No one should be comfortable with state-funded employees determining what is or isn’t acceptable for adults to read. – Eric Paul Leue
Are there still people who believe the French are sexually liberal?
“We are not a puritan society,” French President Emmanuel Macron claimed…He then called for the criminalization of wolf-whistling and gender-based insults, and for requiring France’s TV and radio regulators to police video games and web content…[especially] online pornography, which Macron sees (sans evidence) as a prominent cause of violence against girls and women. Porn is infiltrating French schools, Macron warned, and “we cannot ignore the kind that makes women an object of humiliation”…
I guess six and a half years without a library internet censorship attempt isn’t too bad a run:
[Using the excuse] of out-in-the-open porn viewing, public sex, drug use and theft at [Los Angeles] city libraries, a pair of [politicians] is proposing [censorship software]…David Ryu…[and] Nury Martinez [vomited out several variations of “For the children!”, pretending this constituted an actual argument]…the Free Speech Coalition (FSC)…[correctly] argues that doing so could violate taxpayers’ First Amendment right…FSC executive director Eric Paul Leue said… “Filtering software sounds like an easy solution, but we know that such software often casts an egregiously wide net, blocking not only sexually explicit content but also sexual health information, LGBTQ sites and sites…which…discuss…issues relevant to the adult industry…In the past year alone, we’ve seen magazines like Cosmopolitan attacked as pornography in conservative districts, just as we’ve seen crackdowns on LGBTQ content and imagery, and mere nudity elsewhere”…
Setting Women’s Rights Back a Century
It’s a little reassuring to see somebody else recognize this:
…while we think we are moving forward, we may be willingly transporting ourselves back to a more sexually restrictive era, one that denied agency to women…sexual laws and regulations have most often been strengthened in the name of protecting children…Sometimes the children are symbolic: anti-gay crusades are almost invariably framed in terms of “saving the children”— not specific children, but just the children who have to share a country with queers. In the current American conversation, women are increasingly treated as children: defenseless, incapable of consent, always on the verge of being victimized. This should give us pause. Being infantilized has never worked out well for women.
Acting and Activism (#565) 
Good riddance to bad anti-whore rubbish:
Lena Dunham may be the first person to fabricate details of her alleged rape, then proclaim all women’s claims need to be believed, and then publicly accuse a young woman of lying about having been raped. Finally, the star and creator of Girls has been exposed as the empty vessel she is…Dunham…speaks, usually unbidden, with complete moral and philosophical authority — until she’s called out online, at which point she furiously and pathetically backpedals…She’s a total hypocrite…and…narcissist who possesses no intellectual rigor, no belief system, no relationship with the truth…
The Puritan Recrudescence
Each new revelation since the first reports of the Harvey Weinstein scandal adds to the discussion about how to deal with sexual harassment and sexual violence in American society. And yet nobody is talking about what could be one of the most effective ways to attack the problem: Recognizing that pornography consumption is a public health crisis…the heavy use of pornography skews the users’ perception of what is normal…We have a sexual violence problem because we have a porn problem…the evidence is mounting that porn is addictive…
All of this is pure, undistilled bullshit; as this article explains, the “porn as public health crisis” propaganda is a dodge dreamed up by prohibitionist Gail Dines and used by politicians in socially-conservative states as an excuse for censorship. In reality (as opposed to prohibitionists’ anti-sex fantasyland) all the evidence points to porn viewing decreasing sexual violence, and regular readers know that the “sex addiction” myth, the big sister of “porn as health crisis”, is not only unsupported by evidence but dying a quick death due to the antics of the same abusive douchebag this prohibitionist tries to hang his pro-censorship screed on.
Against Their Will (#707)
Prohibitionists call this “rescue”:
A…sex worker fell to her death in Queens [New York because of] a police raid [last]…Saturday night…[grown men pretending to be big heroes] stormed a massage parlor [as though they were in a war or something]…Police say they were trying to [capture and arrest] the 38-year-old woman when they saw her fall to the sidewalk from a third floor window. She suffered serious injuries, and died Sunday at the hospital. The medical examiner will determine the exact cause of death.
Because “falling to her death while fleeing in terror from rapists who want to torture her & lock her in a cage” isn’t exact enough?
Rooted in Racism (#732)
A vacation to Cancun…ended in anguish when an Atlanta-area woman…and her friend were mistaken on the flight home for human trafficking victims. The incident…has put a spotlight on the [harms inflicted on minority women by “sex trafficking” hysteria]…Stephanie Ung…was [interrogated] by U.S. Customs and Border Protection…for more than an hour upon arriving at the airport…”I just kept telling them that I wanted to go home for my family Thanksgiving dinner, and that they were making me late, but they just didn’t care,” Ung said through tears. “They just laughed”…Ung, who is Asian American, said that she believes her race was a factor in the situation…A Delta spokesperson said that another passenger on the flight [fantasized] someone else was in possession of the women’s passports…and [snitched]…to the crew…
Is anyone so gullible as to believe that their being young Asian women had nothing to do with this?
Against Their Will (#766)
It’s good to see this getting more attention lately:
In Hyderabad in particular there are some very powerful and very well-funded anti-trafficking organisations that…[pretend] any form of sex work [is] a form of trafficking…NGOs…[are] working in combination with the police…processing women and locking them up in “shelters”….[that] operate as jails…Their phones are taken away. They’re not allowed to contact their families, they’re not allowed to contact their friends that could help them. Their money is taken away, sometimes even their jewelry is taken away…They are kept against their will…completely cut off from…their life…there is an actual monetary gain to be had by trafficking these women off the streets and into shelters. So…it actually meets all of the qualifications set out by the Palermo Protocol. Women themselves are calling this a form of trafficking and…attempt to…escape…Some women attempt suicide…
Safe Targets (#766)
Not for ANY reason WHATSOEVER. No, your reason is not an exception:
A woman who reported being kidnapped and raped over a six month period to the police was arrested as she sought care…The woman, who was five months pregnant…was…taken into custody at an east London police station. She was then interrogated over her immigration status…
The Notorious Badge (#772)
OK, so maybe she was listening after all:
Maggie Gyllenhaal thinks prostitution should be decriminalised. The…actress plays a sex worker in her new TV show The Deuce and she thinks it would be safer and healthier for everyone involved…if it was no longer a criminal act…
Wise Investment (#779)
Even though we’re going to lose many of these, lawsuits are for the present our best weapon against prohibitionists:
…it looked like City Attorney Pete Holmes’ tactic for leveraging harsh punishments against sex buyers was in trouble. A filing from a public defender working on behalf of one of the men caught up in the city’s massage parlor stings revealed that the prosecutor had directed his attorneys not to offer pre-trial diversion to men accused of buying sex. The strategy…contradict[s] the city’s lauded criminal justice reform efforts allowing people accused of other misdemeanor crimes to avoid criminal convictions. Public defenders also expressed concern that a sting operation that trapped defendants into guilty pleas could have far more serious consequences for undocumented residents…A law firm hired by the city (to the tune of $60,000) argued in King County Superior Court that…the sex buyer in question didn’t have a due process right to pre-trial diversion…attorney Bob Goldsmith…asked King County Superior Court Judge Sean O’Donnell to recuse himself from the case…[because] O’Donnell had participated in the King County Commercially Sexually Exploited Children Task Force, which supported the “end demand” strategy enshrined in the city attorney’s prosecutorial decisions…Judge O’Donnell [naturally] rejected the motion to recuse himself, as well as Goldsmith’s other arguments…
To Molest and Rape (#782)
What kind of sick fuck enrolls their kids in a program specifically intended to groom them into members of a gang of violent thugs? “A San Leandro [cop] resigned…[after admitting] sexual misconduct with a teenage Police Explorer…Marco Becerra…[molested] a 17-year-old girl…” I mean, just LOOK at this creepy fuck; would you trust him around your daughter?
Buried Truth (#790)
A woman who falsely claimed to The Washington Post that Roy Moore…impregnated her as a teenager appears to work with an organization that uses deceptive tactics to secretly record conversations in an effort to embarrass its targets…During the interviews, she repeatedly pressed Post reporters to give their opinions on the effects that her claims could have on Moore’s candidacy if she went public…When Post reporters confronted her with inconsistencies in her story and an Internet posting that raised doubts about her motivations, she insisted that she was not working with any organization that targets journalists. But on Monday morning, Post reporters saw her walking into the New York offices of Project Veritas, an organization that targets the mainstream news media and left-leaning groups. The organization sets up undercover “stings” that involve using false cover stories and covert video recordings meant to expose what the group says is media bias…
You may recognize the resemblance to the failed attempt at framing Planned Parenthood in 2011.
