prostitutes

The Vernacular of Vixens

Posted by October 31, 2014

Last week The Daily Dot ran a story about a Twitter campaign petitioning the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook to rename prostitutes as sex workers in their 2015 annual update. The AP Stylebook, for those who may not know, is the essential go-to writing manual for journalists, freelance writers, editors, professionals and students. It provides fundamental guidelines for spelling, language, punctuation, usage and journalistic style, along with constantly changing common use slang.

I am more than a bit perplexed by the idea that we need to be renamed. Who is suggesting this? The Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) USA, Mamacash and Soros Foundation? Mamacash, the only granter to ‘sex workers’ in the US of A, demands that recipients of their monies be ‘sex worker led’. According to SWOP’s overbroad definition, legal sector sex workers include but are not limited to strippers or dominatrixes. It seem that by supporting the replacement of use of the term prostitute, they’re supporting non prostitutes to rename us prostitutes a clear act of colonialism.

The term sex worker obscures the underprivileged illegally working prostitutes. Is it appropriate for actual prostitutes to be renamed by privileged legal sector workers such as exotic dancers and fetish models? The Soros Foundation too seems to be supporting this change when they haven’t lifted a finger to help us get out from underneath the train-wreck of being renamed sex trafficked victims by the UN and DoJ, and subsequently journalists who read the AP Stylebook.

Basically, I am concerned that non-working non-prostitutes are calling for this change in the AP Stylebook when they don’t understand the legal consequences of ignoring the fact that ‘sex work’ is considered ‘prostitution’. Prostitution is not only illegal, it is often considered a component of ‘sex trafficking’. The press perpetuates the public perception of that reality by the vernacular they use in reporting on prostitution.

As an activist and working prostitute, I would say that reporting on my industry leaves a lot to be desired. Pun intended! I spend a lot of my unpaid time educating journalists and asking people like Soros and Mamacash for financial support. My experience convinces me renaming us won’t change my legal status. Changing what name we are called in the public spheres won’t enfranchise us. It won’t bring us equal protection under the law.

The term prostitute is completely appropriate to use especially when reporting on arrests for prostitution, which is what the press usually reports when it comes to our community. It is not like reporters go out of their way to cover our fundraisers, or events like they often used to prior to California’s Red Light Abatement Act of 1914, or the Alaskan ‘Line’ being shut down in the 1950s. Old newspapers frequently covered brothels and prostitutes philanthropic events at a time when we were treated as any other (legal) valuable members of society.

Now-a- days those of us who are ‘out’ get hit up by young journalists who want to follow us around for a few days to give the ‘day in the life of…’ feel to their piece. Exposing ourselves doesn’t really do anything for us. It doesn’t make us more money. It doesn’t make us safer. It actually makes us more likely to be arrested for or discriminated against- not for sex work but for prostitution. In fact, since these requests are often unpaid and may introduce unwelcome attention, it usually costs us to participate in that style of expose. It is important, however, to report on prostitution arrests so we all know what is going on.

So consider this: If arrested it is not going work to say we’ve been arrested as ‘sex workers’. Telling judge and jury you were just ‘sex working’ will not clear charges. Changing vernacular without changing the law does not get us out of being criminalized.

Changing our name may allow some to feel like they’ve done something for the cause. It’s one of the those feel-good neoliberal moves that we’ve recently seen, for example in being called ‘victims’, as in ‘sex trafficked victim’, and how now we are being provided ‘much needed services’ when in fact we’re being forced to give our time for free to attend yoga classes and/or unqualified ‘peer-to-peer’ based substandard mandatory counseling to get out of going to jail.

Another problem when journalists write about prostitution arrests is they often use real names. Using our real names without our permission, causes harm. It puts targets on our backs so all the creeps, both within and outside of law enforcement, can find us for a ‘free sample’. Using our real names exposes us – and our families – via Google searches to landlords, employers, education systems, child custody challengers and financial lenders who can line up to take a swipe at us because we’re named to be in association with (not sex work) prostitution, which illegal.

Currently the trend is on reporting sex trafficking. Would it behoove journalists to be more accurate in their reporting on prostitution by stopping calling all of us victims of sex trafficking? Just because the police blotter or the yearly FBI press release renames us as victims doesn’t mean reporters should repeat these inaccuracies, or infantise us by conflating all acts of prostitution with child abuse. Statistics about us in press releases by self appointed experts are often presented out of context. This lack of critical thinking misleads the public and policy makers. In this way reporters play a role in getting the public to go along with the proposed bad policy du jour being brought by the politicians under the guise of rescuing sex trafficked victims. The fact is that we’re all going to jail for (not sex work) prostitution. We’re all having criminal cases being adjudicated in criminal court for? Prostitution. Renaming prostitution as sex work, especially during the current trend in stacking trafficking with prostitution, is more complicated than mere politically correct etiquette.

Ironically, the renaming campaign is being led by SWOP USA. Their founder the late Robyn Few, came to me after her arrest, enthusiastic to start some kind of sex worker group, she asked my input. I told her about the Sex Worker Outreach Project in Australia where prostitution is decriminalized. My friend Rachel W. was an outreach worker there distributing condoms and safe sex information kits. Robyn immediately liked the name, saying she would use it. I encouraged her to contact Rachel W. for permission to associate and share mission, though she never officially aligned with the Australian network. For SWOP USA to say they want to rename prostitutes as sex workers seems highly suspect. I’ve yet to hear current U.S. members actually publicly identify as actual working prostitutes. For legal sector workers like strippers, fetish models, or even former prostitutes, to want to rename of group of active workers they don’t globally identify with is not entirely okay.

I’m not opposed to the term sex worker, but until all workers gain access to their individual and collective voices via decriminalization of prostitution, this effort will create more false reporting.

Lastly prostitution isn’t just a legal term. Prostitution is a part of each era of history. The terms prostitute and prostitution predate adult film performers, pornography, webcam and phone sex performers, lingerie or fetish models, doms, subs, burlesque and pole dancers, strippers, the gamut of diverse erotic service providers. The term prostitute has historic value. Some of us are able and willing to stand in pride as being part of this valuable occupation. We accept – embrace even – what we truly are, and what as prostitutes we have to offer.

Maxine Doogan and M. Dante

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What’s In A Name

Posted by April 27, 2014

What’s in a name?

Being renamed by those who have no regard for you is a drag. Hence the case of California Senate Bill 1388 authored by Sen. Ted Lieu set to go before the California Senate Appropriations committee on May 5th. His bill is called Human Trafficking but really his bill renames us prostitutes as ‘performers and our customers as ‘purchasers’ and mandates the later to spend 48 hours in jail and pay a $1000 fine to be split between police, prosecutors and non profits creating a sex bounty. The bill says the fines must go to provide those shame based sex negative substandard ‘peer to peer counseling’ for minors who have been working as prostitutes. ‘Bounty’ and ‘self dealing’ are words the analysis of the Senate Public Safety Committee used described this bill before they voted to approve it.

This bill is just like the First Offender Prostitution Program here in San Francisco. The FOPP was sold to the pubic under the guise of holding our customers financially responsible for all structural race, gender and social inequalities on the planet but really the public has been subsidizing the salaries of the uncredentialed counselors, the police and prosecutors all these years.

My current legal title is prostitute. I’m fine with that. I used to be an escort when I first started working in the biz in a massage parlor the mid 1980’s that was also licensed for escorts. I got a massage permit, so then I was a masseuse. When I stared working as an outcall escort, I got a license for that too thinking I would be afforded protection. I was wrong. I really liked the term sex worker until I figured out the other people who were using it weren’t doing prostitution. I don’t know what they were doing but it didn’t seem to involve the touching of other people and they weren’t at risk for being arrested for prostitution. The sw terms seems to have some sort of class connotation to it. Political commentators on MSNBC use it now with a smile. I stopped using that term to describe myself for the most part. I am a provider, a provider of erotic services, an erotic service provider, I’m definitely not a performer.

California criminal code 647(b) is the legal definition for prostitution which is anyone providing a ‘lewd act’ for money or ‘consideration’. A ‘lewd act’ means anyone touching breasts, genitals or buttock area with anything by another. So even using my feet to give a sensuous massage of the groin area, or sliding my riding crop over someone’s nipples or grinding my hips on a lap where a penis resides, all constitutes prostitution in California.

Now agreeing to do a ‘lewd act’ for money or consideration is currently protected under the first Amendment but taking any ‘furtherance’ to do or receive the ‘lewd act’ for money or consideration, like even offering or accepting a ride down the street for example, can constitutes an arrestable prosecutable criminal offense under current law and under the proposed bill. However SB 1388 goes way beyond criminalizing behavior. This bill actually renaming us without our permission. This is shocking considered the bill’s title is human trafficking. Human trafficking, a form of modern day slavery, you know that mantra. Slavery like how Africans were captured and sold on action blocks here in the good ol U S of A to have their labor extracted by any means. People who were turned into slaves in this way were striped of every right known to mankind. Typically when they were sold, they were renamed by their masters.

Now I’ve never formally met the sponsor of this bill that’s attempting to rename us. But I did have occasion to sit near him at the April 22nd California Senate Public Safety hearing where he stated his case for his bill, SB 1388. Well he didn’t really that say much. He let Daphne Phong, of Prop 35 and some other woman who spoke about how her daughter liked to watch Disney at the age of 20 but then started dressing ‘like a cheep ho’ do most of the talking. The mother of the daughter testified that her daughter abused other women because he boyfriend made her. Somehow all of this domestic violence justifies reaming of us as ‘performers’ and our customers as ‘purchasers’ and recriminalizing our customers to spend 48 hour in jail and conflating them to sex traffickers to pay new high fines. It’s all about ‘that money’ according to the mother. That would explain why all the police and prosecutor associations supported it.

I’ve never spoken to Senator Ted Lieu before. I wondered why he wants to rename me to be a ‘performer’ and my customers as ‘purchasers’? So as I was sitting there in front of the Senate Public Unsafety Committee near Ted Lieu, a man of Asian decent and looking at one of 3 co sponsored for his bill, Holly Mitchell a black women, I’m wondered what possessed people of color to rename us to create a funding stream for counselors? Coining a pejorative term to refer to human beings is undignified and legislating it into law is certainly below the station of a state senator and the state of California.

I stated in my oppositional testimony among other things, that renaming us without our permission was a human right violation. The Chair of the Public Unsafety Committee, Senator Loni Hancock asked Ted Lieu and Holly Mitchell to address the issues we brought up in opposition to their bill. Senator Holly Mitchell said that we couldn’t just walk in and testify and expect her to respond. That we would have to submit our issues in writing if we expected to be addressed. One of the purposes of speaking up at hearings is to have a chance to speak why decision makers support or oppose something; that’s how our democracy is supposed to work. Chastising us, the unfunded already marginalized workers, publicly for not using a particular process is typical cheap shot and a form of political escapism to avoid taking responsibility. Besides, many of the issues we raised were already written in the 19 page committee analysis in great detail. Her high handed remarks to us made me think she had not bothered to read it.

Oppose California SB 1388

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My Yearly Tax Sex Talk

Posted by April 2, 2014

Since its tax time, I’ll give my yearly tax talk.
Many folks say, “They should tax and regulate prostitutes” instead of arresting us.
Well, taxing and regulating prostitution won’t bring us equal protection under the law.

Many folks in the sex industry pay taxes, local, state and federal taxes already. We pay sales taxes, hotel taxes, property taxes, gas taxes…same kinds of taxes everybody else pays. Except we don’t have access to the constitutional rights like everybody has. We don’t have access to equal protection under the law for example. If I’m assaulted on or off my job, I have to seriously consider how reporting that crime and its substantive investigation will effect my ability to work. Even legal sector sex industry workers don’t have equal protection under the law. They are not protected from discrimination and harassment in housing, education, employment, child custody nor are they guaranteed access to financial institutions. Legal sector workers who pay taxes cannot keep religious zealots from invading their work spaces. Got cupcakes? Free mascara? Nail polish anyone?

FYI, the US doesn’t allot rights based on your ability to pay taxes. If that were true, then why are the big corporations being exempt from paying taxes? Why is one of the richest men in the world paying a less tax rate than his secretary? Yes money gives more access to legislators to make laws that favor your capital but our capital is outlawed and it doesn’t matter how much tax I pay my legislator won’t propose laws to change my status.

We’re severally economically disadvantaged because the anti prostitution laws that have systematically, over a 100 year period, banned our ability to negotiate for our labor and own safe work conditions. So I would say that the US government ought to mandate that our class not pay ANY taxes until such time we have been completely enfranchised to the point where all the negative stigma and discrimination against our class has disappeared!

That is my position and that should be your position. Don’t let them off the hook for how they’ve treated us all these years! Make them pay some consequences and restitution to us for violating our human, labor and civil rights. Don’t just sit back and let us activist do the heavy lifting of changing the laws and then agree to be taxed and regulated. We’re not like any other business. What other business has been so violated to the degree that ours has? Therefore the antidotes to the poison that criminalization has caused all of humanity must be cured and gaining tax exempt status is a good first start.

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Mutual AID

Posted by March 23, 2014

Wow, I just saw a non sex worker tell the 2 presenters who led the sex worker panel at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair that they cannot call themselves Gender Dentata as they were putting forwards ideas of names for their newly forming group. They are currently calling themselves Vagina Dentata. http://bayareaanarchistbookfair.wordpress.com/2014-program-schedule/

The non sex worker said that vagina was too exclusive a term and went on to say that because they were white women, they couldn’t be leaders in the movement. Let us first acknowledge how brave these white women were to identify themselves and secondly out themselves in a public space as outlaw anarchist sex workers. Thirdly; to travel to the bay and lead a sex worker panel. They were told they weren’t good enough to name themselves or had any right to organize.

I cannot think of anything that would have been more antithetical to say at an anarchist book fair!
In my mind, these 2 women are already leaders in our movement and rightfully so.

This same non sex worker, who identified herself as being in association with the San Francisco Sex Worker Film Festival as her cred, spoke all about Prop 35 and how scary it was now that its passed because our friends can be arrested as sex traffickers. This struck me as odd because our group was the statewide opposition and we couldn’t get enough people to respond to all the voters’ requests for information during that election no matter how many times I asked people in our industry to do so. Apparently there are degrees of comfort in being ‘out’ even for non sex workers who support sex workers.

I totally support former and non-sex workers speaking out for the rights and well-being of sex workers as allies. I just have a huge problem when individuals of this group dismiss the voices of actual prostitutes when advocating for ourselves about what to call ourselves, in what manner we advocate for ourselves, what rights we advocate for and telling us our skin and gender aren’t the right ones. I believe there are studies that say most prostitutes are white and women so I am not sure why the 2 presenters were being dissuaded for standing up. I believe more people of color are in jails but that doesn’t mean white women in the sex industry don’t get arrested, or don’t go to jail or get fucked for free less. To say that only people of color who are non gender conforming are the only one’s who can stand up for sex worker rights is counter productive. These oppression qualifiers that non sex workers have put on our movement are counter productive. Its a type of red hearing or is it oppression/privilege baiting? This behavior is really akin to being a counter organizer.

But back to the other related topic, the Freedom Network U.S.A. conference being held in San Francisco March 31 from 8 to 10 pm at the downtown Hilton. When I asked them who was going to be on the panel, they listed off the usual suspects except not any actual direct service providers who’ve “had their lives directly impacted by the anti trafficking policies and laws”. So I offered to connect them with actual women who’ve been arrested for prostitution under the guise of being rescued as sex trafficked victims. They’ve not responded to me.

Only one speaker I saw on their list, before it was removed from the fb page event, identifies as a actual working sw, which is great but I didn’t see anyone who’s been arrested for prostitution under the guise of being arrested for being a sex trafficked victim.

So this begs the question, why would an anti trafficking group invite non prostitutes to lead such a ‘dialog’? I mean, isn’t that what their types do everyday anyway? And why do they need to come to San Francisco to host their $315 a person tariff (at a hotel that took Local 2 years to get a collectively bargained contract)?

I too find it really essential to expand the dialogue about the human, civil and labor rights violations that are occurring under the guise of fighting trafficking. I’m glad to see that others like Veg Vix are taking issue with former and non-sex workers who treat policies like criminalization of us as if that don’t matter. It makes me wonder what polices are good enough? What skin color is the right color? What gender is the right gender?

I can see the Freedom Network U.S.A. is not addressing the harms of policies that conflate all prostitution with trafficking: http://freedomnetworkusa.org/more-penalties-for-prostitution-wont-help-victims-of-human-trafficking/. Freedom Network U.S.A. is only stating that more penalties for prostitution won’t help victims while ignoring one of our key values: including actual workers being affected by the policies.

Any anti-trafficking groups that seriously wanted to address the harms of policies and rhetoric conflating all prostitution with trafficking would put decrim including our customers in their legislative packages, training sessions and raising awareness campaigns and they’re not. None of them have called me up to say, ‘hey we’re going to visit legislators in your state to talk to them about trafficking, wanna come along?’ Have they called you?

They haven’t showed that kind of respect because they don’t really want us in the room with them at legislator visiting time. But who they do want at their high priced Hilton Hotel Conference? Those who lack the political will and skill to hold them accountable for their hollow policy.

Veg Vix said “Though the sex workers’ rights movement has been at the forefront of addressing the harms of such misguided and oppressive policies for years, the movement shouldn’t have to do this alone and it can be very powerful when some anti-trafficking groups also denounce such harms.” And I agree but denouncing these harms isn’t good enough.

Anti trafficking/prostitution have to join prostitutes activist to be demanding decrim as the primary means to reducing these harms. It has to be stated clearly on their websites not just whispered at conferences or assumed. Its especially essential that anti trafficking/prostitution groups take this step because the anti trafficking policy was created primarily as an anti prostitution policy and we ought not let them get away from that fact. Freedom Network USA’s funding, just like the funding for all the other anti trafficking/prostitution orgs are at our expense, or at least those of us who are still working.

They should be made to take responsibility for invading us when they repeat as in brow beat us with their ideas of us in public, in the media, on our chat boards, text messages, advertising spaces and our work spaces. (California passed a law that mandates sex worker spaces post state sanctioned anti trafficking/prostitution baby girl being abducted eyes photos). Not to mention that special surveillance we, (those of us who are actual workers) are all under here in California thanks to the illegal use of the sting boxes and the tracking systems the silicon valley partners have installed for the them on us. These are all ways current workers’ human, civil and labor rights are being violated every single day.

I believe in aligning on common ground. Building alliances could strengthen our movement overall and is important for ending such oppressive policies against sex workers under the guise of fighting trafficking. It’s really essential that anti-trafficking groups have at the top of their list complete decriminalization across the board to even be considered allies, as a starter. And with so many non prostitutes on this NOG’s panel, I am concerned about having the sw rights movement looking like its been co-oped. They’re going to be able to say, “we had a sex worker panel” and while never actually have done anything for us.

Co-oping us is part of their agenda. I wonder what form the carrot will take. What will they put forward towards this end? What monies or positions or projects will they offer whom?

If they were really concerned, they would have invited the actual women who have had their lives directly negatively impacted by the anti trafficking/prostitution laws and they didn’t.

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Violent Feminsts

Posted by March 2, 2013

This whole debacle of calling out these perpetrator feminist types for their violence by stigma, their weapon of choice against us whores is getting really good.

Like the batterers they are, they’re consistent in their acts of violence when they retaliate for being called out for the actors of violence against our class in maintaining criminalization of prostitution.

Its just further evidence of their violent intentions to continue to pollute the public domain with their hate speech again and again with their made to order faux facts about us and our lot in this life.

 

Violence de-escalation training and anti oppression training is in order for us to help put their behavior in the right context.  Then hopefully, our class won’t feel the need to extend ourselves so civilly as to try to reason or educated them with the expectation they’ll stop hurting us.

 

How many times have battered peoples said that if they could just tell the abuser or who ever will listen, the effects of suffering from their bad treatment or try to confront the flawed logic used to justify their attitudes of indifference and denial of abuse in that hope that the violence might finally stop and but it never works out that way.

These types won’t ever stop their violence against us no matter what we say, no matter what do. Its a fact of life and no fake facts the likes of which they use to perpetuate negative stigma against us, are ever going to change this cycle.

 

But some people do change their minds.

We can see politicians changing their minds recently in a very public substantial way in these very last days before the high court decides key lawsuits on marriage equality.  Like  jumping off the imminent crazy train wreck at the last minute, politicos are abandoning these kinds archaic ideas only because they’ve lost or stand to loose elected positions and the subsequent fortunes that accompany them.  We even saw the mother of invention of john school change their minds during Proposition 35 in California and withdraw their endorsement of that menace legislation weeks before the election.  Even with the passing of the Violence Against Women Act, Sen. Leahy managed to added a provision to stop arresting minors for prostitution and substantially defund the imperialist Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons!

 

 

But the feminist types of which we rail against, they’ll never change their minds.  Saying they are for stopping arresting us while they’ve actively opposed legislation to do just that typifies their constant two faced antics. They won’t change their minds because they oppose our rights with the veracity of the religious zealots and the brute force of the police all of which they’ve aligned together to walk in goosestep.

 

The way to deal with them is similar to the way other oppressed groups, like LBGT and African Americans have dealt with the same systems of violence.  When the AIDS epidemic hit, anti sodomy, female impersonation and associating with homosexuals laws had been decriminalized for the most part and for parts that weren’t, the high court’s decisions eventually upheld privacy that dealt the death blow to the hold outs in this area.

Too, it took 100 years after emancipation to pass the civil rights act to finally name discrimination as an illegal act not only against those who are of color but gender too.

 

Since  we still suffer from having our labor and relationships criminalized in the anti prostitution laws and the subsequent discrimination, we have to start with were we are here in the US;  we must all focus our energies together to change these things in short order.

 

As far as dealing with public opinion, I suggest a truth and reconciliation commission convene itself as to fully expose the extend of the damage and corruption that criminalization and discrimination has brought.

 

And FYI, we’ll consider paying taxes 10 years after the last discrimination case has been litigated similar to how the Voting Rights Act mandates 10 years of uninterrupted compliance before restrictions on judicial review can be petitioned to be removed.  But in the meantime, feel free to ban the Dennis Hoff owned walmart brothel and enforce the laws already on the books; rape, robbery, extortion, coercion, theft, abduction, battery, fraud…solicitations for unprotected sex….murder.  I subscribe to the idea that if the workforce is made up of primarily women, then only women from that workforce can be hired by that said workforce in the capacity management.

 

Its okay to be overwhelmed and think, it’s such a tall order, we cannot possible go through with it, but no perfect magic pill can be taken to make it all go away.  Instead find some workable principals and adherence to them and re evaluate and be open to change but lets just start by stepping away from the wasting our time with the hater feminists.

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The Good News and the Bad News About The NM Ruling

Posted by February 6, 2013
  • The good news about this ruling from New Mexico Supreme Court is that these two website owners will go free and not have to suffer going to jail for prostitution which ought not be criminal.
  • The bad news is that it lets the majority of the adult prostitution websites  that  mainly female providers use for advertizing are owned  primarily by male customers  to go unchecked.  Its a problem for us female providers that we are not in control of our own image and advertizing.  Due to the criminalization of our first amendment rights to free speech, we don’t have the right to negotiate for our own labor and safe work conditions.  And since male customers have more access to all kinds of resources like financial backing and technology, they’ve managed to take complete control of all the websites we rely on to advertize and thereby dominate our economy.
  • These websites dictate the terms of our speech by allowing or disallowing us to advertize ourselves as providing the kinds of services we prefer and who we prefer see as clients or not as well as what kinds of rates we charge.  This violates our principals of having the right to refuse service-the right to say no.  These websites attract and support groups of male customers who coordinate the review system of our mainly female service providers by which they threaten us with bad reviews to force us to provide the kinds of services they want at the rates they want.  Or they write fake reviews to blacklist us from being able to get any work at all.
  • The solution is to decriminalize prostitution so that we can tell the truth about who we are so as to restore our right to say yes in the kinds of services we provide as a protected right.  Too customers must be able to tell the truth about what kinds of service they’d like and have that respected as protected right too.
  • But male customers must be barred from dominating our work; we must ban male customers from being in charge our advertizing on any terms in any capacity.

  • NM high court issues setback in prostitution case

    By RUSSELL CONTRERAS, Associated Press
    Updated 1:10 pm, Wednesday, February 6, 2013
    Robert Gorence, attorney for former University of New Mexico president F. Chris Garcia, talks to reporters outside the New Mexico Supreme Court chambers in Santa Fe, Wednesday Feb. 6, 2013. The state’s high court denied Wednesday prosecutors’ requests to overturn a lower court’s ruling that nothing in state law made a website linked to Garcia and retired Fairleigh Dickinson University physics professor David C. Flory illegal. Prosecutors said the website was promoting prostitution. Photo: Russell Contreras

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The New Mexico Supreme Court dealt a blow Wednesday to the prosecution’s case against two aging college professors accused of helping run an online prostitution ring, and denied a request to overturn a lower court’s ruling that nothing in state law made the website illegal.

The state’s high court ruled without comment to deny a request by the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s office to allow them to continue with a case that has drawn national attention and highlighted what some online experts say are New Mexico’s outdated anti-prostitution laws.

A state judge in June ruled that the website “Southwest Companions” — which was linked to former University of New Mexico president F. Chris Garcia and retired Fairleigh Dickinson University physics professor David C. Flory — violated no laws.

Both were arrested by Albuquerque police in June 2011 on charges of promoting prostitution after a yearlong police investigation into an alleged multistate operation where prostitutes and patrons could meet.

But District Judge Stan Whitaker found that an online message board could not be a house of prostitution under state law.

Prosecutors then took the functional equivalent of an appeal — an extraordinary writ — to the New Mexico Supreme Court. They said Whitaker had exceeded his authority in requiring the grand jury to be informed of the ruling, and they said his decision relied on facts not in evidence.

During arguments Wednesday, Michael Fricke, deputy district attorney for Bernalillo County, said he believed that the Internet “was a place” and therefore the website and its owners could be prosecuted under the state’s narrowly defined anti-prostitution laws.

Attorneys Teri Duncan, who represents Flory, countered that the state laws were clear and that the website didn’t fall into that category.

“Looking at the language of the statute, it’s clear that the place of prosecution … is intended to be a physical place,” she said.

New Mexico Supreme Court Judge Richard Bosson hinted that he agreed.

“The Legislature hasn’t looked at this in 30 years,” he said. “Maybe they should.”

State lawmakers are considering a proposal that could strengthen state law to include online prostitution websites.

Experts said that decades-old laws in New Mexico and other states make it difficult for authorities and prosecutors to go after prostitution-linked websites because the laws don’t necessarily outlaw the practice in cyberspace.

Fricke said prosecutors will reevaluate the case to decide if they could seek other charges.

Garcia’s attorney, Robert Gorence, said his client was “joyous” after learning of the high court’s decision.

“He’s been factually innocent from the very beginning,” Gorence said. “This has caused him great anguish.”

___

Follow Russell Contreras at http://twitter.com/russcontreras

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/NM-high-court-issues-setback-in-prostitution-case-4256156.php#ixzz2KAG6NzVS

 

http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/NM-high-court-issues-setback-in-prostitution-case-4256156.php#src=fb

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Feminist Idea of Equality?

Posted by February 5, 2013

 

Equal protection comes in many forms.  One form is when we are victims of violence we, like anyone else have access to the Victims Compensation Fund as it’s called here in California.

How ever, California State regulation  649.56 states that victims can and are precluded from access the fund if those injuries occurred in the course of working as a prostitute.

http://www.vcgcb.ca.gov/law/regs.aspx

 

California State regulation  649.56. Involvement in the Qualifying Crime of Prostitution:

Involvement in the events leading to the qualifying crime of prostitution by the victim may be found if the victim was:

 

*  Engaged in activity related to prostitution.

*  The qualifying crime occurred as a direct result of the activity related to prostitution.

 

Activity related to prostitution includes, but is not limited to the following:

 

*  Soliciting or participating in the solicitation of an act of prostitution.

*  Purchasing or participating in the purchase of an act of prostitution.

*  Engaging in an act of prostitution.

*  Pimping as defined in California Penal Code, section 266h.<http://calvcpmanual.vcgcb.ca.gov/Codes/pc266h.txt>

*  Pandering as defined in California Penal Code, section 266i.<http://calvcpmanual.vcgcb.ca.gov/Codes/pc266i.txt>

 

Where are is the outrage from those women who claim to be against violence when prostitutes, who they consider only as victims, are denied access to the Victims Compensation Fund?

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