.  Businessmen, junkies from the street, anybody looking for sex,” said an [anonymous prohibitionist]…Dominique Roe-Sepowitz is an associate professor [who makes a living stoking “sex trafficking” hysteria by making up fake statistics.]…”In Arizona, we [claim] we have about 250 kids a year and about 800 adults a year [involved in sex trafficking],” [she] said…She [moaned and put her hand down her pants while fantasizing that]…traffickers are creative and calculating when targeting their victims…It happens through social media, in public buildings and parks and even in front of schools.  “They’re going to find that child wherever they are”…

Forward and Backward (#604)

UK politicians don’t like policies that oppose their harm magnification agenda:

…Leeds Council [is considering]…closure of the Leeds ‘managed zone’, in which sex workers are able to solicit for business in a designated area without fear of arrest…Regulation via zoning is not ideal but any solution which increases safety for sex workers, allows them to report crimes and brings down the number of arrests is important.  Working without fear of arrest means sex workers aren’t running from the police are more able to use basic safety measures like working in close proximity to each other and sharing information about clients…outreach charity Basis Yorkshire [says]…97% of sex workers are now willing to report crimes to the police, compared with just 7% before the scheme launched.  There has been a dramatic uptake in engagement with health and support services…

For over a year now, the Leeds red light district has been the subject of a smear campaign by prohibitionists, with the help of the BBC.

Welcome to the Future (#607)

“Immigrant Council of Ireland” is the deceptive name of one of the most vile prohibitionist organizations in Europe:

Police across Europe should be given the resources to spy on…sex workers’ homes to prevent prostitution, a report has said.  The Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI) was one of six organisations to examine laws on sex work and trafficking across Europe.  The group’s Disrupt Demand report called for more [police violence vs. sex workers and clients]…and [more] “surveillance operations on indoor locations”…

Most news coverage of this “report” tries to make it sound like a study, when in fact it’s just a collection of prohibitionist fantasies and demands with no new material of any kind.

The Puritan Recrudescence

The natural result of widespread kowtowing to the heckler’s veto:

…Nina Hartley went to University of Wisconsin-La Crosse to give an optional lecture to students…about STI testing, the importance of consent, and the potential pitfalls of learning about sex from porn.  The talk was soberly titled, “Fantasy vs. Reality: A critical view of adult media.”  There were no explicit images or videos, just an informational Powerpoint slide.  And yet, of course, conservative media outlets are losing their shit over it, because a porn star (who is also a sex educator and activist) spoke with our kids (who are actually legal adults) about fucking (but really much more).  Hartley was invited to speak by Joe Gow, the chancellor of the university…with…$5,000 from Gow’s office fund, as opposed to with state tax dollars…sensationalistic headlines…desperately attempted to turn it into a tawdry sex scandal…Then Fox News jumped into the fray.  The outcry was such that Gow felt the need to pen an op-ed in the La Crosse Tribune…in [which]…he…agreed to personally compensate the university for Hartley’s $5,000 appearance fee…[and] book…a speaker from Fight the New Drug, a [Mormon-backed prohibitionist organization]…infamous for using bad science, shoddy data, and alarmist first-person stories to demonize pornography…

Count the Idiocies

Since this is suburban Seattle, I could’ve done this one stoned:

Sex trafficking is happening in plain sight in Snohomish County¹, according to nurse practitioner Paula Newman-Skomski².  “It’s most visible is along Highway 99,” she said.³  This past weekend [Operation Cross-Country] found 13 female victims of sex trafficking – two of the victims are juveniles⁴. No arrests were made.  The FBI said the victims were offered referrals to a variety of resources.⁵…”Every year we identify 40 to 45 juveniles involved in the trafficking trade here in Snohomish County,” said Newman-Skomski.⁶…”…easily transported up and down the I-5 corridor.”⁷  It is the kind of illegal activity the FBI focused on when it shut down Backpage.com⁸…Peoria Home in Everett…is a two-year, residential recovery program for women 18 and over who have been exploited through sex trafficking and prostitution.  It opened in April⁹…

¹ No, it isn’t. If it were cops would be crowing about it.
² Whom nobody around here has ever heard of before.
³ No, Those are street workers.
⁴ No, they got 13 bites in a sting; the fact that they didn’t arrest them could mean several different things.
⁵ Such as finger-painting classes and the number of the welfare office.
⁶ No, they don’t; that would represent some 20% of all sex workers in Greater Seattle.  Underage sex workers represent only about 3-4% of all sex workers.
⁷ Interstates cause sex trafficking!
⁸ No, it isn’t.
⁹ “Rescue” profiteers are utterly shameless.

Why I Wait (#812)

Most of this article is the usual garbage: equating dating with sex, pointedly ignoring commercial sex, pretending that people answer surveys on stigmatized subjects honestly, etc.  But there was one paragraph which contained some possible clues to the reasons any actual decrease (however small) might exist:

…it might be a consequence of…surging anxiety rates, of psychological frailty, of widespread antidepressant use…of environmental estrogens leaked by plastics [and soy products], of dropping testosterone levels…of helicopter parents…of sleep deprivation, of obesity…

In my estimation, the most likely candidate for this supposed decline is the ongoing culture war on sex, which discourages people from being honest about their sexuality (especially activity involving sex workers).  In other words they aren’t really having less sex; they’re just admitting it less.

The Pro-Rape Coalition (#815) 

Regular readers will recognize Alberta’s article as completely unmoored from reality:

There’s been a “total abandonment of pornography as a battleground in America’s culture war,” writes Politico reporter Tim Alberta in “How the GOP Gave Up on Porn“.  He couldn’t be more wrong.  The flashpoints have shifted certainly since the 1970s and ’80s, when Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority teamed with second-wave feminists to take on Playboy and Hustler.  And social conservatives’ embrace of President Donald Trump does present a stark contrast to earlier eras…But such hypocrisy should not be mistaken for a radical repositioning of Republican dogma on “obscenity”…it was just two years ago that Republicans added language to their official party platform that declared porn “has become a public health crisis that is destroying the lives of millions“…Last year, Republicans in at least a dozen state legislatures introduced measures to ban porn access for anyone who wouldn’t pay a $20 fine…But never mind reality.  Fresh from declaring that there’s been no recent Republican action against porn because he doesn’t personally remember it, Alberta gets right to theorizing about why…

See No Evil (#854) 

Prosecutors want to cage a man for twenty years for drawings of fictional characters:

…a Rapid City, South Dakota, man was charged in federal district court with…Possession of Obscene Visual Representations of the Sexual Abuse of Children…Andrew Hallock…pleaded not guilty to the charges…[which carry] a mandatory minimum of 5 years up to 20 years in federal prison and/or a $250,000 fine…The charges [derive from] Hallock…possessing…sexually explicit drawings and cartoons of minors…The investigation is being conducted by the I[maginary] Crimes Against [Imaginary] Children Taskforce…

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (#885)

Politicians send thugs to violently assault women to advance vain Disnification campaign:

Police and military personnel [brutalized] and detained 53 Laotians–50 women and three girls who were allegedly employed as sex workers–during raids on karaoke bars in southern Thailand’s Narathiwat province…Authorities could not find and arrest the bar owners during the raids, but they were…[threatening] the…sex workers…[with] prosecut[ion] for prostitution [to intimidate as many of them as possible into claiming to be “trafficking victims”]…

No Difference (#886)

Tanzania ramps up its pogroms against gay men:

International human rights organisations have condemned…the harassment and arrest of gay men in Tanzania, following comments from a government official on plans to establish a task force to identify, track down and arrest people suspected of being gay…ten men were arrested on suspicion of being gay on…Zanzibar after members of the public [ratted] them [out] to police.  They are being held…with[out] charge…for allegedly conducting a same-sex marriage ceremony, and the police reported they found the men sitting in pairs “two by two”…

Read Full Post »

Diary #438

Things are moving forward slowly but surely at Sunset.  Grace and Chekhov are very friendly with one of our neighbors, who as it turns out owns a tractor with a stump-pulling arm which is also equipped with a GPS; what that means when one puts it all together is a quick and easy way to clear a fenceline.  He gave me a very good price and did the work on Friday, which means we can now put a fence around the perimeter and Jonathan and Shiloh will have a lot more room to move around and graze in.  Jae is starting to decorate the house; any of you who have been to my incall know that she’s very good at it, and it gives me joy to see her taking frequent trips out to Sunset, employing her skills and playing with her pony.  Tomorrow we’ll be headed out there for Thanksgiving, and though I won’t be back in Seattle until Sunday I will be taking appointments for my annual toy drive; if you don’t know what that’s about, or you do but need a reminder, be sure to look in on Friday!

Read Full Post »