Category Archives: Sexuality and the State

This Democratic Presidential Candidate Wants To Decriminalize Sex Work Reply

by • Law/Justice, Police State/Civil Liberties, Sexuality and the State • Tags:

Tulsi Gabbard is turning out to be the most anti-statist of any of the presidential candidates (a very low standard to say the least). She has also introduced legislation to end federal marijuana prohibition as well. For many years, I have argued that the central focus of anarchists, libertarians, and anti-statists should be opposing US imperialism in the international realm, and opposing the so-called “criminal justice system” (police state), prison-industrial complex, over criminalization, war on drugs, “consensual crime” laws,” surveillance state, anti-terrorism laws, etc. as opposed to the Left’s focus on identity politics, environmentalism, and expanding the welfare state, and mainstream libertarianism’s focus on opposing the welfare state. We should also be striving to take the anti-gun control issue away from the patriotic, cop-loving, military-worshipping reactionary right, and frame gun control as means of oppressing the poor and minorities (which it clearl is).

By Dominic Holden

Buzzfeed

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, the Democratic presidential contender from Hawaii, told BuzzFeed News unequivocally she wants to decriminalize sex work, asserting a clear position on an enormous underground industry that’s largely ignored by American politicians.

“If a consenting adult wants to engage in sex work, that is their right, and it should not be a crime,” Gabbard said. “All people should have autonomy over their bodies and their labor.“

Most candidates in the 2020 race have skirted the issue, including President Donald Trump, but questions about sex work are beginning to chase the Democratic presidential pack.

Gabbard’s embrace of the issue comes just days after Sen. Bernie Sanders was asked for his position and didn’t have one. “That’s a good question, and I don’t have an answer for that,” he told The Breakfast Club.

When asked in late February if she supports decriminalization, Sen. Kamala Harris, who opposed a sex work decriminalization measure in 2008, told the Root, “I think so. I do.”

The White House didn’t answer questions from BuzzFeed News last year about whether Trump thought sex work or paying for sex should be legal. Nor would officials say if the president supported the Justice Department busting a website accused of posting sex work ads.

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‘No Allegations of Human Trafficking’ and ‘Women Could’ve Walked Out’ In Florida Massage-Parlor Prostitution Stings 2

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Law/Justice, Police State/Civil Liberties, Sexuality and the State • Tags: ,

Sex trafficking hysteria is the new “War on Drugs.” Like the war on drugs, virtually every category of do-gooder is getting duped once again.

By Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Reason

It’s been nearly a week since Florida police started bragging about their big “human trafficking” bust, an operation that pulled in professional football owner Robert Kraft, more than 150 other men, and several Chinese immigrant women associated with Asian spas in Palm Beach County. Police say the spas were fronts for prostitution, that the workers there were victims of sex trafficking, and that their six-month long investigation was time well spent.

Six months is a long time, however, and it’s hard to reconcile the cops’ timeline with their heroic rhetoric. If the women employed at these businesses were really the victims of “modern slavery,” why did police take six months to get them out of that situation? Why did it require repeat intimate undercover visits and building misdemeanor prostitution charges against all sorts of random men before these “heroes” decided to intervene?

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Feminism Against Chauvinistic Feminism 19

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Men and Women, Sexuality and the State • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

I’ve long considered myself to be a feminist, even before I realized I was trans. It’s always seemed like basic common sense to me that people shouldn’t be defined by the contents of their genitalia but by the quality of their character. Regardless of where you stand on rape culture or abortion or Hillary goddamn Clinton, that’s really what it all comes down to. That and realizing the basic fact that our society treats women and anyone perceived as feminine like second class citizens at best. If you ask most people, left, right, or center, on these basic realities of American life, they’ll generally (if begrudgingly) agree with you. Then why is feminism still such a controversial subject? Try casually mentioning it on almost any given message board and count the seconds before a dozen trolls threaten to rape and gut you and leave you for dead by the highway. Seriously, fucking try it. I have. The very word feminism seems to bring the worst out of people online.

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Has the Government Declared War on Trans People? 4

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Sexuality and the State, Uncategorized

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

Has the government declared war on trans people? That’s the million dollar question and its one I still don’t have a clear answer to. As some of you may already know, several weeks ago a memo being circulated by the Department of Health and Human Services was leaked exposing a plan by the Trump administration in league with their supposed enemies in the Deep State to officially establish gender as being defined exclusively by ones genitalia at birth. This would essentially erase people like me and leave us at the mercy of a bevy of bureaucratic tyrants from the prison industrial complex to its child abusing cousins in the tenured snake pits of the public school system.

When I first heard about the memo, released by the New York Times, I was skeptical for a number of reasons, most of them having to do with the foul circus of the midterms. Was the memo leaked by Trump’s frenemies in the Steady State in an attempt to use identity politics to shore up the youth vote for their allies in the Democratic Party? Or did Trump leak the memo himself to excite those fun-policing tranny-bashers, the Evangelicals, knowing they’d need the Spanish Fly of state sanctioned child abuse to get hard enough to vote for their local philandering whore-mongers in the GOP and, by proxy, our own philandering whore-monger in chief? Was this memo for real or was it just more hot air to fill Trump’s leaky balloon?

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FOSTA and the Federal Seizure of Backpage.com Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Law/Justice, Police State/Civil Liberties, Sexuality and the State • Tags: ,

The state always needs a moral panic to justify the expansion of its own power. Gay rights are now mainstream, marijuana legalization is moving rapidly, sanctuary cities are resisting immigration enforcement, skepticism of the drug war is growing, support for criminal justice reform is expanding, and protests against police brutality are now common. In other words, the state is losing many of its tools for self-expansion. This is one reason why political correctness is increasingly becoming incorporated into the state’s ideological framework, and why we are likely to see “traditional” cultural groups (i.e. gun owners, religious traditionalists, conservative whites, etc). becoming increasingly under attack in the future.  However, the Red Tribe continues to be a major player in US politics, and currently controls all three branches of the federal government, plus a majority of state governments, even if the Red Tribe is losing ground and does not reflect majority opinion per se. Therefore, the state needs yet another target. Just in the nick of time, here comes hysteria over sex trafficking. Sex trafficking hysteria is becoming the new war on drugs, with the predictable bipartisan enthusiasm in the mainstream, and acquiescence on the part of much of the Left, as there was with the war on drugs. In the future, there will be a sex workers rights movement similar to the gay rights and marijuana legalization movements.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Cato Institute

Listen here.

Sex ads website Backpage shut down by U.S. authorities Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Law/Justice, Police State/Civil Liberties, Sexuality and the State, Uncategorized • Tags:

It is interesting how the state always seeks to capitalize on whatever moral panics are going on at the present time. The biggest moral panics at present are arguably illegal immigration (for the Red Tribe), guns (for the Blue Tribe), opioids and “sex trafficking” (for both tribes). Immigrants are generally included under the umbrella of the Blue Tribe, and gun owners under the umbrella of the Red Tribe, and therefore have certain shields available. But drug users (except pot heads) and sex workers are not included in either tribe and therefore among the most easy targets for the state.

By Sarah N. Lynch, Lisa Lambert

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. law enforcement agencies have seized the sex marketplace website Backpage.com as part of an enforcement action by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to a posting on the Backpage website on Friday.

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Posting or Hosting Sex Ads Could Mean 25 Years in Federal Prison Under New Republican Proposal Reply

by • Law/Justice, Police State/Civil Liberties, Sexuality and the State, Uncategorized

More creeping Stalinism.

By Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Reason

Looking forward to a future when federal agents monitor Tinder? We won’t be far off if some folks in Congress get their way.

Under a proposal from Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R–Va.), anyone posting or hosting digital content that leads to an act of prostitution could face serious federal prison time as well as civil penalties. This is obviously bad news for sex workers, but it would also leave digital platforms—including dating apps, social media, and classifieds sites such as Craigslist—open to serious legal liability for the things users post.

In effect, it would give government agents more incentive and authority to monitor sex-related apps, ads, forums, and sites of all sorts. And it would give digital platforms a huge incentive to track and regulate user speech more closely.

Goodlatte’s measure was offered as an amendment to another House bill, this one from the Missouri Republican Ann Wagner. The House Judiciary Committee will consider both bills on Tuesday.

Wagner’s legislation (H.R. 1865) would open digital platforms to criminal and civil liability not just for future sex crimes that result from user posts or interactions but also for past harms brokered by the platforms in some way. So platforms that followed previous federal rules (which encouraged less content moderation in order to avoid liability) would now be especially vulnerable to charges and lawsuits.

The bill currently has 171 co-sponsors, including ample numbers of both Republicans and Democrats.

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Making sense of the culture war over transgender identity Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Men and Women, Sexuality and the State

The Economist

As more people change gender, they are sparking a debate that enrages some and confuses many

A BEAUTIFUL man with high cheekbones, fluttering eyelashes and a galaxy of silver glitter in his hair strides into the room. He is wearing a wedding dress and dirty trainers. The gender-bending at this club night in east London is not new: Shakespeare’s comedies are filled with cross-dressers; Gladys Bentley stomped the boards of 1920s Harlem in a tuxedo; Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie’s ambiguous interstellar alias, landed in the 1970s. What is new, though, is that convention-defying statements of gender identity are moving from stage and dance floor to everyday life.
The word “gender” is used by prudes to avoid saying “sex”, and restricted by purists (and, until recently, The Economist’s style guide) to speaking about grammar. In the 1970s feminists described the restricted behaviour regarded as proper to men and women as “gender roles”. But in recent years “gender identity” has come to mean how people feel or present themselves, as distinct from biological sex or sexual orientation. Growing numbers of young people describe themselves as “non-binary”. Others say gender is a spectrum, or that they have no gender at all. Facebook offers users a list of over 70 gender identities, from “agender” to “two-spirit”, as well as the option to write in their own.

Laci Green interviewed by Dave Rubin: Red Pilling, Sex, and Constructive Dialogue Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Men and Women, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Sexuality and the State, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Laci Green (YouTube Creator) joins Dave Rubin live in studio to discuss social justice warriors, politics and her recent awakening, gender, sex, and more. Subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c…

The city hardest hit by Mexico’s earthquake is a sexually liberated matriarchy Reply

by • Men and Women, Sexuality and the State

Pan-anarchism for Amazons?

TheLilly.Com

On Thursday, an earthquake devastated parts of Mexico, killing at least 65 people in what President Enrique Peña Nieto called the country’s most powerful tremor in the past 100 years.

Approximately 50 million people felt the 8.1-magnitude earthquake, which was centered more than 600 miles from Mexico City in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Tapachula, a town in Chiapas famous as a way station for Central American migrants headed to the United States.

But one of the worst-hit towns appeared to be Juchitan, located in the state of Oaxaca. At least 36 people have been killed there. Entire streets have been turned into rubble; the town’s white city hall has been reduced to debris.

Juchitan plays a special role in Mexico. The city of 100,000 is home to the country’s indigenous Zapotec people, who run a matriarchal society.

“Women are public figures here,” Marina Meneses, a sociologist and Juchitan resident, told the Los Angeles Times. “Women are the main organizers.”

Many of the city’s men work as fishermen or farmhands, which leaves women to run the market. That economic freedom translates to social freedom.

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What’s the alt-right, and how large is its audience? 1

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Immigration, Left and Right, Men and Women, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Sexuality and the State

Many liberals and leftists that I know are currently in a state of panic over the rise of the Alt-Right, which they predictably regard as the onset of the Fourth Reich. In reality, the Alt-Right is a very small movement that is made to seem much, much larger than it is because of its provocative effect which is duly amplified by the sensationalist media.

The Alt-Right is an entirely predictable backlash against ongoing demographic transformation of the US, the entrenchment of political correctness, globalization, and the hegemony of the neocons in mainstream conservatism. The Alt-Right is to white nationalism what the Religious Right was to Christian conservatism, only with a lot less in the way of size, resources or influence. In nearly 40 years of its existence, the Religious Right has lost every one of its major issues (abortion, school prayer, gay rights, gay marriage, reversing the sexual revolution of the 1960s, gender roles, family relations, education policy, etc.) and the Alt-Right will be even less successful in the long run.

The Religious Right merely wanted to turn back the clock to the 1950s while the Alt-Right wants to go back to the 1920s when segregation, eugenics, and comprehensive immigration were the status quo. Ain’t gonna happen. In fact, neo-Nixonian Donald Trump may well turn out to be the right-wing’s last stand. (And unless anyone accuses me of libertarian bias, it is even more unlikely that the mainstream libertarian program of turning back the clock to the Gilded Age is going to happen).

By Thomas J. Main

Los Angeles Times

Inquiring minds want to know: What exactly is the “alt-right,” and how large is the audience for the movement?

The essence of the alt-right can be distilled to this catchphrase: All people are not created equal. That’s even more extreme than it may sound. Prominent alt-right thinkers don’t only believe that some are naturally taller, stronger or smarter than others, but also that some groups are more deserving of political status than others. They reject the concept of equality before the law.

Andrew Anglin is editor of the most popular alt-right web magazine, the Daily Stormer. He has written that “The Alt-Right does not accept the pseudo-scientific claims that ‘all races are equal.’” He also supports repatriation of American blacks to Africa or “autonomous territory” within the U.S.

Not all alt-right thinkers are so radical in their aims, but they all believe in some form of race-based political inegalitarianism. The unequal brigade includes in its ranks editors of and regular contributors to many alt-right web magazines, including Richard Spencer of Radix Journal, Mike Enoch of the Right Stuff, Brad Griffin (also known as Hunter Wallace) of Occidental Dissent, Jared Taylor of American Renaissance and James Kirkpatrick of VDARE (named after Virginia Dare, the first British child born in America).

The exact size of the alt-right is perhaps not of the utmost importance. As an ideological movement, the alt-right seeks not immediate policy or electoral victories, but longer-term influence on how others think about politics. Still, it’s possible to get a sense of the scope of this netherworld through web traffic.

From September 2016 to May 2017, I analyzed visits and unique visitors to scores of political web magazines of various political orientations. (One person accessing a site five times in a month represents five visits but only one unique visitor). Through interviews and using the site Media Bias / Fact Check, I identified nine alt-right sites, 53 sites associated with the mainstream right, and 63 with the mainstream left. I excluded left- or right-leaning general-interest publications, such as BuzzFeed, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Data were obtained from SimilarWeb, a well-known provider of web-marketing information. All audience figures given here are monthly averages for the nine-month period I studied.

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Gay Pride Marchers with Jewish Flags Told to Leave Chicago Parade Reply

by • Race and Ethnicity, Sexuality and the State, Uncategorized

By Harriet Sinclair

Newsweek

Jewish people celebrating LGBT Pride in Chicago were told not to display Star of David flags because other people found them ‘offensive.’

The Jewish Star of David flag was banned from the city’s annual Dyke March celebrations, and several people carrying the flag were removed form the march because their presence “made people feel unsafe,” LGBT paper Windy City Times reported.

The Dyke March is described by organisers as being a “more inclusive, more social justice-oriented” march than the city’s main Pride parade.

One marcher, Laurel Grauer, said she was harassed by other Dyke March attendees before being told she needed to leave with her flag.

“It was a flag from my congregation which celebrates my queer, Jewish identity which I have done for over a decade marching in the Dyke March with the same flag,” she told Windy City Times.

“They were telling me to leave because my flag was a trigger to people that they found offensive,” she added. “Prior to this [march] I had never been harassed or asked to leave and I had always carried the flag with me.”

The organizers of the march told the Times the event was a pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist one and that the flags made people feel unsafe.

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America’s Culture War Mercenaries Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Sexuality and the State, Uncategorized

Can there be any doubt that totalitarian humanism is the dominant ruling class ideology?

By Rod Dreher

The American Conservative

USAID is spending $300,000 to fight traditional Christian morality in the Republic of Macedonia (a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-367912520/stock-photo-puzzle-with-the-national-flag-of-macedonia-and-dollar-banknote-concept.html?src=1NQf52M43o22eQ682DptgQ-1-66">esfera/Shutterstock)

A reader passes along a government document putting out bids for a contract. Here’s the top of the document:

screen-shot-2016-09-28-at-9-50-04-pm

Apparently the (former Yugoslav) Republic of Macedonia, a small Balkan nation that emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia, is insufficiently progressive on LGBT issues. So the American government is spending $300,000 to undermine the traditional Orthodox Christian culture of the country. Excerpts from the document (emphases mine):

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Pink Pistols Saddened by Attack on Orlando Club Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Police State/Civil Liberties, Sexuality and the State

Pink Pistols
June 12, 2016

Early Sunday, around 2AM Eastern Time, the Pulse nightclub in Orlando was attacked by an armed individual. Approximately 20 persons were killed and over double that wounded when the attacker, whom police have identified as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old from Fort Pierce, FL, pushed his way into the club and opened fire on patrons. Weapons carried by Mateen are reported as an “assault-type” rifle, a handgun, and a suspected explosive device. UPDATE: Reports are that the death toll is around 50, with over 50 more wounded.

“It appears he was organized and well-prepared,” said Orlando Police Chief John Mina at a news conference on Sunday. Additionally, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said “This is an incident … that we certainly classify as a domestic terror incident.” Authorities say the FBI is involved. Preliminary information reveals that Omar Mateen’s family is from Afghanistan, though Omar may have been born in the United States. His family is reported to be distraught at the actions and loss of their son.

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The War on Sex Trafficking Is the New War on Drugs Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Men and Women, Police State/Civil Liberties, Sexuality and the State, Uncategorized

By Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Reason

Girl in handcuffs

“Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door.”

“Sex-trafficking sweep nets arrests near Phoenix truck stops.”

“Man becomes 1st jailed under new human trafficking law.”

Conduct a Google news search for the word trafficking in 2015 and you’ll find pages of stories about the commercial sex trade, in which hundreds of thousands of U.S. women and children are supposedly trapped by coercion or force.

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Once Again, Fuck the U.N.! 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Arts & Entertainment, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Men and Women, Military, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Religion and Philosophy, Sexuality and the State

un-uninvolved-in-peace

Over at the Inferno: my latest love letter to the kind of “peacekeepers” nobody needs.

Excerpts:

Ostensibly formed as a global peacekeeping organisation in the wake of World War II, the United Nations, or U.N., has, over time, made it clear that the peace it means to impose on the world resembles the pax Romana (or pax Islama), mandated and managed by way of a top-down global hegemon.

For all the criticisms levelled at desert pirates Daesh, their M.O. seems to resemble the U.N.’s in several key ways, with its fatwa-friendliness, universalist aspredations*, and a heralded, hypocritical hard-on for pious prohibition and penile predation. If one didn’t know any better, it’d be easy to suspect the Muslim Männerbund of taking more than a few notes.

~MRDA~

A Trafficking Survivor Shares Why She’s Anti-Criminalization Reply

by • Men and Women, Sexuality and the State, Uncategorized • Tags:

By Kitty Stryker

Harlot Media

While the plight of the survivors of trafficking are brought up in modern discourse around whether or not sex work should be legal or good for women, little actual space is given for survivors to come forward and share their stories.

Mercedes is a survivor of trafficking who approached us to present her experiences of being a survivor of trafficking so that she and other survivors can be heard in a debate that so often pointedly excludes them.

How did you end up in the sex industry?

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