Archive
Allowable Enterprises
There’s a piece about trafficking & backpage on Salon containing the quote:
“While the aim of FAIR Girls to rescue victims and stop the sex trafficking of young women is laudable, the devotion of significant resources to an ad campaign dedicated to a non-solution is unfortunate.”
To which this comment was posted in response:
“…non-solution…” I don’t agree that it’s a non-solution. It’s just one that Village Voice Media doesn’t want to make. If you knew that your enterprise allowed for children to be prostituted over and over again, you might want to consider going as far as shutting it down.
To which I say:
Criminalizing and stigmatizing prostitution IS the “enterprise” which allows for “children to be prostituted over and over again”, so perhaps we had best shut that down.
♥
Choice Cut
From Emi Koyama :
At that point, an audience member who is a representative from the U.S. Attorney’s Office was invited to make a statement, which she was completely unprepared for.
…
But it is then she slipped the information that confirmed what many activists knew was the case but most government experts were smart enough to conceal: that the U.S. Attorney’s Office views domestic minor sex trafficking as “primarily gang-related,” and has moved the issue to its “gang unit”; transnational human trafficking on the other hand was moved to the civil rights unit.
The admission that the U.S. Attorney’s Office views domestic minor sex trafficking as a “gang-related” problem is significant. While right-wing anti-trafficking groups such as Shared Hope International has always insinuated racial overtones to the issue (e.g. urban Black men kidnapping suburban white schoolgirls), government officials tended to be more careful in how they communicate the issue. With the admission, however, it should now be a public knowledge that human trafficking is becoming yet another way for young men of color to be criminalized and imprisoned, while leaving behind many economic and social circumstances that lead many youth to engage in the sex trade.
Reproductive Rights & Sexual Rights Fit Together Like A Vagina And A Uterus
cspan clip without the fit:
Presbyterians ♥ Whores
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In the beginning:
God of compassion: your Son Jesus showed mercy to a woman condemned by harsh judgment, and gave her life. We pray for prostitutes, who are victims of lovelessness, or of a craving to be loved. Keep us from easy blame or cruel dismissal. May our church seek them out, and show such genuine friendship and true grace that they may know your welcome, and live among us, as sisters of Jesus Christ our Lord.
God? Could you maybe deliver them to understanding and acceptance instead? Because otherwise I will be easily blaming and crueling dismissing these people just as they do to others
And a little later:
With the advent of a new millennium and this report, the writing team thought it was important to begin asking questions about certain male behaviors: Why do men rape? Why do men frequent prostituted women? Why do men beat their wives and lovers? Why do men incest their daughters and granddaughters? Why do men urinate in public? There is one answer to all of these questions: Because they can. Even though all of these behaviors have been deemed criminal by our society, they are epidemic.
Of course! Because they can. And everyday that the fine upstanding Presbyterians manage to resist raping, incesting, beating, and urinating in public is a day that they get to feel superior to all those other less godly men who can’t manage to control themselves. Just in case you were wondering why other men support these bullshit lies – it’s so they can feel like paragons of self control for not raping women all the time like those unsaved non-christians do. It’s only the power of GOD that stops them from raping every woman they see. Let’s hope presby dudes don’t lose their faith, or it’ll be rape madness all over.
And what’s with the study from half a century ago?
Then further on:
Invite your friends to join you in taking the Prostitution Test (Appendix A). Find out what you already know and what you need to learn about prostitution and prostituted women.
Remember it takes two to “turn a trick.” Don’t blame the victim. Engage in conversation about the role of men in prostitution and sexual exploitation, not only as pimps, but also as clientele. Why do men frequent prostitutes? Why do men rape? Why do men commit incest? Why do men batter their wives and lovers? Why do men urinate in public? It is a form of exhibitionism.
You already asked me those questions, you penis obsessed pervert. And I already took your offensive test, fuckwit. And thanks for telling me to “know what I believe”, but I really don’t need a list from church to tell me that. Only moral inferiors need lists to tell them what to believe.
Know What You Believe
Establish for yourself and your congregation a list of your core beliefs about prostitution and sexual exploitation. The following list is from “Pornography: Far from the Song of Songs,” but there are others you can add:
• God is the source of human dignity;
• There is equal dignity of women and men as being created in the image of God;
• Human beings were created with the possibility for the ultimate acts of celebration and joy in sexuality;
• God calls human beings to positive expressions of mutual affirmation and commitment, especially as typified in the calling to faithful, respectful marital and family relationships;
• The historic pattern of dominance and subjugation in human relationships is a distortion of God’s intended creation;
• God’s gift of sexual pleasure is fulfilled in acts of human love and mutual respect;
• God demands sexual responsibility, balancing love for the self and love for the other;
• God calls us to promote the dignity of all persons and to confront the circumstances in society that negate the integrity of human life;
• Christians are called to model the covenantal, compassionate community;
• The love of Jesus Christ is the Good News, (and brings) empowerment to a world filled with conflict, alienation, and fear.
Would it be impolite, or improper of me to ask people if they are pushing a religious agenda when they talk about “dignity” and use those other buzz words we hear all the time? Because it seems like maybe it’s sort of impolite for these moralist shitfucks to go around trying to turn us all into sisters of Jesus, especially since they are doing it for the glory of a god I don’t believe in at all. I’d really like to start calling them out on what I know is their real agenda.
Can I try to force them to smoke weed and sleep around, and conform to my personal faith? No, probably not…
I’m getting pretty goddamned sick of this murderous religious persecution that is being committed against sex workers with decency laws trussed up as anti-trafficking efforts.
And I’m getting pretty goddamned sick of the psychological warfare being waged on sexually liberated women of all feminist persuations by rape prevention scare campaigns that have convinced a generation of young women that they are LUCKY to find a man who isn’t a rapist.
I Like This Lady
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This is a couple of minutes cut out of the Day 2 link on this page If you’re so inclined, this particular discussion starts @ 155:18. – yep that’s 155 minutes in. It was frustrating to listen to, especially when another woman said that it sounded like she was, in a way, re-objectifying or re-victimizing the trafficked women. Argh.
I See Where She Gets It
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Answers so many questions… too many even; the old man really got around. Oral history of Hon. George E. MacKinnon:
MACKINNON: This girl’s name was Mary Kay Johnson and her pimp was Bobby Banner. To give you a good idea of what a white slave case is, she was the most popular girl in North High School and one of the most beautiful. Graduation night, along with several other people in a crowd, they went to a Black and Tan place and were dancing.
Q: What’s black and tan?
MACKINNON: That’s a colored place. That’s what they used to call it in those days. While she’s there dancing, on the sidelines, here’s this Bobby Banner, a nice tall, slender, slick-haired moderately colored individual, trying to cut in, and Mary’s date wouldn’t let him.
They left the party about 1:00 or 2:00. When she got home, she found that Banner had picked up her name from someone in her crowd and about 2:30 a.m. she received a telephone call from Banner to go out with her. She turned him down cold, and she turned him down for three solid weeks. He called her every day, not once but many times.
Finally, she agreed to a date and in two weeks time, he had her on the train for Fort Dodge, Iowa to work as a prostitute for him in a house of prostitution. That’s the way the white slave traffic worked.
Oral History Project
The Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit
Celebrate Human Trafficking (awareness) Month! (in san francisco?)
Yesterday was “Human Trafficking Awareness DAY” – and I was totally unawares. I’m calling it political protest – take that! you awareness pushing theocrats! I will be unaware! Just try and stop me, you fuckers!
Starting The New Year With Understanding
I talk about trafficking a lot here, and I thought it would be a good idea to review exactly what “trafficking” is. Usually, trafficking is considered to be 2 seperate things: sex or labor trafficking, but there are actually 3 different types of trafficking covered under 2 separate headings:
Regular old “Sex Trafficking”
and:
“Severe Trafficking” which includes:
a) severe sex trafficking; and
b) labor trafficking
The actual definitions are explained on page 1529 of this pdf of TITLE 22 (TITLE 22 is unironically the legal code for: ”FOREIGN RELATIONS AND INTERCOURSE” yeah- intercourse!); here is the part about Labor Trafficking, which is covered under part (B) of the severe trafficking definition:
(8) Severe forms of trafficking in persons
The term “severe forms of trafficking in persons” means—
(A) (snip – covered below)
(B) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
Even without all the specific terms crowding it up, the definition of “labor trafficking” is pretty clear. Sex trafficking though is broken up into 2 different types of trafficking, regular sex trafficking and severe sex trafficking. Here are the definitions:
(9) Sex trafficking
The term “sex trafficking” means the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act.
(8) Severe forms of trafficking in persons
The term “severe forms of trafficking in persons” means—
(A) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; or
(B) (snip – covered above)
You probably already notice that there is a crucial difference between these two definitions of sex trafficking. Only “severe” sex trafficking requires the trafficked person to have been forced or defrauded or coerced in some way. The non-severe sex trafficking, or just plain “Sex Trafficking” – requires no force or trickery or pressure of any kind, all it requires is that there be a “commercial sex act” involved. Recruitment, Harboring, Transportation, Provision, Obtaining – none of those words convey force or fraud in any way. Perhaps “recruitment” could have a shade of “coercion” in it, but if they meant it to cover “coercion” they would have worded it that way.
The term “commercial sex act” also has a definition provided in US Code:
Commercial sex act
The term “commercial sex act” means – any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.
That is the entire definition, there is no clarification of what is considered to be of “value” at all. What is of “value” is left up to the police, task forces, and prosecutors to decide. Do you trust your local police that much? Your local prosecutors? Your local lawmakers? I sure as hell don’t.
Re-Defining Satire
This is just fucked up. It’s a bit of Christmas “satire” from Amanda Kloer of change.org‘s human trafficking section about Santa’s slaves, otherwise known as “Elves”. I have a great sense of humor, and because my sense of humor is so great, I am able to recognize that this shit ain’t funny. Now, I make sex trafficking jokes all the time, like when my buddy said they found an asteroid allegedly from mars and I asked if it was sex trafficked here – but you see that’s how SATIRE works… here’s some wiki definitionism:
Shameful
Does anyone EVER read this stuff?
Jesus Fuck. Does anyone EVER read this stuff? Do they even read the articles about the reports? I can’t believe this crap.
This report about The Commercial Sexual Exploitation Of American Indian Women And Girls In Minnesota that everyone is Oh My!ing and Isn’t It Sad!ing about is seriously vile.
Christmas Is Special Because Of Jesus!!
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. LagonAnd calling women in general “hos” is reprehensible. Read more…
Shady Bullshit
I’m livid. That’s almost my highest anger level, by the way. It’s pretty rare. Surpassed only by “absolutely livid”.
This is how they do it. I’m not good at explaining these things, I can write from my heart with no problem, but when it comes to presenting information, I can’t focus long enough to finish it. I have pages and pages and pages of almost finished diatribes and screeds, all jumbled up. It’s my ADD, there’s no doubt about that. So please bear with me – short version – The F Word published a review of a book about HIV/Aids in marginalized groups: sex workers, transgender, drug users, the review was written by a contributer from WeNews and it’s worse than it sounds – I’ll explain in a second. And, Womens eNews didn’t publish a sex worker supportive article in the prostitution section, and it’s worse than it sounds – I’ll explain in a second.
This Guy Sees It Too
Spiked editor Brendan O’Neill sees the problem. I dunno who he, or this questionable sounding “spiked” are, probably a bunch of commies or hippies or something, but this article kicks ass. He saw it before I did. I did all the bolding on this one.
But What About The Gay Men?
Feminist Philosophers has a pdf linked on their site – it’s from a few months ago – and it’s full of women’s mug-shots and jesus.What the fuck is that shit about? It’s so blatant.
When are they going to start publishing photos of rape victims so they can let everyone know about the dangers women face ‘at the hands of men’, it in no way would be to shame them. Just like it’s totally not about shaming prostitutes, it’s just about letting the world know about the ‘dangers’. And shush, those dangers aren’t lack of mental health or other social services, there’s plenty of help available from God.
On page 11 of the .pdf there is a list of the charities ‘providing services’ to those “prostituted persons”. They are:
Books From My Youth
Female Sexual Slavery, by Kathleen Barry, originally published in 1979.
I read this book when I was 12. The title was too hard to resist, I was afraid the cashier wouldn’t sell it to me, so I stole it.
The only 2 reviews on Amazon: (wheeeee! look, I learned that tables copy right over in visual mode – I’s so smart~)
Transgender Day of Remembrance
Today marks the 11th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, and it’s not just a day where we are supposed to remember-to-remember that transgender people exist, but a day to remember all the transgender people who have been killed out of ignorance, bigotry and hatred.
Andrea Dworkin on BookTV – from 2002
The video isn’t embeddable you can watch it here (update: maybe you can watch it, the page is giving me trouble now, says it has errors) It’s 51:24 in duration, including introduction and question and answer portion. I’ve transcribed only Ms. Dworkin’s prepared speech, beginning at 3:30, below, and my thoughts on what she said follow:
Women and Children Especially pt.2
(In part 1 I looked at Polaris Project CEO Mark Lagon’s career history) Here I am talking about a recent post by Lagon on the Polaris Project blog that shows how he shamelessly panders to feminists:
