Sex work is a highly complex experience and must not be reduced to sensationalised fictions that do nothing to capture the lives of the very people being depicted. – Kate Lister
Nice lady goes to slums and is horrified by poor sex workers; guess why she stayed:
…I set out to write a sex worker diary…out of [lurid] curiosity. I had heard stories that in Bwaise, a slum in northern Kampala, women were selling themselves for as little as 500 Uganda shillings (US$0.14). I wanted to get a first-hand view of the situation…Some…questioned my motive…I almost gave up…It was the encouragement I received from [“rescue”] organisations that…propelled me to continue writing. Not for Sale Uganda…[blathered about “providing] them with alternative dignified work”…Divine Hearts, a Christian organisation…pledged…[to] pay school fees for two of the sex workers’ children…
I would be interested in seeing a comparison of these NGO executives’ salaries with the cost of sending a child to school in Uganda.
It’s really hilarious that cops are now starting to believe their own wanking fantasies:
Seattle police are investigating a purported prostitution ring said by one escort to service “persons in positions of power” in the city. Detectives have searched a Capitol Hill home belonging to the suspected pimp…one former escort told investigators the Capitol Hill man named notable Seattle community members as his clients. Police now have custody of electronic devices and records that may prove that claim…
In other words, a chickenshit pimp brags to somebody to make himself look good, Seattle’s Keystone Kops think they’ve stumbled upon an escort service catering to big wheels, and reporters breathlessly repeat the cops’ fantasies. If you made this a TV show plot, people would say it was unbelievable.
Fever Dream
Law enforcement in Tennessee has altered the way it describes prostitution. Now the preferred language is “sex trafficking”…[even though] big [pogroms]…have yielded few trafficking charges…Josh DeVine, a spokesman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, [denies sex workers’ agency & vomits out a lot of propaganda]…Vanderbilt University professor Jill Robinson sees both sides of the argument, recognizing that it can “be problematic to expand the term so much that it includes everything”…[but she hates whores so she’s happy with policies that infantilize us & deprive us of income]…
Moloch (#342)
Is this enough blood yet? Can we please stop now?
Corey [Walgren] was at lunch…in his high school this past January when he was called into the office. Waiting for him was the campus dean and a [cop]. They questioned him about what was alleged to be an image on his phone of a consensual sexual encounter with a female classmate, also 16. The accusation was possession of and possibly sharing “child pornography.” Evidence strongly suggests that [they threatened him with] being registered as a sexual offender…Only at that point were attempts made to contact his parents. Corey was told that his mother was on the way to the school, and he was left alone to wait for her. At some point before she arrived, Corey left…walked a mile and threw himself off of a six-story parking garage. His death was not instantaneous, but it came before his mother could get to him…the images on the phone were so black that nothing could be seen. Even though audio of the encounter was discernible, police records indicate that they would not have pressed charges after all…
A pig and a prude though it was a good idea to threaten a boy with a lifetime of ostracism because he had sex with a girl. I hope the image of his shattered body is indelibly impressed on their brains; I hope it tortures them both until they end it the same way he did. And I hope this story comes up every time some self-important wanker of a judge declares that the “sex offender” registry isn’t a punishment.
Innocence Never Had
So much fantasy, so many contradictions:
A 17-year-old girl has allegedly been used as bait to ensnare younger girls in a human trafficking ring operating out of [Johannesburg, South Africa]…This is according to the mother of a 14-year-old…girl whom police took from a barber’s shop that allegedly doubled as a brothel…five girls were [supposedly] found drugged…The 17-year-old and the [shop owner] were both arrested and…charged with human trafficking, kidnapping, rape, sexual exploitation and possession of drugs and pornographic material…the 17-year-old…was a “problem child” who had repeatedly run away from home since the age of 15…Prostitutes working in the area are not convinced that…the girls the police have taken from the premises were forced into the trade…
The Monsters Are Due 
The ugliest part of a peak moral panic: lynch mobs:
In the last photographs taken of him, Mohammed Naeem is pleading to a group of villagers as blood trickles down from his head. Half of his body is soaked in red. His shirt presumably ripped away, and dirt marks on his pants suggest he was kicked repeatedly…Naeem was the last of four people to be beaten to death…by villagers in Sobhapur, [India]…Naeem’s last moments became the face of a string of attacks…triggered by rumours…that child abduction gangs are on the prowl. Villagers…picked up weapons such as sticks and bats, and were attacking strangers…Two people were killed over similar suspicions earlier in the week. None of the victims were involved in kidnapping…Naeem and his cattle trader companions were passing through Sobhapur early in the morning on [May 18th when]…Villagers…stopped their SUV, dragged the four people out and tortured them for four hours before killing them…
This is the price of inventing myths to justify controlling other people’s private sexual behavior.
Broken Record (#643)
Canadian prohibitionists are still desperate to cash in before the panic implodes:
The recruitment of young women in the weeks surrounding Montreal’s Formula 1 weekend isn’t new, according to [prohibitionists]…“We plan to…gather the already-existing information from various organisms [sic] who fight the human trafficking of women and girls,” said [prohibitionist] Cathy Wong…demand is so high during the Grand Prix, that women and girls are brought in from Ontario, and even the U.S…“In the end, it’s prostitution,” said Martine B. Côté, [another prohibitionist]…“You can pay for sexual services just by clicking your fingers”…
I’d like to reassure Martine that A) touring escorts are able to make their own travel plans without having to be “brought in” like cargo; B) escorts already know that what we do is prostitution, but thanks for telling us; and C) I’m afraid it takes just a bit more to pay for sex than just “clicking your fingers”, even if the escort accepts online payments. But please, let Cathy tell us more about these organisms who “fight sex trafficking”.
Too Close To Home (#664)
…as human trafficking rates continue to soar and the demand for paid sex grows…Seattle…decided to adopt the “Nordic Model”…It seems to be working well for Sweden, which has seen a dramatic drop in sex work since the law was implemented in 1999…an overwhelming amount of [sex] workers are poor women with few alternatives…[who] are lured or forced into “the life” through a history of sexual abuse, substance addiction, and severe poverty…the alternative, making prostitution legal, has failed time and time again…
Nearly every single sentence in this pile of shit is wrong; it’s actually quite an achievement.
Send In the Clowns
Now, this is an interesting twist:
A 29-year-old man was slashed to death in the parking lot of Torchy’s Tacos in downtown Denver…[very early] Tuesday morning. Witnesses referred to the suspect as a man in “white, clown-type makeup with black streaks on his face…[wearing] a glove with blades on the end of each finger”…the clown-faced man was seen hopping aboard a scooter and riding away into the night. Shortly thereafter…the attacker…was spotted on a [surveillance]…camera a few blocks away…throwing what looked to be a knife in the bushes…police discovered that knife covered in blood…[the suspect] was subsequently arrested…[and] identified…as…Christian Lee Gulzow, a local death metal vocalist…[who] frequently posts photos and videos of himself wearing makeup and sporting gloves with extended and pointed fingertips—both of which seem to match the descriptions made by the witnesses…
The Notorious Badge (#726)
Kate Lister of Whores of Yore on the background history of the Harlots TV show:
Harlots has gone beyond simply dusting off the tit crushing corsets and has deftly woven historical facts into the warp and weft of this bloomer dropping, gin swilling, cinematic trupenny upright, and I love it. But, I’m not here to tell you how much fun the show is (and it really is!) I’m here for the history. Harlots tells a hell of a story, but there is more to consider here than a corseted dose of how’s your father in a sepia filter. That Harlots so clearly uses historical truth to embellish the show is what really piques my interest…
