Mira Lazine at LGBTQ Nation:

In its latest attack on transgender youth, lawmakers in Tennessee passed a bill to stop the nonexistent problem of adults kidnapping kids and taking them to other states for gender-affirming care.

The bill, S.B. 2782, was passed by the Tennessee House of Representatives on Thursday and is on its way to the governor’s desk. It amends a 2023 gender-affirming care ban, adding civil penalties for any adults who aid an unemancipated minor get out-of-state gender-affirming care without their parents’ consent. The bill passed along party lines 63-16 in the Tennessee House of Representatives and previously passed the state’s Senate 25-4. This would be the first state to pass a law of this kind, according to the Associated Press. S.B. 2782, is headed to the governor’s desk. Gov. Bill Lee (R) is expected to pass the legislation, as he previously advanced anti-LGBTQ+ bills, such as one that would allow LGBTQ+ foster children to be placed with foster parents who are opposed to LGBTQ+ rights. It was introduced by state Sen. Janice Bowling (R), who has been introducing anti-trans legislation since at least 2020, and contains exemptions for parents, guardians, those with the consent of parents and guardians, and common carriers like bus drivers, airline pilots, and ride share app drivers. An earlier version of S.B. 2782 reportedly had criminal penalties for adults; however, this was removed in committee. [...]

This type of legislation comes as a reaction to conspiracies that there is a ploy from transgender adults to kidnap kids and “turn” them transgender. A recent bill in Maine made headlines in the right-wing press for supposedly being a “transgender trafficking” bill. A recent bill in Maine made headlines in the right-wing press for supposedly being a “transgender trafficking” bill. The bill, L.D. 1735, makes Maine a safe state for trans people, protecting refugees from other states. Anti-trans advocates like Chaya Raichik (of Libs of TikTok) and Riley Gaines opposed this, arguing that it promoted the alleged kidnapping and trafficking of youth across state lines to give them gender-affirming surgery, something transgender youth almost never get. This culture of fear about children transitioning behind their parents’ backs has been promoted by anti-LGBTQ+ Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who alleged that there are states that want to take kids away from their parents and make them transition. There is no evidence to support any of these assertions.

Tennessee passes anti-trans bill SB2782 that is based on the "transgender trafficking" myth spouted out by anti-trans extremists. The bill has several exemptions: parents, guardians, those with the consent of parents and guardians, and common carriers like bus drivers, airline pilots, and ride share app drivers.

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The commodification of women and “enclosure” of sexuality through prostitution, widespread porn and the resulting fallout led to the next frontier: biology itself, womanhood itself. Transgenderism leverages the mind/body split that rape culture promotes by introducing a new form of biological enclosure. With transgenderism, the reality of sex is no longer something natural that we simply share in common, but a place for Big Pharma to set up shop in the name of “identity.”

I have a “big picture” brain. I’m unsatisfied with superficial explanations of current events and political trends, and only understand them once I’ve placed them in the context of deeper historic trajectories, social patterns and human drives. Without these explanations, I remain unsatisfied and questioning (and can’t be sold on false solutions either).

Transgenderism is one contemporary political trend that requires big picture thinking to comprehend—because there are no casual explanations for why, in less than a decade, people all over the world have started to accept a set of bizarre and contradictory ideas: that sex is a spectrum, that sex can be changed, and/or that sex is not real at all, only gender identity is—all to justify the political mantra, “transwomen are women.” This mantra is simply an assertion of male privilege, that men should be able to claim female identity if they want to, without needing sound justification. How did it spread so fast?

I have just finished writing a series of books called the Brief, Complete Herstory (2021) which offers a continuous narrative of history from the Big Bang to neoliberalism. It discusses pre-patriarchal cultures around the world, and the creation of patriarchy, church and state, capitalism, and neoliberalism. Only the last volume mentions transgenderism, but writing these books has helped me put the transgender trend, among others, in context.

One thing that is clear to me is that the idea that men can become women is not new—it began when patriarchal religions insisted that God, the creator of life, is male. Before this, if “god” had a sex, it was commonly female: she who birthed the world. The idea of god as male-produced all sorts of weird stories and myths to capture the imagination: like the one about Aphrodite being born out of Zeus’ head, and Jesus being born after an “immaculate conception” involving a male sky god and Mary, a sexless virgin (trans activists might call her an “incubator”).

Another thing that strikes me, taking this long view of history, is a succession of waves of “enclosure” or colonisation that cause enough social and economic fallout to prepare the ground for the next, more intimate, “enclosure.” The pattern begins earlier, but if we start with the enclosure movement of the 15th and 16th centuries, also called the “privatisation of the commons,” it is easy to place transgenderism in the context of a historic trajectory. I’ve discussed this before, in a talk on YouTube, but here I want to cast a wider net.

The 16th century saw the Protestant Reformation and the rise of modern capitalism while the Tudors reigned in England. The Tudors used the Reformation as a way of breaking from the Catholic church in order to act without, or against, the pope’s approval. After breaking from Rome, they seized church property, privatised the commons, and colonised Ireland. For centuries, peasants had used common lands to graze milk cows and gather water, edible and medicinal plants, and wood for construction and making fires.

The simultaneous confiscation of the commons and church property cast many people into poverty because the lands were a source of sustenance and, under feudalism, it was the church that had given aid and shelter to the poor. Women were especially affected by the double whammy of enclosure and lack of poverty alleviation. In her biography My Own Story, British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst traces her feminist awakening to witnessing women in the homeless shelters and workhouses that queen Elizabeth I eventually established to address the crisis.

Looking back, we can see that the enclosure movement provided the preconditions for Britain’s industrialisation. When common lands were privatised, they largely became lands for grazing sheep used for wool in the textile industry, the biggest industry of the early industrial revolution; and it created a class of people desperate enough to work up to 18 hours a day for a pittance in dismal conditions, in the factories or “satanic mills,” as the poet William Blake called them. Most textile workers were women. Urbanisation also took place in tandem with the rise of prostitution, with many women forced to choose between that, factory work or domesticity.

In her book, Witches, Witch-Hunting and Women(2018), Silvia Federici connects the 16th- and 17th-century witch hunts in England with the rise of capitalism and the privatisation of the commons. She writes that “women were the most likely to be victimised” by enclosure, pauperisation, and the “disintegration of communal forms of agriculture that had prevailed in feudal Europe,” because they were “the most disempowered by these changes, especially older women, who often rebelled against their impoverishment and social exclusion.” She notes that some women participated in protests, pulling up fences enclosing the commons, and explains:

[W]omen were charged with witchcraft because the restructuring of rural Europe at the dawn of capitalism destroyed the means of livelihood and the basis of their social power, leaving them with no resort but dependence on the charity of the better off, at a time when communal bonds were disintegrating, a new morality was taking hold that criminalised begging and looked down upon charity.

The premise of Federici’s book is that this very same correlation between privatisation and “witch” hunting can be seen with neoliberal privatisation. She shows how witch hunts have escalated dramatically following the neoliberalisation (or “re-colonisation”) of the African continent and the privatisation of lands there, for instance in Tanzania, where more than 5,000 women per year are murdered as witches and in the Central African Republic, where “prisons are full of accused witches.” In Indian tribal lands, “where large scale processes of land privatisation are underway,” witch hunts are also increasing, as they are in Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Saudi Arabia. Describing the way witch-hunting frames the female sex, Federici argues that, “we have to think of the enclosures as a broader phenomenon than simply the fencing off of land. We must think of an enclosure of knowledge, of our bodies, and of our relationship to other people, and nature.”

Federici considers her analysis of the correlation between privatisation and witch-hunting to be ongoing, a work in progress—but I think her project is hamstrung. Her conclusions will remain sorely limited as long as she maintains the position that there is such a thing as a “sex worker” and a “transwoman,” because these ideas are central to the neoliberal “enclosure of knowledge, of our bodies, and of our relationship to other people, and nature” today. The term “sex worker” was coined by the global sex trade lobby on the back of women’s poverty and the normalisation of prostitution under neoliberalism.

In his book Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery (2010), human trafficking expert Siddharth Kara shows that neoliberalisation leaves indigenous women especially vulnerable. He unveils a pattern of neoliberal government reform followed by land confiscation, leading to domestic poverty, and then prostitution in Asia, Europe and the United States. His book covers the period of the 1980s and 90s when the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were handing out “structural adjustment packages” all over the world. These are financial loans conditional on land and infrastructure privatisation, cutbacks to health and welfare spending, and removal of legislation protecting workers and obstructing profit.

In The Shock Doctrine(2007), Naomi Klein argues that this neoliberalisation requires disaster to disorient people and render them sufficiently immobilised to have their rights stripped. Once implemented, just like enclosure and colonisation, neoliberalism creates its own fallout. As Klein explains, neoliberalism began to enter more intimate territory after September 11, 2001, when surveillance culture began to “enclose” our privacy in unprecedented ways. This led to an age where internet companies, which are best positioned to track and collect data, reign.

History shows us a continuous pattern that goes all the way back to the Tudors and before: disaster followed by enclosure creates more disaster that allows for further, more intimate, enclosure. This is precisely why Federici’s argument that we need to define enclosure more deeply and broadly, is so important: otherwise we cannot properly track the pattern and we will fail to notice when neoliberalisation starts claiming new frontiers.

Combine the internet age with prostitution and you have today’s growing porn industry—and porn creates its own fallout. As feminist author Gail Dines points out in Pornland(2010), the average age boys start watching pornography is at eleven years, and porn brainwashes them into objectifying women by linking the image of rape to orgasm. There is hardly a more efficient way to condition somebody than through orgasm. Social conditioning normally involves a system of punishment and reward by some external body—but when men learn to objectify women by watching porn, their own penises dispense the rewards. After that, nobody needs to offer them any other incentives to keep repeating the behaviour.

The fact that porn not only depicts rape but drives it is well established. We can see the link in high profile rape cases like those involving Brock Turner and Larry Nassar. Turner took photos during his assault, and shared them with friends; Nassar was found to be in possession of at least 37,000 child pornography videos and images. New Zealand women’s organisation the Backbone Collective’s report on child abuse "Seen and Not Heard" shows that for 54% of abusive fathers, pornography is a factor in the abuse of their children.

The fallout from rape is dissociation. The human stress response is designed to allow us to run from predators, or to overpower them if we judge ourselves as capable. It is not designed to deal with entrapment and cruelty, and when faced with these situations, women often freeze, our minds shutting off conscious awareness of what is happening, whilst the subconscious absorbs it for dealing with later. This mind/body split is at the root of patriarchy and patriarchal religion because patriarchy relies on it: it requires men to detach from their own humanity and cultivate the dissociation, body hatred and dysphoria that rape culture fosters.

The commodification of women and “enclosure” of sexuality through prostitution, widespread porn and the resulting fallout led to the next frontier: biology itself, womanhood itself. Transgenderism leverages the mind/body split that rape culture promotes by introducing a new form of biological enclosure. With transgenderism, the reality of sex is no longer something natural that we simply share in common, but a place for Big Pharma to set up shop in the name of “identity.”

Trans activists assist this commodification of sex by excitedly censoring, blacklisting, firing, harassing and abusing women as “TERFs” (“trans-exclusionary radical feminists”). “TERF” is a now well-known misnomer for feminists who have not forgotten what sex is, and, whilst trying to tear down the fences transgenderism erects around it, get in the way of the rollout of this new form of enclosure. With respect to her work, it is almost mind-boggling that Federici does not take into account this neoliberal “witch-hunting” that trans activists participate in.

If this terrifying trend exists as part of a broader trajectory—how far can it go?

The first volume in my Brief Complete Herstory argues that the most basic quality of life is sensitivity. Water has a miraculous capacity for storing information, for picking up the qualities of all it encounters. Even the smallest, single-celled organisms share with human beings the capacity to sense and respond to light, movement, and other environmental patterns and changes. Yet the more people are tethered to our phones and smart devices, our behaviour mined as “data” and sold to those who profit from predicting and manipulating our movements, the more numb and desensitised we become. I sometimes worry that as privatisation and dispossession advance in what Shoshana Zuboff calls the Age of Surveillance Capitalism(2019), this is the current frontier: our very sensitivity.

If we listen to spiritual teachers and visionaries throughout the ages, the seat of human sensitivity is the heart. Indigenous cultures have always recognised this, and herbalist Stephen Buhner taught me that this is not a metaphor: our bodies are surrounded by an electromagnetic field generated by the heart, and this field is five thousand times more powerful than that created by the brain. In The Secret Teachings of Plants(2004), Buhner writes that this means that the “[a]nalysis of information flow into the human body has shown that much of it impacts the heart first, flowing to the brain only after it has been perceived by the heart.”

If this is true, then in an era of desensitisation, the heart is the new frontier of enclosure. Can it be captured and domesticated? Or is there a freedom in the heart that simply cannot be enclosed?

One thing the long view of history shows us is that freedom does not exist in the hands of politicians who will deliver it after they tidy up the aftermath of the latest crisis, as they like to promise. I would also suggest it shows us that not only is the very idea of a patriarchal state incompatible with human freedom by definition—the tactic of negotiating with governments to have our “rights” and freedoms delivered has proven ineffective through centuries of trial and error. History shows us that governments are irredeemably deaf to the voices of women, and when they appear not to be, it is short-lived. Between the era of enclosure and the present day, women won the right to vote. Today, we may officially still have that right, but as womanhood is redefined beyond meaning, so has the relevance of the vote to our lives.

I am not saying that people should not lobby governments to promote the recognition of their rights, or that changes in the law have never benefited those who fought for them. I am also not suggesting that you can save the world by sitting under a tree and searching your heart. What I am saying is that in an era characterised by noise and desensitisation, there is no better time to tune out for long enough to discover whether you do carry within you a freedom immune to enclosure—because if you do, if this is part of our make up, surely there could be no better advisor in the decisions you, and we, need to make from here. There cannot be a better guide in the defence of freedom than freedom itself.

[I]n the same way that trans and gender-nonconforming people are represented as a risk and threat to white heteronormative nationalism and militarism, so too are undocumented immigrants portrayed as thieves stealing jobs from hardworking Americans, rapists menacing American women, and violent drug traffickers seeping through porous borders. Evident in the stereotypes and myths deployed against them, the criminalization of both trans and immigrant communities is intimately tied to fears about the sanctity of white cis womanhood—whether it is a so-called perverted man passing himself off as a trans woman to prey on women in public restrooms or alleged members of the Salvadorian gang ms-13 kidnapping and killing U.S. girls on Long Island. The security state’s surveillance of trans people and its surveillance and deportation of immigrants is intimately connected to larger bio- and necropolitical population management processes. 

The links between the state’s regulation of trans, gender-nonconforming, and immigrant populations require us to ask whether trans military service or selective immigration and naturalization rights are the kinds of goals that will achieve true liberation. How does the security state pit marginalized communities against one another? Popular acceptance of the dominant narrative that claims a need for intensive national security measures encourages political trade-offs in which, for example, LGBT activists argue for the inclusion of trans people in the military in the name of national security, while simultaneously supporting immigration restrictions that take away the rights of (undocumented) immigrants. Conceding to ramped-up border security in exchange for a DACA deal further cements a class system where some immigrants are more deserving than others. What makes the workings of neoliberalism and its politics of colorblindness so insidious is that the security state’s claim to provide social emancipation and legal protections for certain marginalized groups depends on its systematic deployment of violence against those people who are already at the margins of the marginalized. A critical queer and trans politics must attend to these intricate intersectionalities if it wants to pose an effective challenge to the security state’s insatiable appetite for more surveillance, border monitoring, and population disposal.

Mia Fischer, “CODA: The Perils of Transgender Visibility” in Terrorizing Gender: Transgender Visibility and the Surveillance Practices of the U.S. Security State.

[emphasis added]

Paris is Burning

The Article Paris is Burning is a critical article written by bell hooks to express her observation and opinion on the documentary Paris is Burning directed by Jennie Livingston. bell hooks is an African American female author, professor, feminist and social activist. hooks has constructed the article in order to explain how the gay black men experience is not fully represented in the documentary film.Livingston is a lesbian white women director, producer and activist; she uses film to capture vouge, drag in the gay community of New York City. I introduce both women in order to comprehend the lenses these women have and how they carry their message. In the class of Blacks and Media we have touched on the history of African Americans in social media, politics, gender and now sexual orientation. In this thought paper I will evaluate the documentary Paris is Burning by Jennie Livingston and bell hooks response in her article Paris is Burning. Gay Black men, transgender/transsexual or non-binaries are considered at threat to societies norm because the United States inevitably has history of being racists, patriarchal and sexist.

           In the 1990 film Paris is burning Livingston documents the lives of black gay men, transgenders/transsexuals influence in the culture of drag and vogue. The film begins with a narrative from one of the men having a nostalgic moment and stating “you are black, you are male and you are gay, you are gonna have a hard time if you gonna do this you are gonna have to be stronger then you ever imagined” three qualities that are stigmatized in Americas misogynist racist society. Homophobia is based on the fear of homosexual behavior it was also included in the DSM (American Psychiatric Association) diagnoses book as a disease/ mental disorder. In the 1980’s there was a HIV epidemic and the scientific myth was that it was only transmitted through same sex engagement. This deadly virus brought fear to many people and it increased the fear and alienation of people (especially men) in the Queer community. The film introduces the ritual of preparing and attending at a ball,  it all began in Vegas when men would cross dress like Vegas girls but as new generations joined the balls the culture shifts from preparing the extravagant gowns with beads and feathers to a more simple like a movie star or a model. Here we see a transition that cross dressing is not only for a night out at a gay gala it has also become a place for validation. Some men find it more comfortable embodied as women and desire to continue to present themselves as women. Livingston focuses on the art, community and ambitions black gay men have to be understood, famous and successful. She structured the film as the men having true feelings, thoughts, ideas and dreams; all of them being no less than any other person. The film emphasizes on the struggles gay and transgender/transsexual men endure in society. Not being accepted for being black male, not being able to get jobs because of their sexual orientation and race. The men have built communities that allows them to be comfortable in their own skin because they yarn to be accepted therefore, they create families and houses with mothers and children in order to be each other’s’ anchors.

In the previous article Oppositional Gaze, hooks emphasize on the psychological and sociological effects of white supremacy on framing, racism and feminism. In this article she takes a similar stance but instead she goes to argue that the gay black man’s struggle was not being represented to its full authenticity. Bell argues “these images of black men in drag were never subversive, they helped sustain sexism and racism” (146) the bigotry in America now feels justified for dehumanizing black people because they appear uncivilized because of their scornful manners. She also states “I can see the black male in drag was also disempowering of black masculinity” (146) because femininity is perceived as a weakness because of gender and the men in drag aim to convey the attributes of a women they are frowned upon and have a low social status. I disagree with this statement because in the documentary the men are sustaining their self-esteem and thriving on the power of seduction. bell perceives power to be a patriarchal status, she lacks to understand that seduction is another form of power. The men use the power in their work of sex trafficking. The men in the use their bodies and exchange of sex in order to make a living and also to validate their sexuality and seduction. Being that man transgender/ transsexual men were able to make a living out of this profession demonstrates the taboo is fetishized but not welcomed. Although The opportunities for jobs as a gay black or transgender/transsexual man in society is difficult to attain and maintain because of the taboos attached to stigmas.

Different societies in different communities determine what is wealth, success and power based on the structure of social stratification. The drag and transgender/transsexual ideal of beauty, success and riches is to embody a white woman. The goal is to be accepted, valuable and ‘normal’ because “the brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself – its way of life – as the only meaningful life there is” features of European decent has subconsciously been ingrained in the minds of African American cognitive to believe that to be successful, beautiful and rich is to imitate the authorities grouping. In the film Livingston interviews Dorian Corey, one of the oldest legends of drag in Harlem. Dorian shares the ideals of beauty is to express white feminine attributes ‘if you capture the great white way of living or looking or dressing or speaking you are a marvel” this is an example to show the struggle that gay black men in drag have is to completely modify their race and gender in order to be a sensation. Hook argues “the idea of womeness and femininity is totally personified by whiteness. What viewers witness in not black men longing to impersonate or even to become ‘real’ black women but their obsession with idealized fetishized vision of feminity that is white” (148). In the ball the category ‘Realness’ is structured to appeal to the audience as to have feminine features because the more feminine you appear because it is not only cross dressing it is a contest to be able to manipulate society as a transgender/transsexual then you gain a price. Octivia was a transgender in the film whom was hoping to change her sex ‘this is not a game for me or fun, this is how I want to live my life” there are not enough black models for her to aspire to appear like so in her room there are posters of white women. Americas ideal beautiful women is a thin figured white rich woman, it has been ingrained in the minds of Americans across the board despite the sex, gender, sexual orientation or social status. Media has a large influence on this portrait because of the people marketing and financing the industries is dominated by white men.

I enjoyed the film and the article because it highlights the struggles, hopes and dreams of being a gay or transgender/transsexual in the black subculture. The documentary Paris is Burning demonstrates the sub gay black community in a humaine vulnerable form. Although bell argues Livingston should have emphasized more on the struggle of being a gay black man, I believe Livingston challenged societal norms by illustrating the stories and experience gay black men are challenged within society and their own community. This film is inspirational to others with similar paths. In the 80’s because of the HIV epidemic Homophobia really affected the gay community because it was known as the “gay man’s plaque” justifying religions argument against same sex relationships and leaving the queer community to question “why is loving love a sin?”. Livingston did a phenomenal job casting transparent people in their journey, I also read that she did activist and participated in the HIV community in NYC. I also want to share that after watching the documentary I was able to visually comprehend the influence black, queer, fashion, psychological evaluation and comprehension along with art culture has influenced todays dance, media, fashion, makeup, queer activism, medicine ext. I watched Rihanna’s 2019 fashion show on amazon prime and I was able to see the transition and progress that the black queer community has influenced in today’s culture across the board.

Prostitution information NEG

The idea that legalizing or decriminalizing commercial sex would reduce its harms is a persistent myth. Many claim if the sex trade were legal, regulated, and treated like any other profession, it would be safer. But research suggests otherwise. Countries that have legalized or decriminalized commercial sex often experience a surge in human trafficking, pimping, and other related crimes

Prostitution, regardless of whether it’s legal or not, involves so much harm and trauma it cannot be seen as a conventional business.

Interviews with prostituted individuals in New Zealand reveal that a majority of prostituted people in the country did not feel as if decriminalization had curbed the violence they experience, demonstrating that prostitution is inherently violent and abusive. (Report of the Prostitution Law Review Committee: pp. 14)

One study of prostituted women in San Francisco massage parlors found that 62% had been beaten by customers. (HIV Risk among Asian Women Working at Massage Parlors in San Francisco: pp. 248)

An investigation of the commercial sex industry in eight American cities found that 36% of prostituted people reported that their buyers were abusive or violent. (Estimating the Size and Structure of the Underground Commercial Sex Economy in Eight Major US Cities: pp. 242)

The “workplace” homicide rate among prostituted women in Colorado is seven times higher than what it was in the most dangerous occupation for men in the 1980s (taxi driver). (Mortality in a Long-term Open Cohort of Prostitute Women: pp. 783)

Prostitution and human trafficking are forms of gender-based violence.

Most persons in prostitution are either female or transgender women. (Estimating the Size and Structure of the Underground Commercial Sex Economy in Eight Major US Cities: pp. 219 and The Impact of the Prostitution Reform Act on the Health and Safety practices of Sex Workers: pp. 61)

In contrast, the vast majority of sex buyers are male. (Executive Summary of the Preliminary Findings for Team Grant Project 4 – Sex, Safety and Security: A Study of Experiences of People Who Pay for Sex in Canada: pp. 3)

Prostituted persons are mostly women and face exceptional risks of murder (pp. 784) and violence at the hands of male sex buyers (pp. 248), signifying that the practice is on the continuum of gender-based violence. This remains true even in areas where prostitution is legal or decriminalized. (pp. 14)

Legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution has not decreased the prevalence of illegal prostitution.

An investigation commissioned by the European Parliament found that in countries with legal prostitution, such as Austria, “the effect of regulation can be a massive increase in migrant prostitution and an indirect support to the spreading of the illegal market in the sex industry.” (National Legislation on Prostitution and the Trafficking in Women and Children: pp. 132)

Denmark decriminalized prostitution in 1999, and the government’s own estimates show that the prevalence increased substantially over the decade that followed. (Prostitutionens omfang og former 2012/2013: pp. 7)

Interviews with prostituted persons in the Netherlands reported that “legalization entices foreign women to come to the Netherlands, causing an increase [in prostitution].” (Prostitution in the Netherlands since the lifting on the brothel ban: pp. 38)

Legalization or decriminalization has not reduced the stigma faced by prostituted people.

After New Zealand decriminalized prostitution in 2003, there were still reports among prostituted persons of “continuing stigma” and “harassment by the general public.” In addition, there was little difference in disclosure of occupation to healthcare professionals before and after decriminalization. (The Impact of the Prostitution Reform Act on the Health and Safety practices of Sex Workers: pp. 11 and 12)

Legalization or decriminalization increases human trafficking.

One study with data from 150 countries found that those with “legalized prostitution experience a larger reported incidence of trafficking inflows.” (Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?: pp. 76)

Another quantitative analysis similarly reported that sex trafficking is “most prevalent in countries where prostitution is legalized.” (The Law and Economics of International Sex Slavery: Prostitution Laws and Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation: pp. 87)

Regulated prostitution increases the size of the overall market for commercial sex, which benefits criminal enterprises that profit from sex trafficking. (Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?: pp. 67 and National Legislation on Prostitution and the Trafficking in Women and Children: pp. 132)

Attempts to regulate prostitution have failed and adherence is low.

A large-scale evaluation of the legalization of prostitution in the Netherlands, coordinated by the Ministry of Justice, found that licensed brothels did not welcome frequent regulatory inspections. This undermines theeeir willingness “to adhere to the rules and complicates the combat against trafficking in human beings.” (Prostitution in the Netherlands since the lifting on the brothel ban: pp. 11)

A review of the empirical evidence on the Dutch legalization of prostitution found that many prostituted persons still rely on anonymity, secrecy, and cash transfers, demonstrating that a legalized prostitution market operates much like a criminal market. (Legale sector, informele praktijken. De informele economie van de legale raamprostitutie in Nederland: pp. 115-130)

New Zealand’s Prostitution Law Review Committee found that a majority of prostituted persons felt that the decriminalization act “could do little about violence that occurred.” (pp: 14) The Committee further reported that abusive brothels did not improve conditions for prostituted individuals; the brothels that “had unfair management practices continued with them” even after the decriminalization. (pp: 17)

The German government’s own evaluation of the 2001 law that legalized prostitution suggested that fewer than 8% of prostituted individuals are “officially insured as a prostitute.” (Report by the Federal Government on the Impact of the Act Regulating the Legal Situation of Prostitutes (Prostitution Act): pp. 26)

Legalization and decriminalization promotes organized crime.

Evaluations have found that regulation of prostitution creates a façade of legitimacy that hides sexual exploitation, and that brothels can “function as legalized outlets for victims of sex trafficking.” (The challenges of fighting sex trafficking in the legalized prostitution market of the Netherlands: pp. 227)

An example of how sex trafficking can operate behind a veil of legalized prostitution is the so-called “Sneep case.” German pimps traveled across the border to the Netherlands and took over large parts of the Red Light District in Amsterdam, using intimate relationships and brutal violence to coerce women to sell sex and hand over their profits. (Relationships Between Suspects and Victims of Sex Trafficking. Exploitation of Prostitutes and Domestic Violence Parallels in Dutch Trafficking Cases: pp. 49-64, and The challenges of fighting sex trafficking in the legalized prostitution market of the Netherlands: pp. 218)

The Nordic Model (criminalizing the act of buying sex, but legalizing the act of selling sex) has lowered the prevalence of street prostitution.

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L.C. Nøttaasen

An evaluation of the impact in Sweden found that street prostitution had been cut in half. (Förbud mot köp av sexuell tjänst: En utvärdering 1999–2008: pp. 34-35)

Similarly, an evaluation of Norway’s implementation of the Model in 2009 found that it “has reduced demand for sex and thus contribute to reduce the extent of prostitution” (pp. 11), a result that has been confirmed in additional analyses. (Kriminalisering av sexkjøp: pp. 13)

The Nordic Model has prevented an increase in prostitution overall.

While Sweden’s neighbors, such as Denmark and Finland, experienced increases in prostitution, data suggest that it remained flat in Sweden for the decade that followed the implementation of the Nordic Model. (Förbud mot köp av sexuell tjänst: En utvärdering 1999–2008: pp. 36)

Prostituted individuals often come from vulnerable populations and lack other options, while most sex buyers do not.

Individuals who are prostituted are often poorly educated (pp. 248) and they are forced into prostitution by the lack of opportunities. (Estimating the Size and Structure of the Underground Commercial Sex Economy in Eight Major US Cities: pp. 220)

An evaluation of New Zealand’s decriminalization revealed that 73% of prostituted individuals needed money to pay for household expenses, and about half of those who were street-based or transgender had no other sources of income. (The Impact of the Prostitution Reform Act on the Health and Safety practices of Sex Workers: pp. 9)

In sharp contrast, sex buyers are more likely to be employed full-time, more likely to have graduated from college, and have higher-than-average incomes. (Ordinary or Peculiar Men? Comparing the Customers of Prostitutes With a Nationally Representative Sample of Men: pp. 812 and Executive Summary of the Preliminary Findings for Team Grant Project 4 – Sex, Safety and Security: A Study of Experiences of People Who Pay for Sex in Canada: pp. 2)

NO BUYERS. NO BUSINESS.

Sex trafficking in the U.S. is a business where “supply” is mostly vulnerable women and girls, and the “demand” is men who buy sex illegally. Demand Abolition advocates for arresting and prosecuting sex buyers—instead of the victims—to dramatically and sustainably prevent sexual exploitation.

The Problem: Commercial Sexual Exploitation

It’s happening here. It’s happening now.

Sex trafficking is a glaring problem in the United States, traumatizing thousands of women and children trapped in prostitution. In 2017, the National Human Trafficking Hotline received over 3,000 reports of sex trafficking from all over the country.

Prostitution is not a victimless crime.

Prostitution, or commercial sexual exploitation, capitalizes on vulnerable women and children. Research shows that most prostituted people want to stop selling sex, but find it difficult to leave due to entrapment, trauma, social stigma, or the sense that there’s no other option.

The men who buy prostituted people, also known as “johns,” play a key role in perpetuating this notorious cycle. In addition to the harm often inflicted on the prostituted person, engaging in paid sex also harms the purchaser, his family, and the community. In our recent national survey, 64% of sex buyers in the United States said they want to stop.

The Solution: End Sex Buying

Men who buy sex create the “demand” that fuels the illegal sex trade. Without buyers, prostitution (and by extension sex trafficking) would cease to exist.

Our nationally-representative survey suggests that 6% of US men have bought sex in the past year. While the majority of men will never purchase a human being for sex, high-frequency buyers (who buy at least once a month) are responsible for three of every four transactions in the illegal sex trade. Learn more about sex buyers

Arresting prostituted persons, whom are often forced or coerced, has not and will never solve the problem; law enforcement and policies must target the buyers who drive this illegal and exploitative market. We must work with law enforcement to avoid penalizing and traumatizing those being exploited, deter men from buying, reduce rates of re-offending, and reserve significant penalties for dangerous and repeat offenders.

Our Approach

Demand Abolition is committed to eradicating the illegal commercial sex industry in the US by combating demand for purchased sex and increasing accountability for buyers. We embrace a multisector approach, working closely with an active network of survivor leaders, criminal justice professionals, practitioners, researchers, policymakers, corporate leaders, philanthropists, media, and others.

Adam and Eve Never Existed

How often do we sit and question our gender or sexual identity? Is it always the same as the biological sex that we are born in? Can it be independent entity, irrespective of our biological sex? Most of us assume, for lack of further information that our overall sexuality that includes our sex, gender, sexual orientation and sexual behavior are all determined at some point through some ‘natural’ genetic intervention during our birth and there is nothing one can do about it. We are taught to believe in strict binaries of male and female and the separate social roles associated with both. Today when we see a television advertisement, where our hero denies a young pretty woman’s courtship, just as he realized that this attractive woman used to be a man. Oh! And everyone chuckles. Well, it’s not that funny. Transsexuality as a phenomenon has gained very little visibility or knowledge in our society – precisely why is it so easy for us to distance ourselves and laugh at it. Our society in fact contains one of the most visible transgender cultures in the world – the ‘Eunuch’ (Hijra) Community. Eunuchs might have an accepted place in Indian society, but it is a place pretty much at the bottom of the social heap – making them not just a sexual but also a highly deprived social minority. Transgender communities have existed in most parts of the world with their own local identities, customs and rituals. They are called baklas in the Philippines, berdaches among American Indian tribes, serrers in Africa and hijras, jogappas, jogtas, shiv-shaktis and aravanis in South Asia. The hijra community in India, which has a recorded history of more than 4,000 years, was considered to have special powers because of its third-gender status. It was part of a well-established `eunuch culture’ in many societies, especially in West Asia, and its members held sanctioned positions in royal courts. Hijras trace their origins to myths in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Rama, while leaving for the forest upon being banished from the kingdom for 14 years, turns around to his followers and asks all the `men and women’ to return to the city. Among his followers the hijras alone do not feel bound by this direction and decide to stay with him. Impressed with their devotion, Rama sanctions them the power to confer blessings on people on auspicious occasions like childbirth and marriage, and also at inaugural functions. This set the stage for the custom of badhai in which hijras sing, dance and confer blessings. But today, keeping in mind the pathetic condition of them one can say that this community actually needs the blessings of Lord Rama more than anyone so that at least they can subsist in the society with proper dignity, respect and most of the most important identity. Hijras (Eunuchs) in India have virtually no safe spaces, not even in their families, where they are protected from prejudice and abuse. The PUCL(K) Report on Human Rights Violations against the Transgender Community has documented the kind of prejudice that hijras face in Bangalore. The report shows that this prejudice is translated into violence, often of a brutal nature, in public spaces, police stations, prisons and even in their homes. The main factor behind the violence is that society is not able to come to terms with the fact that hijras do not conform to the accepted gender divisions. In addition to this, most hijras have a lower middle-class background, which makes them susceptible to harassment by the police. The discrimination based on their class and gender makes the hijra community one of the most disempowered groups in Indian society. The systematic violence that hijras face is reinforced by the institutions such as the family, media and the medical establishments and is given legitimacy by the legal system. The hijras face many sorts of state and societal harassments such as Harassment by the police in public places Harassment at home Police entrapment Abuse/harassment at police stations Rape in jails The roots of contemporary violence against the hijra community can in fact be traced back to the historical form that modern law in colonial India has taken. It took the form of the enactment of the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871 which was an extraordinary legislation that even departed from the principles on which the Indian Penal Code was based. To establish an offence under the India Penal Code, the accusations against the accused has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt in court of law. But certain tribes and communities were perceived to be criminals by birth, with criminality being passed on from generation to generation. It fitted in well with the hierarchical Indian social order, in which some communities were perceived as unclean and polluted from birth. The link between criminality and sexual non-conformity was made more explicit in the 1897 amendment to the Criminal Tribes Act on 1871, which was sub-titled, ‘An act for the Registration of Criminal Tribes and Eunuchs’. Under this law, the local government was required to keep a register of the names and residences of all eunuchs who were “reasonably suspected of kidnapping or castrating children or committing offences under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code”. Any eunuch so registered could be arrested without warrant and punished with imprisonment of up to two years or with a fine or both. check out here The law also decreed eunuchs as incapable of acting as a guardian, making a gift, drawing up a will or adopting a son. Regarding Civil law they are also not spared here. The hijra community is deprived of several rights under civil law because Indian law recognizes only two sexes. This means that hijras do not have the rights to vote, marry and own a ration card, a passport or a driving license or claim employment and health benefits. In north and central India, hijras, who have contested and won elections to local and State bodies, are now facing legal challenges. In February 2003, the Madhya Pradesh High Court struck down the election of Kamala Jaan as the Mayor of the Municipal Corporation of Katni. The court’s logic was that since Kamala Jaan was not a woman, she could not contest the seat, which was reserved for women. Lawyer Pratul Shandilya, who is arguing Kamala Jaan’s case, said: “I have already filed the Special Leave Petition (SLP) before the Supreme Court, and the court has also granted leave in the petition.” The High Court verdict came despite a direction from the Election Commission (E.C.) in September 1994 that hijras can be registered in the electoral roles either as male or female depending on their statement at the time of enrolment. This direction was given by the E.C. after Shabnam, a hijra candidate from the Sihagpur Assembly constituency in Madhya Pradesh, wrote to the Chief Election Commissioner enquiring about which category hijras were classified under. The law that is used most to threaten the hijra and kothi communities, as well as the homosexual community in India, is Section 377 of the IPC, which criminalizes “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal” even if it is voluntary. In effect, it criminalizes certain kinds of sexual acts that are perceived to be `unnatural’. The law, which has its origin in colonial ideas of morality, in effect presumes that a hijra or a homosexual person is engaging in `carnal intercourse against the order of nature”, thus making this entire lot of marginalized communities vulnerable to police harassment and arrest. The Immoral Traffic Prevention Act (ITPA) of 1956 (amended in 1986), whose stated objective is to criminalize brothel-keeping, trafficking, pimping and soliciting, in reality targets the visible figure of the sex worker and enables the police to arrest and intimidate the transgender sex-worker population. According to the two main diagnostic systems used in the Indian medical establishment, transsexualism is defined as a `gender identity disorder’. The doctors usually prescribe a sexual reassignment surgery (SRS), which currently resorts to hormone therapy and surgical reconstruction and may include electrolysis, speech therapy and counseling. Surgical construction could include the removal of male sex organs and the construction of female ones. Since government hospitals and qualified private practitioners do not usually perform SRS, many hijras go to quacks, thus placing themselves at serious risk. Neither the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) nor the Medical Council of India (MCI) has formulated any guidelines to be followed in SRS. The attitude of the medical establishment has only reinforced the low sense of self-worth that many hijras have at various moments in their lives. With every single thing going against the Eunuchs; a notable amount of awareness has also been seen all over the world. Around the world, countries are beginning to recognize the rights of transgender people. In a landmark judgment (Christine Goodwin vs. the United Kingdom, 2002) the European Court of Human Rights declared that the U.K. government’s failure to alter the birth certificates of transsexual people or to allow them to marry in their new gender role was a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. It said that a test of biological factors could no longer be used to deny recognition legally to the change of gender that a transsexual had undergone. In New Zealand, in New Zealand Attorney General vs. the Family Court at Otahuhu (1994), the court upheld the principle that for purposes of marriage, transsexual people should be legally recognized in their re-assigned sex. OF late the Indian hijra community has begun to mobilize themselves through the formation of a collective. Sangama, an organization working with hijras, kothis and sex workers in Bangalore, has played an important role by helping them organize and fight for their rights. Its services include organizing a drop-in centre for hijras and kothis, conducting a series of public rallies and marches, using legal assistance in case of police harassment, and establishing links with other social movements. The organizations of the hijra community can be seen as constituting a larger movement of sexual minority groups in India. They are challenging the constitutional validity of Section 377 and are organizing a campaign questioning the government’s stand that the law should remain. The discrimination and violence that hijras face show that it is high time that both the government and the human rights movement in the country begin to take this issue with the seriousness it deserves. About the Author Author’s Name: – ABHINAV SINHA Author’s Address: – C/o M.Kudare, 66/621, Near Sainath Mandir, Gokhalenagar, Pune -411016, Maharashtra, India Author’s Ph No: – +91-9764159053, 020-32315046 About the Author: – I am a Vth year student studying in the esteemed college of Symbiosis Law School. I am pursuing the course of BBA.LLB. from this college. Atheist: adam and eve never existed Share and Enjoy:

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

On Thursday afternoon, Maine’s Judiciary Committee, controlled by Democrats, voted down House Bill 1735, a bill that would establish Maine as a refuge state for transgender people obtaining care across state lines. The vote to kill the bill came after a relentless social media campaign from leading national anti-trans activists targeting Democrats on the committee with disinformation about what the bill would do. In the Thursday working session, Representative Matt Moonen stated that some of the language in the bill that has come under attack “did not further the goals” intended of the bill and moved that the bill “ought not to pass,” essentially recommending that his own bill be killed in committee.

The bill included several provisions aimed at protecting transgender individuals who travel to Maine for their care. Some provisions shielded patients and providers from investigations by other states, such as those currently being led by AG Ken Paxton of Texas, who is subpoenaing hospitals across state lines for medical information on trans patients. Other sections designated the arrest and extradition of transgender individuals and their providers to other states for “crimes” around obtaining care as a "lowest priority" for law enforcement. However, the section of the bill that garnered the most media attention was the one protecting abused and neglected transgender youth. It proposed allowing judges jurisdiction over cases involving their presence in the state and also included measures to protect parents in custody disputes where one parent consents to the child receiving care and the other does not.

This sparked an intense pressure campaign from prominent anti-trans social media influencers and organizations, targeting the committee members. They received an overwhelming number of emails and phone calls, spurred by calls to action from far-right media. Libs of TikTok, known for posts frequently followed by bomb threats against LGBTQ+ individuals and allies, inaccurately claimed that the bill would "take custody of kids" from parents who oppose gender-affirming care; this post received 7 million views. Other accounts, including Riley Gaines and Chloe Cole, a political detransitioner and right-wing media figure, amplified posts labeling the bill as a "transgender trafficking bill." Meanwhile, right-wing media outlets with a history of anti-trans reporting, such as the Daily Signal and the Daily Caller, published articles echoing similar assertions. Following the pressure campaign, a previously scheduled meeting for January 17th on the bill was postponed to January 25th. On Thursday, that hearing happened, with one of the cosponsors of the bill, Rep. Moonen, stating that despite the bill’s protections, it “ought not to pass” because there was language in the bill that “is not needed” to accomplish the goals of protecting patients and providers from out of state prosecutions. The committee then voted the bill down 12-0.

[...]

Maine rejecting the bill after putting it up for a vote is significant. Currently, 14 states and the District of Columbia have approved similar protections for transgender people seeking care across state lines. Maine may be the first state with both a Democratic governor and legislature to strike down such a bill, and the second state in the region to see puzzling votes from Democrats over transgender rights. Earlier this year, a handful of New Hampshire Democrats joined Republicans in passing a bill that could restrict bathroom access in the state, a move that raised similar questions over the commitment of State Democrats towards protecting their transgender citizens.

This is cowardice in action by the Democrats on the Maine House Judiciary Committee by caving into anti-trans extremists such as Libs of TikTok, Chloe Cole, and Riley Gaines-- who all launched bad faith attacks against LD1735-- into voting down a trans safe refuge bill that would have made it the 15th state to do so.

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

On Wednesday, January 15, Maine scheduled a working session on a bill titled “An Act to Safeguard Gender-affirming Healthcare,” a bill that would declare the state a refuge for transgender people fleeing hostile states. In the past two years, similar measures have been enacted or issued through executive orders in 14 states and the District of Columbia. These laws have proven effective; for example, Seattle Children's Hospital in Washington was shielded from a subpoena that would have required them to share patient information across state borders due to legislation passed there. In response, major anti-trans Republican accounts such as Libs of TikTok and Riley Gaines attacked the bill on social media, erroneously claiming it would require the state to “take custody” of trans youth being denied gender affirming care.

The bill modifies several aspects of state to protect transgender individuals within Maine's borders. One section would prevent states from issuing search warrants or demanding the extradition of transgender individuals who have received gender-affirming care. This is especially important considering attempts by some state attorneys general to investigate parents of transgender youth, including across state lines. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton infamously dispatched agents to interrogate transgender children statewide. The Maine bill aims to ensure that transgender individuals and their families, who seek safety and medical care in the state, are not compelled to return to their home states by extremist attorneys general, possibly under the threat of arrest. It would also make arresting the parents of trans youth pursuant to out of state warrants the “lowest law enforcement priority.” Another provision would protect abandoned or abused transgender kids, giving the state temporary emergency jurisdiction over the child if the child is within Maine’s borders and has been unable to get gender affirming medical or mental healthcare. Importantly, this provision does not not imply, as some conservative accounts have proclaimed, that the state will “take away trans kids from non-affirming parents.” Rather, this provision merely gives judges temporary jurisdiction over a kid present in the state. The state would still have to prove to a judge that a transgender teen is at risk of abuse or neglect if returned to their family in the exact same way the state would have to prove similar things about a cisgender kid.

[...] In response to the bill, several right-wing anti-trans accounts issued viral calls to action, erroneously calling the bill a “child trafficking bill.” The account “Courage Is A Habit” spread a misleading graphic claiming that parents will be denied custody of their children and that it would “negatively impact parental rights.” Libs of TikTok claimed that Maine would “take custody of your kids” if parents did not give them “sex change surgery.” Anti-trans swimmer Riley Gaines shared a list of email addresses to legislators on the committee, urging her followers to message them, and further meetings on the bill have been pushed to January 25th. Should Maine pass this law, it would join 14 other states and the District Of Columbia in establishing the state as a refuge for transgender people fleeing unsafe states.

Maine could be the 15th state to pass a trans safe refuge state law protecting trans people fleeing from prosecution in anti-trans states such as Florida and Texas.

Anti-trans extremists such as Libs of TikTok and Riley Gaines have distorted the details of Maine's #LD1735, falsely calling the bill a "child trafficking bill."

See Also:

LGBTQ Nation: Maine legislators frantically working to make the state a trans refuge