"I'M AN ASS MAN," SAYS ARRESTING OFFICER IN POLICE REPORT

""Eight to 10 officers entered the room with their guns drawn to arrest a 5-foot 1-inch woman in a leopard negligee," she said. "Does that make sense when Oakland is regularly breaking records for murder rates?""

http://makeashorterlink.com/?X126257B5

People who think prostitution should remain illegal usually argue that prostitution victimizes women.

It probably does, but how does police victimization of prostitutes make things any better?

prostitutes who are immigrants are even more at risk to police abuse as they are often forced to have sex for free under the threat that they will be deported.

And they wonder why people call them pigs.

why you call them pigs. Do pigs ( the cute little animals) rape each other, shoot each other, etc... Last time I checkeed the answer is NO, but people do

Shannon Williams, the former Berkeley High School teacher charged with prostitution.

High School teacher / prostitute
SOUNDS LIKE OAKLAND IS SCRAPING THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL FOR TEACHERS, IS THIS A NORMAL BACKROUND FOR OAKLAND TEACHERS ?
NOW WE KNOW WHY OAKLAND STUDENTS ARE
LAST IN TEST SCORES AND FIRST IN JAILS

AS FOR THIS STORY IT SOUNDS MORE LIKE A SLEAZY DEFENSE FOR A SLEAZY CRIMINAL
(FABRACATED!)

shannon is an excellent teacher. find someone who disagrees.

BTW, she doesn't teach in the Oakland schools.

"""""roflmao"""""

Shannon Williams, the former Berkeley High School teacher charged with prostitution.

yes I am surte she is the shiming star of the Oakland school system!
but IF this is what passes for good in the oakland schools, what do they keep hidden from the public?

anon, you sound like you are fishing for a free-bee
are you sure you are not on O.P.D.payroll?

did that make sense?

...is NOT to be confused with the anti-racist anti-Zionist "?".

Thank you.

I think names like "?" just flat out cant be owned. If you post as that your posting as anonymous

they wouldn't have to moonlight.

"A whore should be judged by the same criteria as other professionals offering services for pay--such as dentists, lawyers, hairdressers, physicians, plumbers, etc. Is she professionally competent? Does she give good measure? Is she honest with her clients?

It is possible that the percentage of honest and competent whores is higher than that of plumbers and much higher than that of lawyers. And enormously higher than that of professors." --Robert Heinlein

Does she give good measure?


WOULDN'T YOU KNOW IT,
HERE IS OFFICER ANON SNIFFIN FOR A FREE ONE
YA, KNOW ITS BAD WHEN YOU CAN'T EVEN GET ACTION FROM "O" TOWN

You know, the independent studies program that she was a staff at is for students who work at home or the library four days of the week and then have a meeting with a teacher for a few hours one day per week. This works really well for a percentage of students, just like the Evergreen State College works well for a certain type of person who knows how to direct their own life, but with some others they end up not doing any work.

Once when I was in Vancouver (which feels really radical in several ways) I was reading about a high school that had transitioned to the self directed approach, where students were all given a syllabus and a list of assignments, and teachers were there, and students were to do their work and decide where they would be and what they would do during a particular hour, and they could seek out teacher's help whenever they wanted. 20% of kids raced through the material and some of the others sat around smoking.

Getting Real Facts About Prostitution
Dr. Melissa Farley is working to create a bounty of evidence that shatters the lies told about prostitution and prostituted women. Here in an interview with Merge, we talk to Dr. Farley about her work. She is working with Prostitution Research and Education, which is a project of the San Francisco Women's Center. and collecting data from all over the world.
What is your research about? What are you trying to accomplish?
I would like to see the institution of prostitution ended. The goal of this research is to document the experiences of women in prostitution. One of the reasons, of many, that I got into this is if you look through the professional medical journals and literature on prostitution, you know what you see? HIV and HIV risk factors. That's about 90% of what's written about prostitution to 'educate' professionals. You know how I interpret that? It's the perspective of the john who is interested in 'clean meat.' And that doesn't make me very happy.
And it completely skirts the issue of prostitution and makes it seem like just an occupational hazard.
That's the big spin out there-prostitution as a 'job.' My first article has just been published in the mainstream media--and it's been quite a struggle to get it out there-even in 'feminist' journals and magazines. I don't know if you know how feminist academia is infiltrated with the 'sex worker' point of view. In women's studies, they're teaching that stripping is a fun thing to do, something a student can do for a year to pay for college. There's massive money in the commercial sex industry-you don't have to manufacture product-and they're supporting this.
There seems to be a lot of that 'Orwellian' feminism . . . using the word feminist and twisting it to mean something that it's not, to mean everything that women who have a conscience are against-legitimizing prostitution, stripping, etc.
The word feminism as you see it in the media today means almost nothing. It's meaningless. They're taking our words away from us, as usual. I never use the word 'sex work' because those words imply that it is legitimate work, that when a young woman grows up at the age of 12 she has a discussion with her mother- 'let's see; what would I like to be? A doctor? A lawyer? A computer techie? Oh, no I think I'm going to be a prostitute.' That doesn't happen.
What are you finding in your research? How are you reaching women in prostitution?
I've talked to survivors of prostitution who are out. I do not use the word prostitute. Because it dehumanizes people. We don't refer to a battered women as a 'batteree'. We don't turn the woman into what was done to her. So I would prefer to use the verb 'prostituting,' the adjective 'prostituted,' or 'in prostitution.' Women who are 'in prostitution', Women, survivors, who are 'out.'
To separate it from the woman.
Exactly.
So how do you find these women?
I've contacted agencies that work with survivors of prostitution, going to conferences like the one held by the Council for Prostitution Alternatives (which is also working with PROMISE; see the interview part II). Unfortunately, when it comes to organizations in the US trying to help women out of prostitution, it's a very small world. In other parts of the world, people are much more progressive on the issue.
Really? I would have thought with what's going on in Thailand, in Asia . . . that it's much more backwards.
Well, Thailand notwithstanding, in most other places, there are large, vocal groups of feminists
'Real feminists' as we would call them.
Here in the US there are very vocal groups of people with my race and class background (white, European American, middle-class) who speak for all prostitutes, who say that they like their 'job' and what they need is a union and a condom-but, in fact, the number of people in prostitution who are white, middle-class is extremely small. The vast majority of women in prostitution-and by that I mean stripping, massage parlors, street prostitution, escort, brothel, prostitution tourism-the women there are in extreme poverty and they are women of color.
And isn't that the basis of the problem-it's always about economics.
If it was just about economics there would be equal number of men and women in prostitution. It is not just about economics-it's about a gender hierarchy. And if you really want to see male supremacy, look at prostitution.
Getting back to COYOTE and the unions for prostituted women . . . many feel that anything that helps women while they're in prostitution is good, that organizing is a basic human right. What is your feeling?
You're going to see a range of attitudes on how to help women get out of prostitution, but I don't want to spend any energy supporting an industry that essentially destroys women-emotionally, spiritually, and physically. You have to choose where you spend your energy. I'd much rather organize a safe house for women.
The three things the women in prostitution that I've spoken to have said they want is 1) emergency shelter, a home---the incidence of homelessness among prostituted women is extremely high; 2) drug and alcohol treatment; and 3) sustainable job skills. Which is a big problem, because people get into this as teenagers (the average age of entry into prostitution is 14)-and what can they do, waitress for $5 an hour?
Which brings us back to the economics---the only 'occupation' where women make more money than men is in prostitution. It seems like there are just overwhelming economic forces keeping women in this.
But keep in mind that even in countries where the unemployment rate is astronomical, you do not see men on the streets prostituting. The men sell pencils, etc. It's not about economics at the bottom line---economics is a vicious factor which is used in the service of subordinating women, but it makes no sense, in pure economic theory. If there are 50 starving male refugees and 50 female refugees, and only the women end up in prostitution . . . Who buys them is not the other 50 men-but why don't the men go out and prostitute just as much? Because that's not part of male supremacy.
That's the thing that amazes me---that there are men who think they should be able to 'buy' a woman (or more accurately, a hole in a woman's body). That $20 is a good exchange for someone's dignity, their personhood, their body---how can you get to that point in your head?
Read enough pornography and you'll understand; get on the internet . . . There are long lists: you want to be in this city, you want a 12-year old, a 13-year-old, a fat 14-year-old, a brown one, a red one, a pregnant one-you name it, it's 'available'.
And when you [men] see a system that organizes it and presents it like it's normal, you begin to believe it's OK. Then you see alleged 'feminists' who say women can choose this, and you think that it's OK.
There are many, many lies about prostitution that are being pumped out by the mainstream media. One that women like it. Two, that they get rich in prostitution. Women in any type of prostitution, when they get out, have nothing. There's a huge amount of money that passes through their hands, but they do not keep it. There is no woman I've ever known who was in prostitution, who walked out and bought a house-it doesn't happen. Pimps get 90%-that's another lie that the media and COYOTE put out there, that prostitution is a fun activity that women in college can do once a week to pay for their tuition.
Another part of this is that there is no discussion about the johns, the customers.
Everyone from the pro-prostitution perspective declares that the institution of prostitution is normal, has always been there and we'll never get rid of it---but the prostituted woman is seen as bad, disturbed---and the customer is invisible. And that's a problem. They don't want to be seen.
Do you see this huge effort in the media to normalize stripping and prostitution?
Oh yes. The internet, tragically, has increased men's access to vulnerable women, who don't even have electricity in their home, not to mention a computer. It's increased men's global access to women in ways that are devastating to women.
How do you keep going?
Because the results of this research counteract the lies that are out there. This is a way of giving people accurate information from the most silenced group of women, the most raped group of women, in the world, and their voices are not heard.
Do you encounter women who say they like this 'work'?
Women don't say that to me because of the questions I ask. They're used to seeing questions about HIV and condom use, not questions about being sexually assaulted, torture, childhood sexual abuse (which is documented now at over 90% amongst prostituted women, usually with multiple perpetrators-many in these agencies have NEVER met a women who HASN'T been incested or raped)-and, as Andrea Dworkin says, 'incest is boot camp for prostitution'.
And that's logical because it explains the behavior [of the prostituted woman]. It's the only way you could get broken down enough inside to sell your body.
That's not true. You sell your body if you're hungry enough and men will buy 'it.' There is an economic factor. But I am amazed at the depth of the resistant in women who are prostituted-how much they resist, at all levels, the experience of being prostituted. They have many ways of surviving which are creative and brilliant and keep them alive---and protect a part of their self from the hatred, contempt and violence that is aimed at them all the time.
One of the lies I hear is that men go to strip clubs to 'admire' women-and I always say, 'no men go to strip clubs to get back at women.' And I think that is the same reason men go to prostitutes.
First of all, in order to continue in prostitution, you either have to be psychologically or chemically dissociated. You cannot do 15 blow jobs a night, or get @#%$ by 10 men and stay in your body- the human mind protects us from experiences like that. And if your can't dissociate, then you've got to have drugs. One woman told me her experience recently---she is still very dissociated even many years out of prostituting-but when she was in stripping, she described herself as very mentally disturbed and dissociated and she said she couldn't even hear what the men were saying to her, she tuned out so much. One day, she started to hear what they were saying to her---the awful abuse. It's 'lean over,' 'show me your @#%$, ' 'you're this'-it's all the hatred and misogyny that men have that comes out in a place like that. When that happened to her, she started sobbing; she threw their money back at them, turned her back on them, and NOBODY---for days this went on-nobody stopped her, no one said 'what's the matter,' 'get out of here.' You want to tell me that men go to a strip club to admire women-I guarantee you this horror happens regularly. I've never heard of any man telling me 'I wanted to get that woman out of there'. I'm trying to get this very real for everyone---this is what it's really like. This hurts women extremely badly-about as badly as anyone can be hurt.
It's bad enough to live in a society that treats women this way---if we're fighting to make it better. But to live in a time when all this stuff is being normalized, and turned into a 'feminist cause' . . . Where do you see us in five year? Is it going to get worse?
I don't know. I hope it doesn't get worse.
Do you see anything turning around?
I think there's a second wave [of feminism] going on, in response to the sexism of women's studies professors (people like Katie Roiphe) that advocate sex work as some kind of choice. That's very hopeful to me.
But as soon as you come out against pornography, people call you a puritan, say you're against sex, which is just stupid---they label and completely dismiss you and never address what you're saying. The issues never get out there.
I've been called all those names---if that's the worst they can call me, it doesn't really get to me. But you need support [to do this work].
What would healthy sexuality look like in the media, in the movies?
That's like saying 'what would a culture that's not sexist look like?' I don't even think we can even imagine it. I'm sure there is healthy sexuality out there someplace---I think it's got a mutuality to it, nobody's dominant, no one is subordinate.
What can women do to turn this situation around. When a women is getting married and a man wants to have a bachelor party . . .
'Bachelor parties' are rape parties. Women in prostitution know that a 'bachelor party' is an extremely dangerous situation, much worse than turning your average trick. It's some kind of macho ritual to show other men---it's purchased gang rape--and it's terrifying for the woman. In any other context what happens to her would be call verbal harassment, rape . . . it would be actionable by law if someone so much as touched me [at my job]. But for the woman in prostitution who is 'purchased' for a 'bachelor party' it's OK to do all these things to her: being raped by a gang of drunken men, beat her up if she resists . . . So I would say any man who goes to a 'bachelor party' is not a friend of any woman, just the way some of us don't tolerate going into a home where Hustler or KKK material is lying around. For any woman not to resist a 'bachelor party' is . . . Men are the best ones to educate other men about what a 'bachelor party' really is, if they're willing to talk about it. And we've got to talk about it, and align ourselves with [good] men. There are some very good men in this movement [against prostitution]. There are good men and woman collaborators---and we need to know that.
How do you feel about men?
I don't hate men. I hate people who promote prostitution, no matter what their gender-I hate pimps, I hate customers.
What would be appropriate punishment for johns, since too little, if any, of the focus is every on their crimes?
There have been some amazingly creative responses. In Minneapolis, and several other cities, cars are permanently confiscated. Of course, arrest and charge them. I'm thinking of the most educational and effective ways of doing this. There's a city in New Jersey that puts the names of arrested johns on billboards next to the highway. This is along the same lines of taking pictures of guys coming out of Hooters . . . (referring to last month's issue of Merge). Tell their employers, so they can't hide. I don't want men to feel [like what they're doing] is OK, I don't want them to feel safe, feel benign or be invisible in this process.
Check out Dr. Farley's work: http://www.prostitutionresearch.com

Getting Real Facts About Prostitution
Dr. Melissa Farley is working to create a bounty of evidence that shatters the lies told about prostitution and prostituted women. Here in an interview with Merge, we talk to Dr. Farley about her work. She is working with Prostitution Research and Education, which is a project of the San Francisco Women's Center. and collecting data from all over the world.
What is your research about? What are you trying to accomplish?
I would like to see the institution of prostitution ended. The goal of this research is to document the experiences of women in prostitution. One of the reasons, of many, that I got into this is if you look through the professional medical journals and literature on prostitution, you know what you see? HIV and HIV risk factors. That's about 90% of what's written about prostitution to 'educate' professionals. You know how I interpret that? It's the perspective of the john who is interested in 'clean meat.' And that doesn't make me very happy.
And it completely skirts the issue of prostitution and makes it seem like just an occupational hazard.
That's the big spin out there-prostitution as a 'job.' My first article has just been published in the mainstream media--and it's been quite a struggle to get it out there-even in 'feminist' journals and magazines. I don't know if you know how feminist academia is infiltrated with the 'sex worker' point of view. In women's studies, they're teaching that stripping is a fun thing to do, something a student can do for a year to pay for college. There's massive money in the commercial sex industry-you don't have to manufacture product-and they're supporting this.
There seems to be a lot of that 'Orwellian' feminism . . . using the word feminist and twisting it to mean something that it's not, to mean everything that women who have a conscience are against-legitimizing prostitution, stripping, etc.
The word feminism as you see it in the media today means almost nothing. It's meaningless. They're taking our words away from us, as usual. I never use the word 'sex work' because those words imply that it is legitimate work, that when a young woman grows up at the age of 12 she has a discussion with her mother- 'let's see; what would I like to be? A doctor? A lawyer? A computer techie? Oh, no I think I'm going to be a prostitute.' That doesn't happen.
What are you finding in your research? How are you reaching women in prostitution?
I've talked to survivors of prostitution who are out. I do not use the word prostitute. Because it dehumanizes people. We don't refer to a battered women as a 'batteree'. We don't turn the woman into what was done to her. So I would prefer to use the verb 'prostituting,' the adjective 'prostituted,' or 'in prostitution.' Women who are 'in prostitution', Women, survivors, who are 'out.'
To separate it from the woman.
Exactly.
So how do you find these women?
I've contacted agencies that work with survivors of prostitution, going to conferences like the one held by the Council for Prostitution Alternatives (which is also working with PROMISE; see the interview part II). Unfortunately, when it comes to organizations in the US trying to help women out of prostitution, it's a very small world. In other parts of the world, people are much more progressive on the issue.
Really? I would have thought with what's going on in Thailand, in Asia . . . that it's much more backwards.
Well, Thailand notwithstanding, in most other places, there are large, vocal groups of feminists
'Real feminists' as we would call them.
Here in the US there are very vocal groups of people with my race and class background (white, European American, middle-class) who speak for all prostitutes, who say that they like their 'job' and what they need is a union and a condom-but, in fact, the number of people in prostitution who are white, middle-class is extremely small. The vast majority of women in prostitution-and by that I mean stripping, massage parlors, street prostitution, escort, brothel, prostitution tourism-the women there are in extreme poverty and they are women of color.
And isn't that the basis of the problem-it's always about economics.
If it was just about economics there would be equal number of men and women in prostitution. It is not just about economics-it's about a gender hierarchy. And if you really want to see male supremacy, look at prostitution.
Getting back to COYOTE and the unions for prostituted women . . . many feel that anything that helps women while they're in prostitution is good, that organizing is a basic human right. What is your feeling?
You're going to see a range of attitudes on how to help women get out of prostitution, but I don't want to spend any energy supporting an industry that essentially destroys women-emotionally, spiritually, and physically. You have to choose where you spend your energy. I'd much rather organize a safe house for women.
The three things the women in prostitution that I've spoken to have said they want is 1) emergency shelter, a home---the incidence of homelessness among prostituted women is extremely high; 2) drug and alcohol treatment; and 3) sustainable job skills. Which is a big problem, because people get into this as teenagers (the average age of entry into prostitution is 14)-and what can they do, waitress for $5 an hour?
Which brings us back to the economics---the only 'occupation' where women make more money than men is in prostitution. It seems like there are just overwhelming economic forces keeping women in this.
But keep in mind that even in countries where the unemployment rate is astronomical, you do not see men on the streets prostituting. The men sell pencils, etc. It's not about economics at the bottom line---economics is a vicious factor which is used in the service of subordinating women, but it makes no sense, in pure economic theory. If there are 50 starving male refugees and 50 female refugees, and only the women end up in prostitution . . . Who buys them is not the other 50 men-but why don't the men go out and prostitute just as much? Because that's not part of male supremacy.
That's the thing that amazes me---that there are men who think they should be able to 'buy' a woman (or more accurately, a hole in a woman's body). That $20 is a good exchange for someone's dignity, their personhood, their body---how can you get to that point in your head?
Read enough pornography and you'll understand; get on the internet . . . There are long lists: you want to be in this city, you want a 12-year old, a 13-year-old, a fat 14-year-old, a brown one, a red one, a pregnant one-you name it, it's 'available'.
And when you [men] see a system that organizes it and presents it like it's normal, you begin to believe it's OK. Then you see alleged 'feminists' who say women can choose this, and you think that it's OK.
There are many, many lies about prostitution that are being pumped out by the mainstream media. One that women like it. Two, that they get rich in prostitution. Women in any type of prostitution, when they get out, have nothing. There's a huge amount of money that passes through their hands, but they do not keep it. There is no woman I've ever known who was in prostitution, who walked out and bought a house-it doesn't happen. Pimps get 90%-that's another lie that the media and COYOTE put out there, that prostitution is a fun activity that women in college can do once a week to pay for their tuition.
Another part of this is that there is no discussion about the johns, the customers.
Everyone from the pro-prostitution perspective declares that the institution of prostitution is normal, has always been there and we'll never get rid of it---but the prostituted woman is seen as bad, disturbed---and the customer is invisible. And that's a problem. They don't want to be seen.
Do you see this huge effort in the media to normalize stripping and prostitution?
Oh yes. The internet, tragically, has increased men's access to vulnerable women, who don't even have electricity in their home, not to mention a computer. It's increased men's global access to women in ways that are devastating to women.
How do you keep going?
Because the results of this research counteract the lies that are out there. This is a way of giving people accurate information from the most silenced group of women, the most raped group of women, in the world, and their voices are not heard.
Do you encounter women who say they like this 'work'?
Women don't say that to me because of the questions I ask. They're used to seeing questions about HIV and condom use, not questions about being sexually assaulted, torture, childhood sexual abuse (which is documented now at over 90% amongst prostituted women, usually with multiple perpetrators-many in these agencies have NEVER met a women who HASN'T been incested or raped)-and, as Andrea Dworkin says, 'incest is boot camp for prostitution'.
And that's logical because it explains the behavior [of the prostituted woman]. It's the only way you could get broken down enough inside to sell your body.
That's not true. You sell your body if you're hungry enough and men will buy 'it.' There is an economic factor. But I am amazed at the depth of the resistant in women who are prostituted-how much they resist, at all levels, the experience of being prostituted. They have many ways of surviving which are creative and brilliant and keep them alive---and protect a part of their self from the hatred, contempt and violence that is aimed at them all the time.
One of the lies I hear is that men go to strip clubs to 'admire' women-and I always say, 'no men go to strip clubs to get back at women.' And I think that is the same reason men go to prostitutes.
First of all, in order to continue in prostitution, you either have to be psychologically or chemically dissociated. You cannot do 15 blow jobs a night, or get @#%$ by 10 men and stay in your body- the human mind protects us from experiences like that. And if your can't dissociate, then you've got to have drugs. One woman told me her experience recently---she is still very dissociated even many years out of prostituting-but when she was in stripping, she described herself as very mentally disturbed and dissociated and she said she couldn't even hear what the men were saying to her, she tuned out so much. One day, she started to hear what they were saying to her---the awful abuse. It's 'lean over,' 'show me your @#%$, ' 'you're this'-it's all the hatred and misogyny that men have that comes out in a place like that. When that happened to her, she started sobbing; she threw their money back at them, turned her back on them, and NOBODY---for days this went on-nobody stopped her, no one said 'what's the matter,' 'get out of here.' You want to tell me that men go to a strip club to admire women-I guarantee you this horror happens regularly. I've never heard of any man telling me 'I wanted to get that woman out of there'. I'm trying to get this very real for everyone---this is what it's really like. This hurts women extremely badly-about as badly as anyone can be hurt.
It's bad enough to live in a society that treats women this way---if we're fighting to make it better. But to live in a time when all this stuff is being normalized, and turned into a 'feminist cause' . . . Where do you see us in five year? Is it going to get worse?
I don't know. I hope it doesn't get worse.
Do you see anything turning around?
I think there's a second wave [of feminism] going on, in response to the sexism of women's studies professors (people like Katie Roiphe) that advocate sex work as some kind of choice. That's very hopeful to me.
But as soon as you come out against pornography, people call you a puritan, say you're against sex, which is just stupid---they label and completely dismiss you and never address what you're saying. The issues never get out there.
I've been called all those names---if that's the worst they can call me, it doesn't really get to me. But you need support [to do this work].
What would healthy sexuality look like in the media, in the movies?
That's like saying 'what would a culture that's not sexist look like?' I don't even think we can even imagine it. I'm sure there is healthy sexuality out there someplace---I think it's got a mutuality to it, nobody's dominant, no one is subordinate.
What can women do to turn this situation around. When a women is getting married and a man wants to have a bachelor party . . .
'Bachelor parties' are rape parties. Women in prostitution know that a 'bachelor party' is an extremely dangerous situation, much worse than turning your average trick. It's some kind of macho ritual to show other men---it's purchased gang rape--and it's terrifying for the woman. In any other context what happens to her would be call verbal harassment, rape . . . it would be actionable by law if someone so much as touched me [at my job]. But for the woman in prostitution who is 'purchased' for a 'bachelor party' it's OK to do all these things to her: being raped by a gang of drunken men, beat her up if she resists . . . So I would say any man who goes to a 'bachelor party' is not a friend of any woman, just the way some of us don't tolerate going into a home where Hustler or KKK material is lying around. For any woman not to resist a 'bachelor party' is . . . Men are the best ones to educate other men about what a 'bachelor party' really is, if they're willing to talk about it. And we've got to talk about it, and align ourselves with [good] men. There are some very good men in this movement [against prostitution]. There are good men and woman collaborators---and we need to know that.
How do you feel about men?
I don't hate men. I hate people who promote prostitution, no matter what their gender-I hate pimps, I hate customers.
What would be appropriate punishment for johns, since too little, if any, of the focus is every on their crimes?
There have been some amazingly creative responses. In Minneapolis, and several other cities, cars are permanently confiscated. Of course, arrest and charge them. I'm thinking of the most educational and effective ways of doing this. There's a city in New Jersey that puts the names of arrested johns on billboards next to the highway. This is along the same lines of taking pictures of guys coming out of Hooters . . . (referring to last month's issue of Merge). Tell their employers, so they can't hide. I don't want men to feel [like what they're doing] is OK, I don't want them to feel safe, feel benign or be invisible in this process.
Check out Dr. Farley's work: http://www.prostitutionresearch.com

yeah - MTV had it's annual well-hyped commercial award show this week, and there is usually some staged 'outrageous' behavior that occurs in order to promote press and record sales. There is something wrong when Britney Spears kissing Madonna is considered outrageous, but hardly commented upon is 50 Cent's pimp dance with Snoop Dog where women in underwear are dangling off them. There's never the reverse image of women selling out their stable of guys.

And this would be better, why?

Can you imagine being held at gunpoint by jocks who want to ogle and touch you for sex, who obviously appear to care nothing for you any more than an object, and are appear to be ready to rape you?

The amount of uncaring and distracted responses to this article illustrates the evironment that allows this sort of IRRESPONSABILITY.

Let me remind you. You have an innocent will, it is called a conscience, and it is asking you to care for others just as your loved one's care for you. Peace and Truth Bay Area.

prostitution only functions as the exploitation of women in a society where women are less powerful and shame is associated with the practice.

If you were to create a similar demand shame and power structure on lets say waitressing soon waitresses would also become mistreated drug users etc.

There is no reason why a prostitute should not have the right to refuse a client or to have only clients that they like except where it is illegal and shameful practice where they would thus be artificially denied power.

your desire is (y)our shame