Like A Pack Of Wild Whores

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I posted some of this as a response to this post at Bound, not Gagged here’s the first few lines (of the original post, that is):

One thing I’ve noticed again and again is that when men make online comments in any way supporting sex workers (like on news articles or major blogs), they always hasten to add that they have never seen a sex worker and have no need of it. Obviously, they believe client-stereotypes (e.g. all clients are ugly losers) and feel a strange need to pretend they’re not clients.

I wonder why they even think the disclaimer is relevant — can’t they, as arguably intelligent people — support sex workers with or without vested interest?

but I started rambling and posted an extended version here:
 

Watch The Machine

Daly just died, many say they had no idea she promoted bigotry and hate. They say she’s done much good for “women” – they say at least she was not a “publicity hound”. She called herself a radical feminist and if you ask anyone in-the-know who are some other Radical Feminists they will tell you two names: MacKinnon and Dworkin.

MacKinnon is a lawyer and has a political science Ph.D .  She has no degree in “feminism” of any kind. MacKinnon is “not a liberal” and she is quite derisive of liberalism, and the “left” in general. She has argued for years against the right to privacy, asserting that it is a male-centric rape and abuse enabling “right” that hurts women.

You’re Welcome Alabama

Another video, I dunno what’s come over me, usually I don’t post a lot of vids.

This one seems to be mostly focused on taxation, like from those folks who don’t like to pay taxes, but it’s very detailed besides that.

A lot of it is about “common law” vs “maritime law” – corporate rights vs. person-hood rights – registration laws, contracts and claims of right – … It’s just very very interesting from an “International Trafficking-In-Persons” perspective. First off, there is the issue of people who have been ‘trafficked’ might be here of free will to work “under the table” to earn bank and send it home, also there are many “stateless” peoples around the world who have no protections under law and a part of the anti-trafficking stuff internationally is a push to have people be recognized by a state…

Interesting, though maybe a tad too much “conspiracy minded” for me, but well — I guess not too much, because I watched the whole thing. I don’t mind taxes though – that is I wouldn’t mind them if I was actually free and my money went to help people and wasn’t wasted on paying off shady CEOs and the salaries of paper pushers and committee members and funding NGO’s that push religion…

Anyway, it touches on how the system is set up so that we don’t ever actually truly understand the regulations and restrictions and laws – and beyond that how legal code is “only words” that can be manipulated and redefined to mean anything. — which is certainly very true, I think that how there are actually three forms of trafficking: sex, severe sex, and labor; and not just two: sex and labor is a good example of that, and it’s not like Linda Smith or Mark fucking Lagon or even Emma Thompson are taking the time and effort to set THAT record straight. Jerks.

And the other thing is they make it fuck-all hard to find that shit anyway – not federal stuff, the federal stuff is pretty easy to get a hold of, but state legislature and state code is a whole different animal. Earlier today I was compiling the links for the trafficking law page and I was on some fed.gov type site that had supposed links to state government – and it all went to the fluff.state.us type sites that tell you what museums are in Alabama or shit like that, It still took a bunch of digging around to turn up Alabama’s legal code, which is here, by the way. You’re welcome Alabama – you first-alphabetically lucky fuckers, you! (No, it’s not from 1975, it’s current, I guess 1975 was just a special year for Alabama for some reason).  Now, IF Alabama passes anti-trafficking legislation, I’ll know just where to go to read it. :/

Oh yeah, almost forgot here’s the video – apparently it’s chapter “3” and I saw a chapter “5” in the related vids list… I didn’t watch any of the other ones though, I’m too scared it’s gonna turn me into a tea-bagger.

Also, some truly porntastic music starts it off, there is some activist chick who’s a ringer for Kate Moss, and ceiling cat makes an appearance right near the end:

Short Answers

Ok, I got a thought-provoking comment the other day, well a couple of them actually, but this particular comment had some questions I’ve attempted to answer, here’s question 1:

How does one effect change in the organizations that perpetuate the problem that you are describing? (to paraphrase: the problem of conflating trafficking with prostitution and prostitution with being an inherent victim of rape-culture type systemic oppression)

Short answers are (yes omg, this IS the short version!) –

Anti-Sex-Trafficking Dude Calls Prostitutes “Nasty, Immoral” – Prostitute Not Shocked

It seems sort of important to me that dudes from the Bush administration are now in charge of the anti-sex trafficking movement, and pimping it hard. The Ambassador has a blog post on the Polaris Project Blog:

Reverse the Stigma
by Ambassador Mark P. Lagon

And calling women in general “hos” is reprehensible.

Sins Of Omission

Yeah. This report, released on December 2, is all about these detention centers for illegal immigrants, it goes into some detail about how many come in, how many go out, etc.

Seems like, and I’m not making any guarantees about my reading comprehension at this hour – but seems like, if you get swept up in an immigration raid, you can argue that you shouldn’t be deported because ________ . But you need a hearing, so they schedule it, then they can lock you up, or let you go on temporary probation type stuff with your promise to return for your hearing. The report says that something like 90% of the people come back without a problem for their hearing.

The report says that ICE prefers the more expensive option of putting people in detention centers, but more than that, ICE transfers these people about- willy nilly – away from lawyers and family members – they will send a person from Indiana to a facility in Texas, for example, for the hearing, and the person being detained has to contact a lawyer themselves- paying a hometown lawyer to fly in, or trying to find a lawyer in the new area when they have no contacts.

The result is that something like 60% of non-citizens end up without lawyers to represent them.

It says a bit about children who either are orphans, and how they try to place them in childfriendly settings but there aren’t enough of those places (thanks, conservatives, for voting against funding), or how women get more flipped out when you try to take their children away to a different facility.

Dr. Janice Crouse Bears False Witness – Will God Strike Her Dead?

Dr. Janice Crouse: Hateful Homophobe who, if her god is at all just, will burn in hell for being so hateful.

Over on Concerned Women for America I came across audio of Martha Kleder interviewing Dr. Janice Crouse about the Center for Sex and Culture’s  “Strategic Plan to Promote a Sexualized Culture” (audio pop up here   or download here  – note: made my browser lock up, fine once I closed the player) – The bolded bit is from me in order to point out the slanderous lies:

MK: “Dr. Crouse, it sounds almost ridiculous – a “strategic plan” for promoting I guess a positive view of sex – but there really is one [a strategic plan].”

DrC: “Well, it’s not very positive Martha. (laughs)  The Center for Sex and Culture is a San Francisco, California group - no surprise there, right – but their recent four year plan, a strategic plan has just come to light, and it’s alarming. Their goal is to change the way Americans think about sex and obviously it’s an effort to desensitize Americans so that aberrant sexual practices will be considered mainstream. It’s astounding because the document is a well thought out strategic plan, they want to acclimatize the public to everything from sadomasochism to consensual sexual practices that are far outside the mainstream. They want to change the way that Americans think about sex, so that there’s a wider range of acceptability in sexual practices and that people will not react negatively to homosexuality and to some of the non-mainstream sexualities that they would like to see promoted.”

MK: “Well obviously it’s a San Francisco group trying to eliminate the ‘ewww’ factor from the topic of homosexual sex, what are some of their strategies?”

Sexy Sex And Stuff! Giggle! Except It’s More About Structural Libertarianism Actually

You might already know that I am enraged by the whole “whores are damaged and stupid, but it’s not their fault they’re too stupid to even know” shtick, and today I happened upon a thread over at Tiger Beatdown which was actually one of those pop-culture-feminism-conversation things that I HATE – anyway here is the part that literally flipped my lid (for realz i spilled my pot cuz I was so upset!):

SADY: [...] i think the only people who think it is empowering are people who don’t get structure, and are kind of libertariany and weird.

AMANDA: yeah. “i do something, and i am a woman, so that thing is empowering for women” doesn’t really make sense

here is my comment, which might still be stuck in the moderation queue:

It doesn’t make sense because you are trapped in the twisted glorification of women’s sexuality. It’s about libertarianism, because it’s about freedom. Sexual freedom and reproductive freedom. All at once, together, forever.- (big surprise)

 
So, ok, sure there’s the anti-sex freedom stuff that bugs me – but the anti- libertarian stuff just makes me extra extra stabby. It has for months too, well for more than a year since before the election last year when all of a sudden there was all this anti libertarian hate everywhere. I’ve been a libertarian since – like forever – since jesus gotta think now… 1991? Since before I voted for Bill Clinton, I mean I was registered as a Libertarian when I voted for him, so whenever the fuck that was… – . Anyway, when all the libertarian hate started I endeavored to find out where it was coming from – and well I didn’t have to endeavor much because alla sudden BLAM here comes the far-right Randian whack-jobs – and ta-da yeah, not a surprise that everybody hates them. 

But ok, here we have two worthy feminists, 2 smart women who write great stuff, and I understand that this is a conversation I’m reading but to have the “libertariany and weird” thing thrown out there, and then have it followed by the “doesn’t really make sense” stuff …. I mean HAVE YOU TRIED TO FIGURE IT OUT? Cause it ain’t that hard, as my unneeded endeavoring shows. Libertarianism is a big big big ummmm spectrum of beliefs and nuances and all sorts of stuff… the ONLY thing that it holds true across the spectrum is that Libertarianism is NOT Authoritarianism. Full Stop.

As an example, here is my “political compass” (and take yours, I bet that you’re a libertariany weirdo somewhere near the Dalai Lama too!)

Well, That’s What You Get

Well, that’s what you get, I guess. Really, this “Stupak” uproar – you uproarers – that’s what you get. Yeah, I woke up feeling a tad bitter – so apologies right off the bat for expressing myself thusly, but; fuckin’ a, that’s what you get when you don’t fight for the rights of all women.

How can any feminist expect to be ‘given’ rights over her uterus if she doesn’t also demand rights over her vagina? We’ve given these people, these anti-choicers, so much when it comes to women’s sexual rights that it will be impossible to get reproductive rights.

Apparently I Lied

When I started this blog and said “it won’t have a constant stream of sex worker’s rights stuff”, apparently I lied. Sorry ’bout that.

To tell you the truth, I don’t even really think of it as sex-worker’s rights stuff, I think of it as general human rights stuff. It’s similar to when I would rail against the drug war; that wasn’t because I wanted to do drugs, it was because I’d seen so many people’s lives ruined by the attempted legislation of morality and I wanted it to stop. It wasn’t about the dope smokers and line snorters who got thrown in jail either, it was mostly about mandatory minimums being applied to drug offenses, which resulted in violent criminals being released, and the forfieture laws that violate the right to presumption of innocence and cost truly innocent people their homes, land and savings. I had been sentenced under mandatory minimum guidelines, and not too long after I’d been released a cop was shot and killed by a violent repeat offender named Robert “Mudman” Simon who’d been granted early parole:

In May 1995, Robert “Mudman” Simon, a motorcycle gang member, shot and killed a New Jersey police officer during a routine traffic stop. ⁴ Mudman had been paroled from a Pennsylvania prison only months before the attack. (source)

between 1970 and 1982, “Mudman” Simon was convicted nine times for crimes that included things such as murder; robbery, rape, weapons charges, receiving stolen property, larceny, issuing worthless checks, forgery, and many other things. [...]Even though he was at one time charged with murdering an inmate, on February 18, 1995, he was released from the State Correctional Institute at Graterford, and on May 6, 1995, just several months later, he shot a policeofficer on a routine traffic stop.  (source p264)

When the Mudman story broke I felt compelled to write my first-ever letter to the editor of my local paper. I ranted about the mandadory minimums on drug offenses that had sent prison population skyrocketing up to 130%~ capacity and resulted in violent offenders - who were not covered under mandatory minimum laws – being released far, far too soon and with horrific results. They printed it, I was happy, and I still have a copy of it stashed away somewhere on a shelf in a box of memories. 

Tom Ridge was the Governor of Pennsylvania at the time:   ”He was elected in 1993 on a campaign stressing fighting crime. He sought and won new anti-crime laws early on, though some were ruled unconstitutional. During his two terms, Ridge pursued a get-tough agenda using all the police-related branches of state government. He’s had little patience for critics, from death penalty opponents to civil libertarians.”  Of course, mandatory minimums are a federal sentencing guideline, so the governor had no power to override them, Ridge served as Pa.’s tough on crime governor right up until Bush appointed him director of Homeland Security - and we all know how well that worked out.

Now, when I read about the anti-trafficking organizations targeting the commercial sex industry I have the same worries; that a lot of truly innocent people are being put in far worse situations than they need to be. It seems so simple that decriminalization, or legalization and regulation of sex work is the only way to truly help the people who have been trafficked against their will. It’s the illicite nature of the sex industry as it is now that makes autonomous sex-workers as well as those who have been forced into servitude extremely vulnerable.