Czech town to fine clients of street prostitutes

The town of Chomutov, Czech Republic has had huge problems with street prostitution since the 1990’s. As of the first day of this year it has had a municipal ordinance in force, pursuant to which anyone caught soliciting a prostitute will pay a fine. Before the ordinance was adopted, only the street prostitutes could face fines if caught. Deputy Mayor of the city told a local daily newspaper that the city administration hopes the ordinance will discourage most potential clients and the women will disappear from the public streets and places. According to the ordinance, the soliciting of a prostitute is a misdemeanor “of a very sensitive nature” which is “investigated” by the municipal authority, i.e. something most men would prefer to avoid.

In addition, Chomutov Municipal Police decided in 2008 to publish photos of drivers soliciting roadside prostitutes near main roads, where doing so resulted in road rule violations and related problems. However, since the applicable law did not allow the immediate identification of the drivers (clients), this measure proved ineffective.

Most women in the Czech Republic who offer sex for money have their own tiny apartments (sometimes shared by more girls/women). Naturally, they pay no income taxes because there is no way of proving that their encounters with men actually constitute prostitution. Chomutov is near the Czech-German border where foreign truckers and German citizens were the most common clients of the local prostitutes. In the recent years, however, the demand for these services has decreased rapidly.

LN: Many Czech schools hire religious societies to teach sex ed

(c) Getty Images

Way too many Czech schools hire or appoint religious societies and NGO’s to teach sex ed. It is dangerous because they teach “abstinence only”, the teacher is not present during the lectures and they lie to children, for example by saying that condoms do not protect against HIV, the Lidove noviny daily wrote today, citing an extensive research the paper has recently conducted.

According to experts quoted by the daily this form of sex education can influence only children who are raised in a similar way by their own parents (i.e. Roman Catholics, etc.).

Most schools appoint religious societies because they are cheap, or their services are even free of charge. No surprise, because their fee or reward is the possibility to be able to teach what they believe in. However, there is a strict separation of church and state in Czech public schools and certain restrictions apply in terms of religious societies being given space for their “lectures”.

The Czech UIV Institute conducted a “flash research”, with the following results (selection):

• only 4 percent of schools arrange special/separate sex ed lectures for boys and girls
• 90 percent of sex ed teachers are women
• 60 percent of sex ed teachers are biology teachers and “sex ed” is a part of biology classes curriculum
• 25 percent of schools have an educator who teaches “Family Education”, making sex ed a part of this course
• most schools have their own teachers-employees talk with children, while inviting a real expert for “open discussions” (i.e. “what do you want to know” QaA) is the second most frequent method
• demonstrations and “tools” (“condom on a banana”) are used almost exclusively at large schools in bigger cities

Reverse discrimination: when a store in Brno discriminates against men

Wanted: a skilled and experienced female clerk (shop assistant). That’s what this ad says. Found it today in the very heart of Brno:

(c) Petr Bokuvka

The store discriminates against male applicants. Publishing ads that discriminate due to age, sex or marital status, to name a few issues, is very frequent in this country.

The gender issue is usually based on the “language problems” and stereotypes, i.e. how we associate certain professions either with men or women. And the problem is that most Czech nouns carry information on the gender of the person referred to. For example:

prodavac = male shop assistant
prodavacka = female shop assistant

ucitel = male teacher
ucitelka = female teacher

etc.

In other words, most of these ads are published or printed and hanged out by people who live in stereotypes. A guy would not want to work in a store that sells clothes, they might think.

Another two most frequent forms of discrimination in “wanted” ads are: We offer work in a young team – which translates as  “if you are over 35, do not bother applying”, or We request flexibility beyond usual working hours – which translates as “women with children should not attempt to reply”.

I understand discrimination is a bad thing, but on the other hand “it is my company so I can hire whoever I want” is an element of democracy and free market economy that should not be forgotten either. Firms that seek new employees are therefore recommended to use slashes in their ads, like this: prodavac/prodavacka, i.e. in order to refer to both sexes in their ads. On the other hand, the fact that HR specialists ask undesirable questions (Do you want to have children? Are you pregnant now? Do you have grandparents to take care of your children in case you are sick?) is an altogether different thing that is hard to prove and battle with.

Czech teacher sex tape: the woman will not face prosecution

The English teacher from the Czech town of Znojmo who was taped having sex with a former student (18) while her current student (16) watched and commented will not go to jail, the iDNES.cz news server writes.

Miroslava Prillerova, 29, was given a “trial period” of two years by the district attorney, so the punishment is not even court-ordered (as in “suspension of sentence” pursuant to the Czech penal code).

According to the news server the woman faced imprisonment for up to two years as she was having sex in front of a minor (ironically, the age of consent is 15). The police were also investigating whether the publication of the video on the Internet was illegal and the answer is no.

Prillerova left the school on her own shortly after the scandal surfaced, while her bosses were discussing “legal ways to fire her” (even before a trial).

The Vanessa Hudgens “scandal” and Czech family movies. Good to compare

DISCLAIMER: This post might not be suitable for minors
and conservative readers

A reminder to begin with: A few years ago Vanessa Hudgens took a few pictures of herself that she wanted to give to her then-boyfriend. The photos leaked and surfaced…on the Internet. They were nudes, not porn.

And yet she felt like she had to apologize to her fans who might have felt offended by… well, something we all do all the time, i.e. get naked.

SMASH CUT TO:

Czech Republic, April 2009: TV Nova airs a certain 1981 Czechoslovak movie about a shy construction worker apprentice who seems to have zero luck with women [IMDb link]. The movie was scheduled for primetime program, i.e. 8:00 p.m. And this scene is what viewers can see about 20 minutes into the movie:

Yes, about 10 girls go swimming in a pond later in the evening. They are 15-16 years old… and they are naked.

Yes, pre-1989 communist cinematography sometimes consisted in having naked teen girls in few-second shots in family movies and comedies, if it fit the script and if it was obvious that this is what people do.

Back in the 1990’s when the same aforementioned TV station aired Beverly Hills 90210 I always hated scenes in which actors engaged in sex, the scene would fade to black and the next scene would show the male protagonist waking up wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Guys under 30 do NOT get dressed after sex. Never ever…

Teacher sex tape scandal: footage was made by her student, police say

(c) Getty Images

The Czech high school teacher who was taped having sex with an 18 year-old young man (not a student of her school) might go to jail after all.

According to the police the footage was indeed made by a sixteen year-old student who IS in the woman’s English class. Or was, because the woman quit on her own before her principal could find a legal way to fire her.

The woman will probably be charged with what we might call (it is my translation of the particular provision of the Penal Code) “endangerment of moral development of the youth”. Apparently, it is what you commit if you have sex and let an 16 year-old watch you, even though the age of consent is fifteen.

I used to defend the woman, claiming that “teachers have sex and tape themselves doing it too, big deal”. Hmm. I stand corrected. As a teacher she was supposed to know where the legal-illegal borderline was. Intoxication is not an excuse.

Cops: Penis snow sculpture? No way

(c) B. Malecek, http://www.veslavkove.cz

A group of enthusiasts from the Czech town of Slavkov u Brna found a unique way to spend winter free time. They build penis sculptures. In other words they build a snow mock-up of something almost everybody in this country has seen or touched (at least once) in their life.

However the Municipal Police of the said town decided that the sculpture must be destroyed. The Commissioner, Pavel Ehrenberger, said to a local daily:

It was built close to a kindergarten, so it had to go…

Since this was a penis, I think it is appropriate to react: What the f*uck? It was a piece of ice, for crying out loud. It was a satirical stunt. And so what it was built close to a kindergarten? Uptight parents could have told their kids it was a mushroom, whereas normal parents could explain it according to the actual status of mental development of their child. Is the Commissioner trying to say that had this thing been built elsewhere, they would leave it alone?

Plus, I am pretty certain that kindergarten kids can’t be offended by a snow sculpture resembling an erection, if they have not seen a real one before, which corresponds to Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory of signs and semiotics. There is no connotation, there is no reference model…

This is a huge hypocrisy issue going on. Many Czechs will turn away when they see a drunk hobo – but they often get drunk at parties themselves, so the only difference is that they wake up in their own or somebody else’s bed, while the hobo wakes up on a park bench. Some people will point and faint when they see a snow (!!) sculpture of a penis but they will not report their neighbor to authorities for littering.

Where did all the pubic hair go?

Fashion is a remarkable phenomenon.

In 2001 I went swimming one day and I was pointed at by two high school guys in showers and I am pretty sure I heard the word “fag”. I ignored it because they did not seem ready and willing to participate in a debate on, well, hair, and I had to admit that back in 2001 not many men felt the same as them and you can’t do anything with stereotypes if you have to deal with two idiots, especially when you are naked.

2008. A strange thing happened during the seven years. Many Czech men seem to have realized that scissors and razors do the thing, and we do not even have to have a famous male celebrity who would promote shaving, just like some U.S. famous men do.

According to my ex-girlfriend’s little survey among our friends, most men decide to do something about it as a result of their girlfriend’s request/nagging. Once they survive their “what will guys in the gym say” stage, they are doing fine.

So, yes, Czech men do shave a lot… This has been an answer to a reader question…

Pornstar teacher quit the school on her own

The 31 year-old teacher from the Czech town of Znojmo who was cell-phone taped having sex with a 19 year-old man quit the school on her own. Under the Czech Labour Act, this form of employment termination that is initiated by the employee and against which the employer does not object can become valid and effective immediately, with no severance pay involved.

Originally, the principal maintained that there were no grounds on which she could be fired, so if he really wanted to fire her, he would have to give her 4 monthly salaries as the aforementioned severance pay.

Students mostly voice their support, as this was a “stupid party incident” she took part in in her spare time, and she did not violate any law. However, there are still some theories that the person who actually taped it was only 15.

Teacher-student sex scandal: footage taped by a fifteen year-old

The scandal of the amateur sex tape of a young English teacher and a young man from the Czech town of Znojmo has an interesting development. According to a certain tabloid, the author of the footage is fifteen. The young man admitted to have done so to the police, the daily claims.

That changes the originally “it-was-not-illegal” argument. Whereas the age of consent IS indeed 15, there are certain laws that protect minors aged 15 to 18 (“moral development endangerment” is the most interesting translation of the penal code provision I can come up with now….)…