Welcome to Whore College
Welcome to Whore College
posted by Scarlot Harlot @ 7:31 PM
0 comments
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Thursday, July 28, 2005
If it isn't the feminists, it's...
Do you believe someone actually said to me "Your ass is fair game if you ...." and it was supposed to be an ally. How will we ever make peace amongst ourselves?
posted by Scarlot Harlot @ 12:54 PM
Monday, December 27, 2004
Recuperating...
Talk about a long story. I haven't blogged since late October. I just recuperated from the election. We lost.
The only suprise win I had was my San Francisco outskirts neighborhood (Richmond District) City Supervisor Jake McGoldrick. The money funded an over-the-top campaign against him. But he won, and recently held a reception for sex workers in his office.
I was quoted in the New York Times and LA Times last week. In the New York Times is a very supportive article about our movement and our 2nd Annual Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/18/national/18prostitutes.html?ex=1104296400&en=cd1954bab79f04bf&ei=5070&incamp=article_popular_5
The LA Times was about an internal disagreement among SF sex workers, which has been obsessing me lately.
http://www.latimes.com/classified/jobs/news/la-me-stripper19dec19,0,2816089.story?coll=la-class-employ-jobnews
The only suprise win I had was my San Francisco outskirts neighborhood (Richmond District) City Supervisor Jake McGoldrick. The money funded an over-the-top campaign against him. But he won, and recently held a reception for sex workers in his office.
I was quoted in the New York Times and LA Times last week. In the New York Times is a very supportive article about our movement and our 2nd Annual Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/18/national/18prostitutes.html?ex=1104296400&en=cd1954bab79f04bf&ei=5070&incamp=article_popular_5
The LA Times was about an internal disagreement among SF sex workers, which has been obsessing me lately.
http://www.latimes.com/classified/jobs/news/la-me-stripper19dec19,0,2816089.story?coll=la-class-employ-jobnews
posted by Scarlot Harlot @ 7:59 PM
0 comments
Sunday, October 24, 2004
I figured it out
I have been looking at their propaganda. I was at Robyn and Michael's helping put up signs and hangers, actually taping the paper signs to card board...we didn't have enough money to print cardboard signs...
The crux of their human rights argument is that "... the best way to help (street prostitutes) to get out of prostitution is law enforcement."
Prostitution damages society...the 'neighborhood' as a metaphor for society.
The 65% sucess rate they are bragging about is 12 out of 20 women gradutated from their program...which means they (may have) stayed straight for x number of days, went to groups and got along well in that context. But what happened to the other 8? They are tossed into the streets! There's from zero to not enough dollars in disability funding for them. Didn't this state make drug users ineligible? What about former drug users?
I am mad when I see their misleading literature. I am almost comforted to see the blatant marriage of fundie feminism with...uh, another type of fundie feminism...who are the big donors, moviers and shakers behind the anti-pros? Wealthy feminist donors..I know one! I even got a dribble down effect bit of funding from her...not much.
I am waiting for Law and Order...not the social dynamics, but the TV Show. I like to watch them again and again.
The crux of their human rights argument is that "... the best way to help (street prostitutes) to get out of prostitution is law enforcement."
Prostitution damages society...the 'neighborhood' as a metaphor for society.
The 65% sucess rate they are bragging about is 12 out of 20 women gradutated from their program...which means they (may have) stayed straight for x number of days, went to groups and got along well in that context. But what happened to the other 8? They are tossed into the streets! There's from zero to not enough dollars in disability funding for them. Didn't this state make drug users ineligible? What about former drug users?
I am mad when I see their misleading literature. I am almost comforted to see the blatant marriage of fundie feminism with...uh, another type of fundie feminism...who are the big donors, moviers and shakers behind the anti-pros? Wealthy feminist donors..I know one! I even got a dribble down effect bit of funding from her...not much.
I am waiting for Law and Order...not the social dynamics, but the TV Show. I like to watch them again and again.
posted by Scarlot Harlot @ 7:35 PM
0 comments
Friday, October 22, 2004
It never ends...
So I was painting my studio today along with Carol Queen from the Center for Sex and Culture...and I talked to Robyn who let me know there was a hit piece in the local Daily Planet about our initiative...No surprise. It's at http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=10-22-04&storyID=19935
So I was pondering and I soothed myself remembering that what Robyn says at the end is right. We win just by bringing it out in the open. Our society rarely discusses or thinks about prostitution...so the fear mongering stands unchallenged, ofcourse, in our sex phobic culture. Smart progressives might even buy into the argument below that "... the best way to help (street prostitutes) to get out of prostitution is law enforcement."
Ofcourse some progressive types and liberals might question that notion...I think...I expect...this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy–don't nice, open-minded people question the ability of the police to protect prostitutes and arrest them at the same time?
To me it's a no-brainer...I haven't even managed to properly articulate my objection to this goofy assumption. I will. So, as society discusses the issues of prostitution more, people will think these issues through. Some will still believe prostitution control is best in the hands of the police, but those who challenge that formula will develop a familiar rhetoric, as as the argument becomes more sophisticated, trashy commentaries like the one below will take places in the anals of yellow journalism. It has to work out that way, right?
Measure Q Hurts Women, Neighborhoods: By ZELDA BRONSTEIN
(Who is this Zelda? I googled her name and sex to see if she generally has a gripe against sex workers. She does...More analysis and a url later) )
COMMENTARY (10-22-04)
If Measure Q passes, the Berkeley Police will be told to make the enforcement of existing laws against prostitution their lowest priority. Supporters say that this will help women.
In fact, Measure Q is likelier to hurt the women its supporters want to help.
(SH: Basically, Zelda is just repeatinng the fear mongering anti-sw rights rhetoric of the anti-measure Q campaign...rhetoric only, masquerading as information.)
That’s one reason it should be defeated. The other reason is that it will certainly harm our neighborhoods.
First, the women’s issue. The prostitutes who would be affected by Measure Q are the ones likeliest to get arrested, which is to say, the ones who work the street. In Berkeley, that means the prostitutes who frequent San Pablo Avenue and nearby neighborhoods. Often young (the average age is 14)
(SH: Well those studies are skewed, surveying teenagers and young women. In fact she even got the skewed stats wrong. The skewed stats say the average age of entry is 14, not the average age of prostitutes. Is she so rabid that she can't see through her own fog?)
and poor, these women became streetwalkers in the first place because they were fleeing an abusive family or, in an economy with shrinking opportunities for the disadvantaged, they were desperate for paying work. As prostitutes, many of them are trapped by drug addiction, isolation and low self-esteem into emotionally and physically abusive relationships with their pimps.
(SH: The survey by the court mandated rescue group is that 60% of the street pros in Berkeley don't have pimps...not to mention the huge off street sex industry in Berkeley, of which I was a part for at least 10 years.)
The best way to help street prostitutes is to help them get out of prostitution, and the best way to help them to get out of prostitution is law enforcement.
(SH: This drives me crazy.)
The City of Berkeley has a successful court diversion program, in which a judge offers street prostitutes who’ve been arrested for solicitation the options of going to jail or getting professional help through Options Recovery Services. This city-funded program helps women mend their lives, reunite with their families, and find meaningful work that will set them on the road to self-respect and independence. Options Recovery Services has had 65 percent success rate in getting people off the street and off drugs.
(SH: Duh? 65% of what, and what is success? I think they base this on about 10 people who have been through their program...If this 65% were true there would be no prostitution here. But Options recovery pointed to some local pros who had various (like 27) years in the business. I don't get it, but someone should call this group and get the info.)
The second reason to vote against Measure Q is that it turns a blind eye to street prostitution’s degradation of community and neighborhood life. After CNN and other TV stations reported that Measure Q had qualified for the city ballot, street prostitution increased in south and west Berkeley. We’re talking about sexual acts taking place in cars, on porches, in driveways. There are two schools in the area, the East Bay French American School and the Infant School for the Deaf. Children walking to and from school or just playing in front of their houses see prostitutes and their clients openly going about their business. They find condoms and dirty needles on the sidewalk.
(SH: The clients are the ones with the condoms on their dicks. They just toss them. Something should be done about that!)
But it’s not just kids who are being put at risk.
(SH: Since the pros don't have anywhere else to work, they work in deserted areas, schools at night. Duh again. If there were other options, they would take them.)
A man who lives near San Pablo told me a chilling story.
(SH: Anecdotal fear mongering...that always goes over big.)
He had walked toward a car parked on his block that had been used by a pimp to transport prostitutes. After memorizing the license plate, he had turned around and started to walk home when he heard a car door slam and a menacing voice behind him say, “You looking for something?” It was the pimp, who, having realized he was being watched, had gotten out of his car to defend what he had come to regard as his turf. The neighbor kept on walking. He got home, safe but shaken.
The group that put Measure Q on the ballot, Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), never consulted beforehand with Berkeley residents or their elected representatives. Perhaps that’s because SWOP sees its campaign in our town as merely a steppingstone toward its ultimate goal: the decriminalization of prostitution, which is illegal under California State law.
At the July meeting of the Berkeley Commission on the Status of Women, SWOP spokesperson Robyn Few said that regardless of how Measure Q did on Nov. 2, the initiative had already succeeded, because she had been contacted by CNN and Reuters. “We have won,” said Few, “because all over the United States they’re talking about prostitution in Berkeley.” Repeatedly queried by members of the commission about harm protection programs for prostitutes, Few said again and again that she didn’t “have the details.”
(SH: There are many aspects to the issue and Robyn has much info, but to point fingers for not having statistics around benefits of a harm reduction approach is absurd. Wake up and smell the alternatives to imprisonment for poor women, Zelda!)
In fact, there no such details in Measure Q. Measure Q neither founds nor funds any programs that would help women get out of prostitution. Instead, it asks Berkeleyans to avert their eyes from the exploitation and intimidation of women that’s occurring daily in their neighborhoods. And it says nothing at all about protecting the women and children and, for that matter, the men, who already live and frequent those neighborhoods from the violence—physical and emotional—that sustains prostitution.
(SH: I think, (if I recall...will look that up) we were told that we were not allowed to put financial requirements in this initiative. This is obviously a first step, not a complete solution. Ofcourse we support programs for alternatives and funding for such programs.)
Berkeley is a proudly humane city. That’s why we’ve been targeted by Measure Q’s supporters. We should reject their simplistic, publicity-seeking initiative
(SH: Yes, publicity is a good thing, because if we publicly debate prostitution issues, the discourse will evolve beyond Zeld'a fear-mongering. People know so little about this issue that they will believe the hype, but with more discourse, some may notice that the anti-prostitution discourse has the same tenor and tactics of homophobic discourse and right wing fundamentalism.
and instead work to strengthen and expand the programs we have in place—programs that reach out to prostitutes and offer them real, practical opportunities to better their lives.
(SH: Right, more money to force us into programs that really only work for the smallest percentage in the long run (IMHO) )
For the sake of women and children and our neighborhoods, vote No on Measure Q.
(SH: Save the women and children! The Titanic is sinking!)
So I was pondering and I soothed myself remembering that what Robyn says at the end is right. We win just by bringing it out in the open. Our society rarely discusses or thinks about prostitution...so the fear mongering stands unchallenged, ofcourse, in our sex phobic culture. Smart progressives might even buy into the argument below that "... the best way to help (street prostitutes) to get out of prostitution is law enforcement."
Ofcourse some progressive types and liberals might question that notion...I think...I expect...this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy–don't nice, open-minded people question the ability of the police to protect prostitutes and arrest them at the same time?
To me it's a no-brainer...I haven't even managed to properly articulate my objection to this goofy assumption. I will. So, as society discusses the issues of prostitution more, people will think these issues through. Some will still believe prostitution control is best in the hands of the police, but those who challenge that formula will develop a familiar rhetoric, as as the argument becomes more sophisticated, trashy commentaries like the one below will take places in the anals of yellow journalism. It has to work out that way, right?
Measure Q Hurts Women, Neighborhoods: By ZELDA BRONSTEIN
(Who is this Zelda? I googled her name and sex to see if she generally has a gripe against sex workers. She does...More analysis and a url later) )
COMMENTARY (10-22-04)
If Measure Q passes, the Berkeley Police will be told to make the enforcement of existing laws against prostitution their lowest priority. Supporters say that this will help women.
In fact, Measure Q is likelier to hurt the women its supporters want to help.
(SH: Basically, Zelda is just repeatinng the fear mongering anti-sw rights rhetoric of the anti-measure Q campaign...rhetoric only, masquerading as information.)
That’s one reason it should be defeated. The other reason is that it will certainly harm our neighborhoods.
First, the women’s issue. The prostitutes who would be affected by Measure Q are the ones likeliest to get arrested, which is to say, the ones who work the street. In Berkeley, that means the prostitutes who frequent San Pablo Avenue and nearby neighborhoods. Often young (the average age is 14)
(SH: Well those studies are skewed, surveying teenagers and young women. In fact she even got the skewed stats wrong. The skewed stats say the average age of entry is 14, not the average age of prostitutes. Is she so rabid that she can't see through her own fog?)
and poor, these women became streetwalkers in the first place because they were fleeing an abusive family or, in an economy with shrinking opportunities for the disadvantaged, they were desperate for paying work. As prostitutes, many of them are trapped by drug addiction, isolation and low self-esteem into emotionally and physically abusive relationships with their pimps.
(SH: The survey by the court mandated rescue group is that 60% of the street pros in Berkeley don't have pimps...not to mention the huge off street sex industry in Berkeley, of which I was a part for at least 10 years.)
The best way to help street prostitutes is to help them get out of prostitution, and the best way to help them to get out of prostitution is law enforcement.
(SH: This drives me crazy.)
The City of Berkeley has a successful court diversion program, in which a judge offers street prostitutes who’ve been arrested for solicitation the options of going to jail or getting professional help through Options Recovery Services. This city-funded program helps women mend their lives, reunite with their families, and find meaningful work that will set them on the road to self-respect and independence. Options Recovery Services has had 65 percent success rate in getting people off the street and off drugs.
(SH: Duh? 65% of what, and what is success? I think they base this on about 10 people who have been through their program...If this 65% were true there would be no prostitution here. But Options recovery pointed to some local pros who had various (like 27) years in the business. I don't get it, but someone should call this group and get the info.)
The second reason to vote against Measure Q is that it turns a blind eye to street prostitution’s degradation of community and neighborhood life. After CNN and other TV stations reported that Measure Q had qualified for the city ballot, street prostitution increased in south and west Berkeley. We’re talking about sexual acts taking place in cars, on porches, in driveways. There are two schools in the area, the East Bay French American School and the Infant School for the Deaf. Children walking to and from school or just playing in front of their houses see prostitutes and their clients openly going about their business. They find condoms and dirty needles on the sidewalk.
(SH: The clients are the ones with the condoms on their dicks. They just toss them. Something should be done about that!)
But it’s not just kids who are being put at risk.
(SH: Since the pros don't have anywhere else to work, they work in deserted areas, schools at night. Duh again. If there were other options, they would take them.)
A man who lives near San Pablo told me a chilling story.
(SH: Anecdotal fear mongering...that always goes over big.)
He had walked toward a car parked on his block that had been used by a pimp to transport prostitutes. After memorizing the license plate, he had turned around and started to walk home when he heard a car door slam and a menacing voice behind him say, “You looking for something?” It was the pimp, who, having realized he was being watched, had gotten out of his car to defend what he had come to regard as his turf. The neighbor kept on walking. He got home, safe but shaken.
The group that put Measure Q on the ballot, Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), never consulted beforehand with Berkeley residents or their elected representatives. Perhaps that’s because SWOP sees its campaign in our town as merely a steppingstone toward its ultimate goal: the decriminalization of prostitution, which is illegal under California State law.
At the July meeting of the Berkeley Commission on the Status of Women, SWOP spokesperson Robyn Few said that regardless of how Measure Q did on Nov. 2, the initiative had already succeeded, because she had been contacted by CNN and Reuters. “We have won,” said Few, “because all over the United States they’re talking about prostitution in Berkeley.” Repeatedly queried by members of the commission about harm protection programs for prostitutes, Few said again and again that she didn’t “have the details.”
(SH: There are many aspects to the issue and Robyn has much info, but to point fingers for not having statistics around benefits of a harm reduction approach is absurd. Wake up and smell the alternatives to imprisonment for poor women, Zelda!)
In fact, there no such details in Measure Q. Measure Q neither founds nor funds any programs that would help women get out of prostitution. Instead, it asks Berkeleyans to avert their eyes from the exploitation and intimidation of women that’s occurring daily in their neighborhoods. And it says nothing at all about protecting the women and children and, for that matter, the men, who already live and frequent those neighborhoods from the violence—physical and emotional—that sustains prostitution.
(SH: I think, (if I recall...will look that up) we were told that we were not allowed to put financial requirements in this initiative. This is obviously a first step, not a complete solution. Ofcourse we support programs for alternatives and funding for such programs.)
Berkeley is a proudly humane city. That’s why we’ve been targeted by Measure Q’s supporters. We should reject their simplistic, publicity-seeking initiative
(SH: Yes, publicity is a good thing, because if we publicly debate prostitution issues, the discourse will evolve beyond Zeld'a fear-mongering. People know so little about this issue that they will believe the hype, but with more discourse, some may notice that the anti-prostitution discourse has the same tenor and tactics of homophobic discourse and right wing fundamentalism.
and instead work to strengthen and expand the programs we have in place—programs that reach out to prostitutes and offer them real, practical opportunities to better their lives.
(SH: Right, more money to force us into programs that really only work for the smallest percentage in the long run (IMHO) )
For the sake of women and children and our neighborhoods, vote No on Measure Q.
(SH: Save the women and children! The Titanic is sinking!)
posted by Scarlot Harlot @ 9:00 PM
0 comments
This is a long story but...
When I was at the Prostitution Conference in Toledo, (http://www.hhs.utoledo.edu/socialwork/ProstitutionConference.html) one of my gorgeous-nice-brainy hooker friends told me that she knew that Donna Hughes was there. Donna Hughes is a famous anti-prostitution academic. She's sort of feminist and even sort of Christian right wing...so I hear, I haven't researched all this. Anyway, my friend saw Hughes' luggage tag by accident somewhere else in Toledo, actually - so she knew what Hughes looked like. But I was told that Donna Hughes didn't wear her name tag during the conference! This might not seem like a big deal to anyone reading this, but, then it seems that this Rhode Island Professor was not wearing a name tag during the conference. This is apparenlty a violation of her responsibitity as an academic...
During my Norma Jean's (Book: Cop To Call Girl) presentation someone said Hughes was taking ferverish notes! During Robyns presentation, apparently, she was also feverishly scribbling. Then she wrote this thing in the National review which is posted next to a cmpaign ad for Bush! Very very right wing...
(http://www.nationalreview.com/hughes/hughes200410200838.asp)
Don't you think the mainstream feminists would notice that the right wing is all lined up against the pros rights people using the exact same rhetoric? Don't you think it would make some supposedly progressive feminists question this alliance...I have a nice little article about the right wing-feminist comradierie,too...(http://www.alternet.org/rights/15947/)
Anyway, back to Donna Hughes possible lapse in morality:
I was telling this to my Ph.D candidate friend and she remarked that academics aren't supposed to do that, like she is actually doing something wrong by hiding her identity and then writing the trashy article about our excellent and well intentioned legislation. See http://www.swop-usa.org for more about the great Measure Q in Berkeley to decrminalize prostitution. Basically, you need to follow the links to understand at all what is going on here.
It's very complicated. How could this happen? Would Donna Hughes commit such a blatant faux paus of academic morality!?
During my Norma Jean's (Book: Cop To Call Girl) presentation someone said Hughes was taking ferverish notes! During Robyns presentation, apparently, she was also feverishly scribbling. Then she wrote this thing in the National review which is posted next to a cmpaign ad for Bush! Very very right wing...
(http://www.nationalreview.com/hughes/hughes200410200838.asp)
Don't you think the mainstream feminists would notice that the right wing is all lined up against the pros rights people using the exact same rhetoric? Don't you think it would make some supposedly progressive feminists question this alliance...I have a nice little article about the right wing-feminist comradierie,too...(http://www.alternet.org/rights/15947/)
Anyway, back to Donna Hughes possible lapse in morality:
I was telling this to my Ph.D candidate friend and she remarked that academics aren't supposed to do that, like she is actually doing something wrong by hiding her identity and then writing the trashy article about our excellent and well intentioned legislation. See http://www.swop-usa.org for more about the great Measure Q in Berkeley to decrminalize prostitution. Basically, you need to follow the links to understand at all what is going on here.
It's very complicated. How could this happen? Would Donna Hughes commit such a blatant faux paus of academic morality!?
posted by Scarlot Harlot @ 3:55 PM
0 comments
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Scarlot's first post
Wow! I am so excited about blogging. I always think of little stories, mostly about my nasty battles with repressive feminists (I am the other kind of feminist). I am mostly fuming mad all day. Maybe this will be a kind of therapy?!
Tonight I am going to Dee Dee Russell's http://www.deedeetv.com surprise party for Matt, her boyfriend. He sells blinkies, things that flash, buttons and all.http://www.wear-flashing-jewelry.com/
I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow to spill the beans.
Love and condoms,
Scarlot Harlot
Tonight I am going to Dee Dee Russell's http://www.deedeetv.com surprise party for Matt, her boyfriend. He sells blinkies, things that flash, buttons and all.http://www.wear-flashing-jewelry.com/
I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow to spill the beans.
Love and condoms,
Scarlot Harlot
posted by Scarlot Harlot @ 6:55 PM
0 comments
