When the government shuts down sites like Rentboy, they’re really taking away tools for folks to be safe. – Becky Barryte
Amateurs are a menace to public health; they should be licensed and heavily regulated:
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a recent spike in STIs such as chlamydia (up nearly 6 percent since 2014), gonorrhea (up nearly 13 percent) and syphilis (up 19 percent) among young people…between the ages of 15 and 24…A 2015 CDC study found that condom use among sexually active high schoolers dropped from 63 percent in 2003 to 57 percent in 2015. A study that same year by Skyn condoms found that 48 percent of millennials use condoms “never” or “rarely”…
A man serving a life sentence for killing three prostitutes in their one-woman brothels in 2008 hanged himself in…[a Hong Kong] Prison…on Thursday morning. Nadeem Razaq…a Hong Kong resident of Pakistani origin, was found hanging with his pullover tied to the bars of his single-person cell at about 6.44am…
“One-woman brothels” are a fiction of the lawhead mind; what they mean is “incalls”.
The Punitive Mindset 
Given the petty vindictiveness of US prison officials, I’m amazed that any of them allow this:
…Sterling…is…a maximum security prison 130 miles northeast of Denver…every afternoon, half a dozen inmates gather around a table in the common room to join forces against imaginary foes in a…game of Dungeons and Dragons…Dice…aren’t allowed…so the inmates…use a set of 20 playing cards to make “rolls”…most of the guards…tolerate the game, even looking on with bemused curiosity and asking questions…Some even go so far as to encourage it…However, over the years, there has been the occasional guard who read sinister motives into the game…Back in 2004, at Waupun [prison] in Wisconsin, inmates were banned from playing D&D, and Dungeon Master, Kevin T. Singer’s, gaming materials were confiscated, including a 96-page handwritten manuscript outlining a campaign he was developing…Singer sued the prison, claiming the seizure and ban violated his free speech and due process rights. At the trial, Captain Bruce C. Muraski, the prison’s security supervisor and also the man responsible for the confiscation, attempted to justify the prison’s decision. He testi[l]ied that role-playing games like D&D “promote competitive hostility, violence, and addictive escape behavior, which can compromise not only the inmate’s rehabilitation and effects of positive programming, but endanger the public and jeopardize the safety and security of the institution.” Singer appealed the decision and six years later, it escalated to the United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit. There, Singer presented testimony to show that D&D—and roleplaying games in general—were effective tools for rehabilitating inmates, yet the appeals court upheld the ban…
Legal Is as Legal Does
Why sex workers keep telling you that legalization isn’t much better than criminalization:
…at the end of 2014 Holbeck [in Leeds] was thrust into the limelight by a trial scheme: the UK’s first “managed prostitution zone”…Elsewhere in the UK, while selling sex is legal, soliciting is not. In the managed area, however, this law no longer applies between 7PM and 7AM. The basic premise is that, as long as you’re over 18 – police may ask to see ID – you can work as a sex worker without fear of arrest. On Friday the 21st of October, however, the truce appears to have broken. Women working in the area were shocked as police and UK Border Agency (UKBA) officials poured out of vans and cars and began to round up whoever they could find. Anyone from outside the UK…found themselves detained and questioned…six women, all from EU countries, were taken straight to Yarl’s Wood and are now waiting to be deported. Others have been given 30 days to provide paperwork proving their legitimacy to stay in the UK…
Another Fine Mess
This one’s more of a mess than usual; though it starts with the usual “OMG whores use the internet!” it quickly devolves into nonsense about sexbots, then veers off into idiotic prohibitionist claims like “Because there’s such high demand for [commercial] sex, that is what is creating sex trafficking, because a majority of people don’t want to go into commercial sex work willingly…because there’s this gap in supply, trafficking victims are filling that gap…” If that were true, sex workers wouldn’t be working as hard as we do to attract clients and I wouldn’t be posting fucking specials. The truth is that it’s a rare whore who has enough clients these days, and if prohibitionists’ moronic claims about clients they attack “generating demand” were true, we’d all be a lot wealthier.
Drawing Lines (#446)
Marc Randazza explains once again why attempts to prosecute porn as prostitution are doomed to fail:
…The industry has threatened to leave California, en masse, if [the mandatory condom bill] does pass. Those who support the measure…claim that the industry can’t leave….[because] the only states where you can shoot porn legally are California and New Hampshire…I finally got sick enough of hearing this stupid shit that I wrote a law review article on it: This will explain to you why porn is not prostitution, and why you can shoot anywhere in America. It also tells you a bit about the Condom Wars…Download it, read it, study it, and tell the next idiot who tells you that you can only shoot porn in CA and NH that they’re full of shit. Or, the next time someone asks “why isn’t porn prostitution?” explain this shit to them — because I’m sick of explaining it.
Shifting the Blame (#597)
The once popular and swaggering chief of the Suffolk County Police Department, James Burke, was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison…for a series of misdeeds that began after a duffel bag belonging to him was stolen from his [truck]…The duffel bag contained pornography and sex toys. Its disappearance in December 2012 set Mr. Burke off on a furious effort to find the thief, teach him a lesson, recover the bag and make sure the episode stayed quiet. It did not. Mr. Burke’s efforts at a cover-up set in motion a scandal that reverberated through Long Island politics…
Public Service Announcement (#669)
Admit it; you knew he’d claim to be a “sex addict”:
…serial sexter Anthony Weiner has checked into a sex addiction clinic…days after [his]…texting jolted the presidential race. Weiner has dropped out of sight after an FBI investigation into his latest sexting scandal led the feds to reopen a probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server…
The Pygmalion Fallacy (#679)
I had a feeling he’d extend this fantasy nonsense to his Swiss endeavor as well:
A Swiss café offering robot sex services to accompany your hot drink wants to open in Geneva by the end of the year. Owner Bradley Charvet…had originally planned to employ sex workers to entertain clients, but legal issues meant he now wanted to use high-tech robots [that do not actually exist]…[because] Geneva’s department of security and economy told Le Matin “paid-for sexual services are banned in public establishments under the law on catering and the sale of drinks.” Charvet…[pretends] he’s in talks with a U.S. sex robot manufacturing company to buy several “lifelike robot-women” for a cost ranging between $1,800-$3,000…
If you can’t quite see how absurd this all is, read the next item below.
The Pygmalion Fallacy (#685)
This is what robo-fetishist David Levy was fantasizing about when he claimed “sex robots” will be available next year: “Fifteen grand…as of next year…will get you a talking sex doll with heated genitals….physical responses to touch, verbal capabilities allowing them to speak in sultry voices…and synthetic skin…” IOW, a cross between an adult-sized Talky Tina and a fleshlight. Not what I’d consider competition.
The Course of a Disease (#686)
A very interesting development in Ireland:
Sex workers have called for a new law making it illegal to pay for sex to be reconsidered after several TDs raised concerns about its impact on vulnerable women. The Sexual Offences Bill includes an amendment criminalising the purchase of sex…[which] would make sex workers’ lives more dangerous by driving the trade underground. The legislation was criticised by Amnesty International, the World Health Organisation, HIV Ireland, the Sex Workers Alliance Ireland and the Police Service of Northern Ireland…
