My body is my business – and it is a money maker. – Vera Sidika
“Human trafficking” has become nothing more than a dysphemism for sex work:
A trio of bills before the [Frederick] County [Maryland] Council [cl]aim to address human trafficking…[one] would require hotels and motels to conduct human trafficking training for new employees, [the second would] hold landlords and tenants liable for criminal charges for [not evicting sex workers on a cop’s say-so] and [the third would] regulate “bodyworks” establishments, which [prohibitionists pretend] are relatively common locations for human trafficking…The landlord and tenant bill would would make it unlawful for any tenant or landlord or property owner to [lease to anyone a cop decides to call]…a potential problem…Prince George’s County has…implemented this bill and has seen success in [evicting] some [sex workers]…the goal of the bill isn’t to punish the landlords,
but to get them to [become fascist tools] by evicting the tenants or reporting [them] to police…
Instant karma’s gonna get you…
On [May 16th], Sahar Sarid, Thomas Keesee and Kishore Vidya Bhavnanie—three out of four alleged owners of Mugshots.com—were arrested and charged with extortion, money laundering and identity theft…[for] harvest[ing] people’s mug shots and charg[ing] them exorbitant fees
to have the photos removed…$399 and up…many people have filed lawsuits against the site…California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said…“Those who can’t afford to pay into this scheme to have their information removed pay the price when they look for a job, housing, or try to build relationships with others. This is exploitation, plain and simple”..
And yet I don’t see Becerra pushing for a law to make mugshots not public records. Is that the stench of hypocrisy I smell?
Uncommon Sense (#404)
Beware of male “feminists” who try to stop women from organizing:
Spain’s fiercely anti-prostitution Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was left red in the face…after it emerged a sex workers union was approved by his own administration. Sex work is…neither illegal nor regulated [in Spain] but Sanchez came to power in June with a strongly feminist agenda promising to fight…women. “Prostitution in Spain isn’t legal and this government won’t support any organisation that includes this illicit activity,” he tweeted…
Rescued To Death
“Abatement”. A term used for things, especially nuisances, here applied to people. But NHI, right?
…[spokespig] Gaetano Caltagirone…announced the initiation of a “Sex Worker Abatement Unit”…Some 20 [cops] applied [for obvious reasons], but only four were selected…the unit has arrested “Johns” — men soliciting prostitutes — as well as pimps. Any ensnared sex workers, he said, have been offered [brainwashing sessions or else]…This [paternalistic scheme] was modeled after a pilot program in Seattle…This news was, by and large, well-received by the meeting attendees…[but] Tessa Brown, a Mission resident, pinned the rise of street prostitution on the closures of popular personal websites like Backpage…“I just wanted to push back at the idea that all neighbors agree that we should be arresting all sex workers and more clients of sex workers,” Brown said…Another attendee, Aaron Sunshine, chimed in and suggested the police ease up. “Let’s just leave the sex workers alone,” Sunshine said…
Slowly but surely, we’re getting through to people who aren’t predisposed to bigotry & bootlicking.
The Face of Trafficking
What an actual attempt to abduct a woman into forced prostitution looks like:
…her former pimp crept up from behind and dropped her with a roundhouse punch. Two men heaved her into a car trunk and they were off, forcing the woman to claw for her life in the dark as the vehicle careened along crowded city streets…Soon police were in pursuit across the Bay Bridge. Minutes later the car would slam into a pole in a fiery, fatal wreck. But before the deadly crash, the woman in the trunk remembered an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show that informed viewers about emergency trunk latches. In her panic, she found her lifeline and escaped from the vehicle as it headed to the bridge…
The Sky is Falling! (#772)
…the exchange of youth and beauty for long-term financial gain, motivated not by hunger but by aspiration, glamorised by social media stars, and often wrapped in the trappings of a relationship. Older men have always used gifts, status, and influence to buy access to young women. The sugar daddy has probably been around, in every society, for as long as the prostitute. So you might ask: “Why even have a conversation about transactional sex in Africa?” The answer is that in Kenya, and in some other African countries, “sugar” relationships seem to have become both more common and more visible: what once was hidden is now out in the open – on campuses, in bars, and all over Instagram…
Lower Education (#773)
Ashe Schow debunks the absurd numbers behind the “campus rape crisis” propaganda:
A potential draft of new federal campus sexual assault policies was leaked this week, so expect a new round of false and misleading statistics to be shared by those who claim due process “protects rapists” and “hurts victims”. Rape and sexual assault are serious offenses, and shouldn’t be watered down to create a narrative that America is somehow the rape capital of the world, nor should we pretend that non-offenses are offenses…I’ve taken down every one of these statistics before — sometimes many, many times — but it’s time to debunk them all in one place…
Schow debunks the “1 in 4” lie (“numbers thousands of times higher than war-torn Congo”), the “serial predator” bogeyman, the “all rape accusations are true” poison, the “universities which report no rapes are lying” libel, and the “1 in 3 men intend to rape” bullshit. It’s worth reading in its entirety.
To Molest and Rape (#797)
What kind of sick fuck enrolls their daughter in a program specifically intended to groom them into members of a gang of violent thugs?
[Cops] in the Louisville Metro Police Department’s youth Explorer program…interrogated…a girl who [was the victim]…of sexual abuse [by one of their cronies], took her cell phone and refused to let her parents be present when she was questioned during an out-of-town trip…the head of the program tried to keep the allegations quiet through what amounted to a bribe — offering to pay the cost of the trip to Atlanta…Louisville Metro P[ig] Brad Schuhmann…sexually abus[ed] the girl from 2008 to 2009…and sought sexual pictures and acts from her. The abuse [was perpetrated] in [pigmobiles], at Explorer events and through text messages. The lawsuit was initially filed under seal in Jefferson Circuit Court in October but was moved to federal court earlier this year. It is among five other similar suits unsealed [on August 30th]…the teen told her parents, who confronted Schuhmann and met with the program’s leader at the time, Lt. Curtis Flaherty. Schuhmann is under criminal investigation and [was rewarded for the rapes with a] paid [vacation]…
The Widening Gyre (#822)
In which “sex trafficking” hysteria is employed to mask the stench of xenophobia:
Britain is ramping up efforts to [charge people with] sex trafficking of girls…amid [fantasies] that cases uncovered by police are just “the tip of the iceberg” with modern slavery ever-evolving…Britain this week announced a 2 million pound ($2.6 million) scheme to [divert funds to cronies under the excuse of] help[ing] stop at risk children falling into the grip of traffickers and gangs who rape them and force them to move drugs…from cities to rural areas…Britain has been rocked by a series of child sex trafficking and abuse [s]ca[r]es over the past few years, with hundreds of girls [claimed to be] exploited by large gangs..of mainly Asian men…
The Course of a Disease (#850)
We were warned that Israeli whore-censorship was only “part of a wider plan”:
The State Attorney’s office, along with Israeli police, decided…to take severe measures against the practice of lap dances in strip clubs. The new enforcement intends to eradicate “the activity that in certain circumstances constitutes prostitution”…The police issued a written notice to owners of strip clubs clarifying the new policies…[Prohibitionist] Nitzan Kahana of the Task Force [for Pearl-Clutching smugly bloviated]…“The treatment to root out prostitution in Israel has begun…Strip clubs are a major part of this industry…lap dances, posing for years as ‘an innocent dance’ when it is apparent to all that they are essentially a sexual act of physical contact intending to please customers”…
OH MY GOD WE CAN’T HAVE CUSTOMERS EXPERIENCING PLEASURE!!! THE HORROR!!!
Disaster (#865)
I’ve never seen anything galvanize public support for sex workers like FOSTA has:
…Coyote…RI…conducted a survey of 262 sex workers between April 14 and May 25, 2018. Seventy percent…reported that sex work had been their primary source of income before FOSTA and 77 percent…were the sole providers for their families. Within a week of the laws’ passage, 70 percent noticed a drop in their income, rendering them unable to pay for rent, food, utilities or phone…Sixty percent…now take on less safe clients in order to make ends meet. Sixty-five percent…reported that someone had tried to threaten, exploit or [rape] them…censorship of sex workers’ content…means that many are turning to street-based sex work…including people who have little to no experience working on the streets…street-based sex work…increases vulnerability to predators, including police…
The Monsters Are Due (#867)
The ugliest part of a peak moral panic: lynch mobs:
Some residents of [the] small town [of Acatlan] in central Mexico [abducted] two men accused of trying to kidnap children from police custody and burned them to death…A crowd of about 150 people gathered and stormed the jail…then doused the…[men] with an accelerant and burned them [alive]…
In the comments, a witness wrote, “The two men were innocent. They were drinking in the street and they got arrested. A small group of people [then] began gossip[ing] that they were kidnapping children…Everything was broadcasted on Facebook Live and the mother of the younger man was watching the stream of her son getting killed. There are posts of her begging them to stop…”
The Widening Gyre (#868) 
Here’s another entry in the “sex trafficking” scare story invasion of Twitter. Notice we’re back to Ikea again; apparently “sex traffickers” just can’t resist picking up cheap furniture and enjoying Swedish meatballs while shopping for their “sex slaves”. I wonder how many abductions it takes to make a furniture store a “hot spot”, and how many women have been abducted from the Covina Ikea in comparison with, say, the Cost Plus in San Dimas or the Ethan Allen in Pasadena?
