June 12, 2021 by Maggie McNeill
Prohibitionists never want to hear from sex workers who want rights rather than rescue, and they don't want anyone else to hear them either. - Mark Draughn
Another excellent article by stalwart friend of whores Mark Draughn:
Backwards into the Future (#963)...International Whores' Day has been celebrated on June 2 for 45 years. Naturally, this day pisses off...prohibitionists, who...are [now] trying to replace International Whores' Day with their own re-branded International Day of Remembrance for women who died in prostitution. What makes this especially creepy is that...anti-prostitution laws are one of the biggest causes of violence against sex workers...If you follow sex workers rights issues, you may know that the traditional day for remembering those who died by violence is not June 2 but December 17, which is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers ...[but a quick search of prohibitionist] twitter feeds [from] December 17th...finds lots of ranting about brothels and pimps, but no recognition that it's the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers...The prohibitionists' failure to recognize the long-established International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers reveals the hollowness of their concern for the victims of violence in the sex trade. It's clear their attempt to establish an International Day of Remembrance is little more than an...attempt to erase International Whores' Day...
Will South Africa decriminalize province by province?
I Spy (#1069)The KwaZulu-Natal Legislature...resolved to fast-track the process of decriminalising and regulating sex work...during a sex work symposium held in Pietermaritzburg...as part of the legislature's public participation programmes...the resolutions...[will] be...debated by political parties prior to execution. At least 55 sex workers and their representative organisations were part of the discussions. Dudu Dlamini from Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce...said they wanted a decree before 2024...
Remember, Amazon eagerly hands data from internet-connected devices to cops:
...buried inside millions of Amazon Echo...speakers and Ring...cameras....[is] the ability to make a new kind of wireless network called Sidewalk that shares a slice of your home Internet connection with your neighbors' devices. And on Tuesday, Amazon...switch[ed] Sidewalk on - for everyone. I'm digging into my settings to turn it off. Sidewalk raises more red flags than a marching band parade: Is it secure enough to be activated in so many homes? Are we helping Amazon build a vast network that can be used for more surveillance? And why didn't Amazon ask us to opt-in before activating a capability lying dormant in our devices?...
Comfort Zone (#1072) 
An especially-incompetent attempt to hide migration control behind the "trafficking" narrative:
I Spy (#1082)The Biden administration...announce[d] new actions to combat [migration by branding it] trafficking as [Copmala] Harris embarks on [a propaganda] trip to Latin America to look into ways of a[ttack]ing the root causes of regional migration...[without actually providing any] additional aid...Harris will also be [trying to remove motes from the eyes of] the governments of countries from which people are fleeing, though [not removing the beam from her own first]...
Curiosity offends the state, comrade:
Permanent Record (#1099)...In an insane new bit of federal...overreach, the FBI demanded that USA Today turn over records showing who read a February story about two FBI agents killed in Florida. The FBI sought...I.P. addresses...[of] all "computers and other electronic devices" that accessed the story during a 35-minute period on the evening of the shooting... USA Today's parent company, Gannett, asked a federal court to quash the...subpoena...[as blatantly] unconstitutional and...amid the publicity, the FBI backed off...but...doesn't seem to think it did anything wrong. The FBI [only]...withdr[e]w the subpoena because...the person it sought to find...was identified "through other means" ... the FBI...had other ways to find the suspect...and...still decided that infringing on freedom of the press was a good first step...
If prohibitionists really want to "rescue" sex workers, why do they keep trying to shut us out of other jobs?
Guinea Pigs (#1101)A sales rep at a T-Mobile store in Fort Worth, Texas has filed a gender discrimination suit against the company after a [personnel manager] in[terrogated] her about having an OnlyFans account. Caitlyn Stevens had been working at T-Mobile for nearly seven years when a male colleague became angry...and approached her..."in a physically aggressive manager," forcing a coworker to step in and stop the man from hitting her. Stevens reported the incident to the store manager. Rather than disciplining the ma[n]...the manager relocated Stevens to a different location...[which] got less foot traffic, resulting in fewer [commissions]...When Stevens submitted a complaint...a man...called...and began asking questions about her personal life, including "whether she had a 'sugar daddy' and whether she had an OnlyFans account"...Then...added, "We've heard that people have seen nude pictures of you"...
They're going way beyond fake Facebook profiles now:
...for years...the FBI ...[ran an encrypted messaging system called] Anom by...working with [other fascist government] partners, including the Australian Federal Police...to [spy on] the co[nvers]ations [of every single user, excusing the outage by branding all users "criminals"]...their developer source "built a master key into the existing encryption system which surreptitiously attaches to each message and enables [pigs and spooks] to [root through each]...message as it is transmitted"...Since October 2019, the FBI has catalogued "more than 20 million messages from a total of 11,800 devices...in over 90 countries." Most of this [snoop]ing seems to have been [to]...sniff...out drugs...[pigs] began [oink]ing [about] the results of the operation-including 700 houses [raid]ed and more than 800 [people abducted]...at a Tuesday morning press conference in The Hague...
These are the same people who thought it was perfectly OK and ethical to run their very own child porn site, so this isn't a new low. But it does demonstrate just how far authoritarians will go to inflict violence on people for the "crime" of enjoying themselves in ways puritans dislike.
