Nothing has appeared in the last couple of years to make [sex trafficking] estimates…more scientific than they were 10 years ago. – David Finkelhor
The reporter seems to be trying to hide what happened here:
…a Butte man was found not guilty of raping a woman in Missoula [Montana] in June 2015…Nicholas James Dolson…[met a sex worker via] Craigslist seeking sex. After the pair engaged in consensual vaginal intercourse, Dolson [anally raped her]…she…told him to stop but…he didn’t. Dolson [then] left [without paying her]…The day after their encounter, Dolson sent the woman a text message that [admitted he] had planned to have sex with her twice…and…leave [without paying]. Dolson…[pretended] what had happened between him and the woman had been consensual…[even though] he hadn’t…paid for their encounter as the two of them had discussed…
It isn’t quite the same thing, but close enough considering the human aesthetics are the main attraction:
…The Amrita restaurant, which is set to open in Tokyo, has said that anyone 15kg above the average weight for their height will not be allowed to dine. The restaurant…will ask guests to check in their clothes and put on paper underwear when they arrive. Anyone who is thought to be above the average weight for their height will be weighed and ejected if deemed to be overweight…[spokeswoman] Miki Komatsu…[said] “If fat people are allowed in it could be miserable for some guests…We are aiming for a sort of Roman aesthetic, like the beautiful paintings you see in museums.” People with tattoos are also banned from the restaurant and diners are asked not to “cause a nuisance” by touching or talking to other guests.
Scapegoats
Anyone who thinks that a dog has to be “forced” to lick any part of a human body has never spent much time around dogs:
In a surprising decision from Canada’s Supreme Court, the country’s top judges ruled that forcing a dog to perform oral sex is not, in fact, bestiality and therefore not necessarily illegal…The case…involves an unnamed man, accused of forcing the family dog to perform oral sex on his underage daughter. The man was convicted of a litany of sexual offences in relation to the abuse, and sentenced to 14 years in jail. On one charge of bestiality, however, he was acquitted on appeal…His lawyers contended that…the charge, which carries no formal definition in the Criminal Code, was linked to “buggery”…and therefore required penetration. The [prosecution]…argued that…any sexual contact with animals [is] wrong, abusive, and illegal…Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, a backbench MP…[predictably reacted by introducing] C-246, which would explicitly ban all sexual activity between man and animal…
Pyrrhic Victory
Surveillance beyond the wildest dreams of the Stasi:
Motherboard used public records requests to extract 3,000+ pages of court docs…which revealed the full extent of the Mounties’ secret use of Stingrays…the fake cellular towers that let cops covertly track whole populations by tricking their phones into revealing information about them…in the USA, their manufacturers collaborated with federal law enforcement to swear local cops to secrecy, going so far as to drop cases rather than reveal the use of Stingrays, and, in a few known cases, lying to judges. Feds even raided local cops and stole all documents related to Stingrays before they could be entered into evidence. But even by those standards, the RCMP’s use of Stingrays is breathtakingly broad and out-of-control…They not only routinely use Stingrays to surveil regions in a radius of up to 2km…but…also retained this data indefinitely, creating permanent surveillance databases that recorded the locations and activities (including the calls) of literally millions of Canadians who had never come under any suspicion for any crime…
The Pro-Rape Coalition (#314)
A huge victory for the adult video industry:
In a big victory for the Free Speech Coalition, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals…vacated and remanded a lower court’s July 2013 ruling that held that performer record-keeping for adult entertainment producers are constitutional…The 3rd Circuit…held that the inspection provisions of the statutes are facially unconstitutional under the 4th Amendment…
Eternal Vigilance
Even where sex work is legal, whore stigma is an ever-present danger:
A [political] candidate has quit after it emerged he owns a [suburban Melbourne] brothel called Paradise Playmates. Taiwan-born massage therapist John Min-Chiang Hsu resigned as the Liberal Party candidate for the Victorian seat of Calwell after his ties to the brothel were revealed…Hsu also owns a company called Beautiful Life Natural Therapies, which runs three Melbourne massage establishments: CBD Massage, Five Star Massage and Sabaydee Thai Massage Day Spa. It’s believed at least Sabaydee offers sexual services because it appears on a review website for sex work…Hsu…has denied owning the brothel but was unable to explain why
company records show it is registered to a man with the same name, address and date of birth as him…
The Face of Trafficking
…April Corcoran…handed over her 11-year-old daughter to a drug dealer for sex in exchange for…heroin…The alleged dealer is Shandell Willingham, who recorded
some of the sex acts on video…[and] faces charges of rape, gross sexual imposition…[child porn] and human trafficking. He’s already been convicted of drug crimes…The charges…to which [Corcoran] pleaded are enough to put her in prison for the rest of her life…
Moving Pictures
In what could be a metaphor for the modern world, an ignoramus who knows nothing about either filmmaking or sex work sets out to make a film about “sex trafficking”:
Danielle Rose, 25, took it upon herself to expose the ugly truth that it happens in her native Brooklyn. Her first documentary, In Our Backyard, depicts the unspoken world of sex trafficking through the emotional stories of recent survivors and the work of advocates fighting to end this form of modern-day slavery. A senior at Sarah Lawrence College, having never used a camera before, Rose set out to make a documentary film about it. She invested all her savings into the film and enlisted her friends and family to help her…Rose [said]…”my mom, who was a caterer, was friends with someone at the Brooklyn DA’s office and they got in touch with her to donate food for an anti-trafficking event…I knew nothing about using a camera but I started going out and filming…The subjects it touches upon are sex buyers, pimp culture, the music we listen to, and Backpage.com”…
The Pygmalion Fallacy (#596)
This just keeps getting stupider with every iteration:
…Professor Noel Sharkey said he believes teenagers could lose their virginity to android sex dolls…and…warned that the robots may have damaging consequences for society…he insisted that robotic dolls could have as big an impact as online porn in the sex industry…”Sex robots are accessible now and certainly [will be common] within the next 10 years. I think there will be an age limit. Certainly there should be, but if your dad or mom had one, you could sneak in and use it…It’s not a problem having sex with a machine. But what if it’s your first time, your first relationship? What do you think of the opposite sex then…It will…stop…people forming relationships with normal people”…
Still a Child (#620)
Naturally, Baton Rouge couldn’t let itself be out-pruded by New Orleans:
Louisiana strip clubs will be barred from hiring dancers under the age of 21, under a new law…Bill sponsor…Ronnie Johns…[pretends] the provision will help to fight human trafficking…Debate was briefly derailed by a proposal from…Rep. Kenny Havard…suggesting strippers should be between 21 and 28 years old and less than 160 pounds. The amendment drew strong criticism. Havard called it a joke about overregulation…
To Molest and Rape
At [the] press conference announcing the departure of Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent, Mayor Libby Schaaf…told a room full of reporters that Whent was resigning for “personal reasons”. The mayor said it had nothing to do with a scandal involving rookie police officers who sexually exploited a minor, or the suspicious death of a police officer’s wife and his subsequent suicide…But the mayor and other city officials are either not being forthright about the extent of OPD officer misconduct…at least fourteen Oakland Police officers, three Richmond Police officers, and four Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies had sex with the girl who goes by the [stage] name Celeste Guap…who…said she slept with cops as a form of protection [from arrest]…
*Credit Mistress Matisse
A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#641)
It’s so good to see “sex trafficking” lies now being attacked from multiple directions:
…The 1,000-victim figure comes from a questionable study commissioned by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and published in 2010…The…FBI…[labeled] an average of 15 [minors as] victims of sex trafficking in Toledo each year, between 2005 and 2009. The study’s authors took that 15-per-year figure and applied it to all girls ages 12 through 17 in the state of Ohio…[yielding] an estimate of 202 girls per year. Then, the commission multiplied 202 by five, because a University of Toledo study claimed that each sex trafficking victim they interviewed knew an average of five more underaged minors “not known to law enforcement, but who were engaging in the sex trade”…
No Moss
Rolling Stone is trying to cover its collective arse (or rather, that of whatever drunk editor approved the publication of a piece of anti-sex propaganda from a government stooge) by publishing a rebuttal from Amnesty International featuring those stupid things called “facts”. It’s too late, Rolling Stone; you’ve flushed whatever credibility you had down the anti-sex toilet. But maybe you can reinvent yourself as a magazine for fascist bootlickers and authoritarian apologists.