It is a somewhat quaint, futile idea that the sex trade, an industry which has continued with hardly a murmur for 20,000 years, will be “ended” by a bill passed through an ineffectual Canadian parliament, but politicians have never had much self-awareness when it comes to the limits of their own power. – J.R. Ireland
…Jennifer Stelly and her boyfriend Channing Castex were…pulled over for speeding in Brazoria County [Texas] in March 2013. Castex said he was handcuffed and put into a patrol car after he admitted to a state trooper that he had smoked marijuana. A female state trooper was called to search Stelly in full view of a dash-mounted camera. “She started going into my clothing and she penetrated areas that I don’t wish to disclose at this point,” Stelly said. “I was scared. I was violated. I didn’t know what to do”…the full, invasive cavity search happened on a busy freeway as people sped by…the same trooper [was] involved in [lawsuits over] two [other] roadside cavity searches two years ago…
Cowboys4Angels is at it again, trying to convince the world that their male escorts only have female clients; the “journalist” who wrote this fluff piece apparently didn’t do enough research to discover that they had to pay women to pretend to be clients on TV. But now agency owner Garren James also wants us to believe the “time and companionship” dodge, which at least in this case is probably closer to the truth.
They Just Don’t Get It (May Updates) 
St. Louis cops are trying to convince politicians that knife-wielding hookers who need to be gunned down in the street are among “the risks officers face every day”. I am not making this up.
The More the Better
This article in Cracked entitled “5 Ways Life as a Prostitute is Nothing Like You Expect” is nothing like perfect, and in some places it’s grating. But the reporter troubled himself to interview five actual sex workers for the piece, which is something American non-humor media can’t seem to manage.
Japanese Prostitution (#346)
…preparations for the upcoming Olympics Games in Tokyo include cleaning up red-light districts…“Nowadays, for job interviews at sex clubs, nine out of 10 women will be refused,” says “pink” writer Taizo Ebina…Such selectivity is due to a decrease in number of such businesses as the city attempts to sharpen its image prior to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of tourists in 2020…Tokyo had 847 “fashion health” joints…in 2007. Six years later, there were 813. Also experiencing declines over the same period were soapland bathhouses (1,239 to 1,218), adult-goods shops (340 to 232) and “encounter” coffee shops…
Something Rotten in Sweden (#445)
It’s a good sign when a blog post debunking prohibitionist mythology makes it into the national media:
…Charles Hill, a business school professor…starts from the increasingly validated position that most sex workers have personal agency, and haven’t been coerced to pursue their trade. Dr. Hill suggests that…reducing demand side will [actually] increase supply…conservative aspects of society use morality as a tool to control sexuality, especially that of women, under the guise of providing a social good. And that the ways in which they exercise these tools consistently puts the weakest members of society at the greatest harm…
A Procrustean Bed (#448)
Here’s Molly Crabapple with the most thorough, revealing look yet at New York’s “sex trafficking” courts:
…[Former sex worker] Love…caught up [with an old friend], hanging out on the corner of Edgewater Road and Lafayette Avenue. When a car circled the block several times, Love assumed it was an acquaintance. She waved. “Hop in,” the man in the car demanded. “I’ve got thirty dollars for a blowjob.”
“OK, officer, have a nice day,” Love shot back. As she walked away, the man shouted, “You must be a cop. You’re calling me a cop.” Love forgot the man, until, as she walked back to the train station, three police officers…arrested Love for prostitution…[she] spent the night in a cell—missing a day of classes. The whole process took 24 hours…At the pre-trial hearings, Love had become increasingly confused. Undercover officers are supposed to wear a recording device in order to have proof that solicitation took place. Since Love never solicited anyone, the police department had no recording to present. Yet Judge Michels would not throw out the case…when the undercover cop took the stand, Love began to panic. She’d never seen this guy in her life. His story was filled with inconsistencies, but the prosecutor later said this only proved he was honest. The stranger on the stand testified that…Love offered him a $20 blowjob. For $30, he said, she’d fuck him in the street…
Longtime readers may remember my own experience with the adolescent porn cops pass off as “testimony” in prostitution cases.
A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#449)
It’s bad enough that people think anything in a movie most be true; the new thing seems to be that anything written on a card held up by a po-faced person in a photo must be true:
Original Sin (#501)
I’m really happy to see evangelicals increasingly embarassing themselves with bombastic Bible-thumping anti-harlot rhetoric in support of prohibitionist laws; the more they do it, the more they’ll alienate their neofeminist allies and open the eyes of ordinary people who’ll buy the pseudoscientific crap but not so much the holy rolling. Here’s a post on the Locust Kings blog which ably takes down both a ridiculously mouth-foaming anti-whore screed in Crisis magazine and the 2006 National Review essay which partially inspired it.
