When [cops] weren’t groping you, they were having sex with you, and if you had any money they took it from you. – Mérida, Mexico City sex worker
Jesse Walker on the long American tradition of rescue fantasies:
On December 4, Edgar M. Welch carried a rifle into the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria…to rescue [“child sex slaves”]…This is hardly the first time someone has filled up on fantasies that a conspiracy was holding innocents captive and exploiting them. It isn’t the first time a fantasist has set off on a potentially bloody rescue mission either. Take the mob that burned down the Ursuline convent and boarding school in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1834…the rumors that prompted the riot took an oft-told form: Girls were being held prisoner, and they needed to be saved…Throughout the era, paranoid Protestants became convinced that convents contained sex slaves, secret tunnels, and other staples of the modern pizzeria; more than once, they invaded intending to liberate the nuns…A couple decades before…a youngster named Ithamar Johnson was “rescued” from a Shaker community in Ohio. He promptly returned the next day, and remained a Shaker until he died in his eighties. Much more recently, the cult scare that took off in the 1970s produced a whole profession of “deprogrammers”, some of whom felt the best way to liberate a cultist was to kidnap and torture him…the Satanic panic of the 1980s and ’90s…[claimed] a web of devil-worshippers was raping, kidnapping, and even killing children…In the white-slavery panic of the early 20th century, a flood of exposés—there’s that “fake news” again—made lurid claims about prostitution, greatly exaggerating both the number of women coerced into the profession and the extent to which the trade was controlled by a centralized conspiracy…
Do As I Say, Not As I Do
I love it when they feed on each other:
Larry Harmel, executive director of the Maryland Chiefs of Police Association, is the latest criminal-justice official to get caught up in his colleagues’ own undercover prostitution stings…Harmel was arrested after approaching an undercover [sow on a stroll in]…Baltimore…Also…Raymond Edward Bernasconi…a deputy sheriff…[in] Los Angeles…Bernasconi was…arrested on November 21 in a sting…though his hearing has now been postponed until January for unspecified reasons…
A Tale That Grew in the Telling
We haven’t seen claims this ridiculous in quite a while:
…In Atlanta, a sex trafficker can make an average of $30,000 a day, according to Doug Crumbly, one of the organizers of End Slavery Georgia…[which is] raising money to build a safe haven for survivors of the sex trade…near…where Crumbly serves as pastor…Every two minutes, a girl is taken by force or tricked into working in the sex trade, he said…“The average age of a victim of sex trafficking in Georgia is 13. The average lifespan is seven years from the time they are taken”…Susan Roberts [fantasizes]…“I guess I was kind of his prize cow. There was a lot of violence…He poured alcohol down my throat and threatened to kill me and my family”…The pimps have total control, Roberts [fantasized]…“He constantly fed me Xanax, cocaine, whatever drug he could. If I tried to leave the house, he had cameras everywhere and would call me and tell me ‘I’m watching you right now’…They lurk in places like DFCS offices”…
Because farmers beat and drug their prize cows. Why can’t most people see this nonsense as the paranoid delusion it clearly is? Cameras everywhere? Pimps hanging out in welfare offices? Seriously? This woman needs help from psychiatric professionals, not exploitation from religious fanatics trying to make a fast buck.
Gullible’s Travels
You don’t have to buy into the drug panic narratives…to believe that it’s good news that today’s teens are smoking less marijuana. If use of alcohol and smoking among teens went down, we’d see that as a good sign, too. Those substances are legal (as it seems marijuana is destined to become) but it doesn’t mean we want kids using them at such a young age. But when your career involves promoting teen addiction panics as a way of shaping public policy, well, perhaps that’s not the best news…[prohibitionists] were so certain that marijuana legalization would lead to a culture where teens thought toking up was just fine and the numbers would go up. Nevertheless, [Nora] Volkow [of the National Institute on Drug Abuse] was quick to try to turn good news into bad news…”The development of very, very fancy video games has resulted in a pattern of compulsive use…that may serve as a substitute for drug-taking”…It doesn’t take a whole lot of speculating to figure out what could prompt such a quick attempt to redirect. The rest of her response, “it needs to be tested,” says a whole lot. It’s a call for more research, more funding, more spending. The problem can never be “solved”. There’s more to do! If one panic gets disproven, look for another…
The Widening Gyre
A grandmother who sells painted life-like dolls had to try desperately to convince police she wasn’t selling real babies. Kathy Cadle, who paints and sells the dolls, was reported [by a busybody] as a suspected human trafficker…She later found out that police had spent much of the day questioning her friends…[but the cops were so stupid they still believed the ridiculous “trafficking” story until Cadle handed] one of her realistic dolls to [the pigs to see for themselves]…the dolls…are made from vinyl…and…sold under company name Bunny Bundles Reborns…[they] have featured in front page spreads and are used as therapy dolls for patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s…
Imaginary Evils
Theresa May is really dedicated to competing with the US in using “sex trafficking” as an excuse to destroy civil liberties:
…Theresa May…convinced six Gulf countries to sign up to the WeProtect Global Alliance – a British-led international coalition dedicated to [persecuting sex workers]…Recent [propaganda touts the ludicrous idea]…that there are around 46 million people in some form of slavery around the world…[prohibitionists pretend] that there are currently 10,000 – 13,000 people enslaved in Britain [despite a complete lack of evidence for even 1% of that number]…
An Example to the West (#429)
More than two years after a landmark court decision, Mexico City’s whores are still fighting:
A 2014 court decision recognized…[the] status [of] non-salaried sex worker[s]…A legislative bill seeking to recognize these guarantees in the Mexican capital’s new constitution has opened a fresh breach between those seeking to eradicate [sex workers, whom]…they view as [subhuman], and those who defend [human rights]…The decision said that…authorities are obliged to respect these workers’ decision to sell sex…
The More the Better (#512)
Despite being a humor site, Cracked has a far more realistic view of sex work than the mainstream media:
In movies, prostitutes are either walking tragedies — invariably addicted to drugs and doomed to a life of crime and sadness — or used as comedic relief — pure fodder for a series of wacky misunderstandings. In reality, of course, neither is accurate. We exist, all of us, on a complicated spectrum somewhere between Oscar Bait and Rob Schneider bit. So we spoke to “Felicia,” whose mother worked at a New Zealand brothel when Felicia was a teenager, and she told us…
Ashley Madison (#653)
“…past business practices that may have allegedly been misleading to consumers.”
The Toronto-based parent company of the infidelity dating site Ashley Madison…has paid more than $1.6 million US in settlements as part of an investigation led by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission…half the money went to the FTC and half to the states participating in the probe. The company says that as part of the agreement, it will also…”refrain from past business practices that may have allegedly been misleading to consumers.” But it…neither admits nor denies the [proven fact]…that it resorted to fake profiles of women — commonly known as bots — to lure unsuspecting male customers…
Too Close To Home (#672)
Another round of persecution of TRB users:
At least twelve more men face felony charges in Washington for posting comments to the now-defunct web forum known as The Review Board (TRB). The dozen defendants, most of whom [were] arraigned in King County District Court on December 14, face one count each of promoting prostitution in the second degree—a charge historically used to target people who profit off of the prostitution of others but more recently favored by King County prosecutors to go after people who write positively online about area prostitution…law enforcement needn’t show that defendants actually engaged in pay-to-play sexual activity themselves. All they must show is that the men “advanced” the prostitution careers of others by saying positive things about them online…authorities present no evidence that the women these men “promoted” were being exploited, other than the mere fact that the women were engaging in sex work at all. At least a couple of the “prostituted women” mentioned in charging documents are prominent sex-worker rights activists. In the Certification for the Determination of Probable Cause against one defendant, emails from nonprofit groups such as the Sex Worker’s Outreach Project (SWOP) and Center for Sex Positive Culture are even presented among evidence…Clients of Sex Workers Allied for Change (CoSWAC) issued a Tuesday statement “condemn[ing] this continuing crusade”…
Opting Out (#694) 
On the futility of attempts to block porn:
As the United Kingdom considers banning “nonconventional” pornography, xHamster is offering up a warning: It won’t work — or, at least, not very well. The porn site has released new data on the more than 1 billion visits that it received in the past year from countries that have blocked its url. “Despite the best attempts of censors, users are finding their way to [xHamster] using web-based proxies, VPNs, and networks like Tor…porn bans may have the opposite of the intended effect by pushing otherwise apolitical citizens into networks that bypass government blockades.” xHamster looked at nine countries that have reportedly blocked its site — China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates — and the number of visitors from these countries accessing xHamster using proxies or VPNs…
A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#696)
Americans disapprove of teaching kids about sex, but they’re all for filling their heads with stupid anti-sex propaganda:
Orange County leads the state in reports of human trafficking cases involving children…Florida Abolitionists…[fantasizes that] children are top targets for traffickers–girls between 12 and 14 are in high demand, and boys as young as 10 are targets. That’s why [the group] is in talks with Orange County Public Schools to bring [propaganda] to classrooms…and make human trafficking a part of [indoctrination] in the classroom…“just like bullying and ‘say no to drugs’”…
