Most [sex workers] are very well-informed about the conditions of factory work, and they know they’re not interested. – Ding Yu
Another hysteria-free look at sex work in East Asia:
In the 1990s, if you were a young woman in any Chinese city, everyone from waiters to taxi drivers would call you “xiaojie”. Ten years later, the once-ubiquitous term had become a euphemism for female sex workers…Though prostitution was outlawed in China in 1949, it has proven to be an extensive and resilient industry. Chinese economist Yang Fan has estimated that up to 20 million people are engaged in some form of sex work…Ding Yu is an associate professor of sociology…[who] has spent more than 10 years researching the lives of female sex workers in…Macau, Hong Kong, and the…province of Guangdong…while academics and advocates often insist that sex work should be considered a form of labor, many xiaojie understand their role differently — and in fact delight in the ways their lives diverge from women laborers….”Within the community, many don’t especially like or understand the term ‘sex worker’ and prefer the term xiaojie…because they feel the…term “sex worker” reduces all their work to sex, which doesn’t…accurately represent the diverse forms of emotional work and entertainment that they’re engaged in; rather, it highlights the one part that’s stigmatized…
What a belief in sympathetic magic looks like:
New York State Senator Chris Jacobs has proposed a law that would prohibit any person serving time for a sex offense against a minor from “possessing a depiction of any minor.” Taken literally, the text of the bill makes it a crime for such a person to receive a wallet photo of his own kid…Will security guards be expected to confiscate every picture—and drawing—of a kid? Is a holiday card with baby angels contraband? Would prisoners have to snip Robin out of their Batman comic books? And how would this make anyone even one bit safer?…
This is kinda like the Super Bowl of basketball, right?
A new human trafficking task force…stressed the upcoming NBA Finals, attracting tens of thousands of visitors from out of town, creates heightened concerns. “Anytime we have an abnormal gathering of a large number of people…human trafficking goes up”, [panted] Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine [while fingering himself]. “The predators come in”…
This may not have been intended as a vigilante action, but I’m not sure what else it could have been:
A man wearing body armor and a mask backed a tractor-trailer through the gate of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch and crashed it into the front door…Brian Brandt…was arrested and faces charges of assault with a deadly weapon, property destruction and possession of stolen property…The crash happened just after 4 a.m….Brothel owner Dennis Hof said [nobody]…inside at the time [was] hurt…Hof said…he did not know Brandt and none of the people working at the brothel did…
Wanna molest teen girls without serious consequences? Just become a cop:
A…Houston…[cop] was facing 20 years in prison after he was charged with two counts of indecency with a 14-year-old student…at a local middle school [where he worked]. But after pleading guilty to a lesser charge, his sentencing was surprising light — five years probation, which will be erased from his record if he fulfills the terms, and not having to register as a sex offender…Jacob Ryan Delgadillo…pleaded guilty to having an improper relationship…
Backwards into the Future (#639)
Virtually no government “commission” will ever suggest taking power away from government:
A report by the SA Law Reform Commission is expected to recommend continued criminalisation of sex workers when it is unveiled today. Former deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, now director of [the prohibitionist] group Embrace Dignity, said…”We know the…report…recommends continued criminalisation of both the buying and selling of sex with diversions…”
…authorities…announced federal sex-trafficking conspiracy charges against 21 people, part of what they described as one of the most elaborate and extensive sex-trafficking operations they had seen. The operation had gone on for at least eight years, netted tens of millions of dollars, and involved hundreds of women…“The women did not have freedom of movement and, until they paid off their bondage debts, were modern-day sex slaves,” an indictment unsealed on Thursday in Federal District Court in Minnesota said…
The “authorities” admit the women were willing to do sex work; what they don’t admit is that any exploitation this “ring” engaged in was only made possible by the criminalization of sex work and the difficulty of legally migrating to the US. In other words, this isn’t a lurid tale of “sex slaves”; it’s a warning against prohibition and other bad laws.
The Spiral of Absurdity (#715)
“Sex trafficking” fetishists are still masturbating to the fantasy that emojis in low-rent escort ads are part of some mysterious pimp “code”:
Child sex traffickers are using emoji symbols such as smiley faces to lure young victims…the symbols are found all over websites such as Backpage.com, where pimps are reportedly known to sell girls and boys as young as 12 and 13 years old for sex. Masters student Jessica Whitney…and her professor Murray Jenney figured out the emoji code. They said the cherry symbol means virgin. The number of roses implies the price and an airplane means new in town. A crown symbol indicates a girl or boy is under house arrest and the growing heart emoji let’s [sic] the buyer know the girl or boy is childlike and still has some growing to do…
Their interpretations of these symbols say a lot more about their sexual fantasies than they do about the ads. Why, for example, would a “pimp” want to tell a client (“buyer”) that an escort is “under house arrest” (whatever that means; are they imagining “pimps” as some kind of legal authority)? Do they think that men would find that somehow appealing? What that tells me is that Whitney & Jenney do, which is disturbing to say the least. The whole thing reminds me of cop masturbatory fantasies that Pedobear or plush toys with heart symbols on them are “pedophile” symbols used to lure children.
Are most people such hopeless bootlickers that they can’t grasp what “denounce & cooperate” means?
Ivanka Trump met…with a group of African women in Rome who were trafficked into prostitution rings…Trump asked the 10 African women for suggestions on what the U.S. government…can do to help others like them…The women…praised an Italian law that allows trafficked persons to receive residency permits if they denounce their traffickers and cooperate with investigative authorities…
Some human rights groups, even in the UN, are very concerned about laws that incentivize claiming to be a “victim” and ratting out others in exchange for favors like residency permits. These laws allow prohibitionists to pad their statistics & prop up a narrative which would otherwise have little to support it.
“I can’t help but think this is vindictive prosecution.” No!!!
The San Diego District Attorney’s Office filed criminal charges against marijuana business owner James Slatic…two weeks after a judge ordered it to return more than $100,000 it had seized from Slatic and his family…prosecutors accused Slatic and five other employees of his business, Med-West, of illegally manufacturing and distributing hash oil to Colorado. Slatic and the others face 12 counts of manufacturing a controlled substance, exporting more than 4 grams of concentrated marijuana, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and money laundering…
Notice the bullshit charges “conspiracy” and “money laundering”, added to increase potential sentences so prosecutors can force a plea deal which will almost certainly involve all or most of the money they stole.
