We lie together on the floor until someone buys us. – Margarita
Facts have absolutely nothing to do with US sex laws:
When Henry was 18, he had sex with a 16-year-old he met on a dating app who said they were 18 too. The 16-year-old’s parents found out, summoned the cops, and Henry was charged with a sex offense. He took a plea: no jail time, and seven years on the sex offense registry…this…made it nearly impossible to find work…After three years with little income—and several hundred dollars a year in payments for court-mandated polygraph tests—Henry moved back in with his parents. The neighbors got up in arms, so all three of them moved to Henry’s grandmother’s house…At last, Henry found a good job. But when he gave his probation officer his office address, he was told it was too close to a school…Henry begged his probation officer to let him keep this hard-won job. The officer said he could continue working until a judge ruled on his request. But when Henry got to court…the judge issued the harshest ruling possible, sentencing Henry to six years in state prison…
They usually make these cases sound like the rapist was doing his victims a favor:
[A typical and representative Idaho cop named] Ryan A. Bendawald…[has been charged with rap]ing…at least seven women[, often by threatening them with criminal charges if they refused to submit]…
The Missing Word (#838)
If only there were a specific word for this sort of thing:
Women seeking jobs as domestic workers in the UAE…are being detained and abused in squalid accommodation, while recruiters sell them over apps and social media platforms to household employers…women…[a]re denied food, held captive and treated violently…[while] being marketed in an “exploitative” way reminiscent of slavery…with employers charged less for the services of black domestic workers and being told they do not even need to provide them with proper bedrooms…migrants wait, in limbo, for an employer to take them on…a process that can take months, with women often being returned to the agencies at the whim of an employer…
So this is only “reminiscent” of slavery, whereas highly-paid, flexible, self-employment is slavery if it involves sex. That makes so much sense.
You Were Warned (#1177)
Child porn will only be the first of many excuses to bleed internet companies:
Australia’s [internet control agency has]…fined…Twitter — 610,500 Australian dollars ($385,000) for failing to…explain [to bureaucrats’ satisfaction] how it [deals with] child [porn]…because…[it did not fully fill out] a…question[aire]…
The Puritan Recrudescence (#1344)
Pseudoscience is much more useful as a tool of social control than science could ever be:
Texas recently passed a law that would require some websites to display a lengthy claim concerning the supposed scientifically-based harms of pornography…I study the effects of pornography on humans. I was unable to find any truthful scientific statement in this state-forced speech…Texas has created a completely false statement by misrepresenting the science of myself and other scholars. If they want to continue to make such outlandish, false claims, I and other scientists will continue to accurately describe the actual state of the science…
You Were Warned (#1370)
These tyrannies often start with sex workers, but never stop with us:
KOSA…would [invent] a “duty of care” requiring social media apps and websites to “prevent and mitigate” [anything any politician chooses to declare a “]harm[“] to children…the bill would allow state Attorneys General to sue apps and sites if they [pretend] certain content is harmful to minors—meaning AGs could weaponize the law to attack content they simply disagree with. In response, platforms likely would preemptively block content they think could get them sued. Much has been made of the bill’s potential to lead to online censorship of LGBT…content and sex ed info for everyone, not just kids, and [much to the surprise of silly people who believe in “wing” mythology] …22 Democratic Senators co-sponsor it—including…[pro-censorship politician] Elizabeth Warren…KOSA could also censor content about abortion on sites ranging from social platforms…to abortion resource websites…
Property of the State (#1376)
Etowah County is one of those jurisdictions which needs to be sued into oblivion:
In March 2021, [pigs] in Etowah county, Alabama, arrested Ashley Caswell [using the pretext] that she’d tested positive for methamphetamine while pregnant and was “endangering” her fetus. Caswell, who was two months pregnant at the time, became one of a growing number of women imprisoned in the county in the name of protecting their “unborn children”. But over the next seven months [locked in a cage] for “chemical endangerment”…Caswell was denied regular access to prenatal visits, even as officials were aware her pregnancy was high-risk…She was also denied her prescribed psychiatric medication and slept on a thin mat on the concrete floor…for her entire pregnancy. In October, when her water broke and she pleaded to be taken to a hospital…[screws] told her to “sleep [labor] off” and “wait until Monday” to deliver – two days away. During nearly 12 hours of labor, staff…[shouted at] her to “stop screaming”, to “deal with the pain” and that she was “not in full labor”. Caswell…was alone and standing up in a jail shower when she ultimately delivered her child…and…nearly bled to death…The baby survived, but…was immediately [abducted by “authorities”]…he[r] lawsuit, filed by…Pregnancy Justice and the Southern Poverty Law Center, is the first case to challenge the conditions for jailed pregnant women in Etowah county…the national leader in arresting women under the guise of protecting their fetuses…
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