Craigslist Removes Its Controversial Adult Section

Cyrus writes "The online classified website Craigslist has removed its controversial Adult Services portion of its website. Technology blog TechCrunch was the first to report the section had been blacked out with the word 'Censored.'"

Comments

Re:Consenting Adults

[cappp]

I'm not sure you're right there, at least in part. Prostitution is legal and regulated in a fair number of countries - Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, Canada for instance - and treated in a somewhat more complicated manner in many more - most of the rest of Europe, India, a smattering of Central American states, and so on. The sheer scale of the sexual industry in countries that have legal protections in place - which have reduced financial incentives for what would otherwise be illicit trades - suggests that a decent number of men and woman deliberately choose prostitution as a rational employment route. Superfreakenomics has an interesting chapter online which covers the basic topic.

That of course leaves the question of trafficking which is the usual problem raised i.e. does the prostitution industry provide a prime motivation for human trafficing. However there seems to be a significant lack of data supporting this. The Guardian ran an interesting piece covering this topic. I'm going to quote just the opening paragraph but its well worth a read if you find yourself with a free 10 minutes.

There is something familiar about the tide of misinformation which has swept through the subject of sex trafficking in the UK: it flows through exactly the same channels as the now notorious torrent about Saddam Hussein's weapons. In the story of UK sex trafficking, the conclusions of academics who study the sex trade have been subjected to the same treatment as the restrained reports of intelligence analysts who studied Iraqi weapons – stripped of caution, stretched to their most alarming possible meaning and tossed into the public domain. There, they have been picked up by the media who have stretched them even further in stories which have then been treated as reliable sources by politicians, who in turn provided quotes for more misleading stories.

Yes, that doesn't prove that sex workers necessarily enjoy their work. It doesn't prove that other forms of coercion don't exist.But it does frame the issue somewhat differently.

Re:oh darn

[kestasjk]

• It's not always women
• You're being morally presumptuous, basically saying you want to decide whether they should work as prostitutes based on whether you think it's wrong

I'm not commenting on whether I think it's right (I'd sure never consider it a career option), but I don't think it's right to decide for other people.

Re:oh darn

[Kilrah_il]

I don't know about you, but many times that I have sex with a "normal woman" I become somewhat poorer (although usually not 200$). I do admit that the one getting richer is the restaurant/bar and not the woman, so who is the victim here?

P.S. In a magazine in my country they once did a comparison of the price of getting laid between a hooker, one-night stand, steady girlfriend and wife. As you can guess, the hooker and the one-night stand were the cheapest.

Re:oh darn

[jewishbaconzombies]

There's plenty of other sites. Backpage.com is just one of many that comes to mind. Is Facebook is another.

Re:oh darn

[wmac]

You mean all prostitutes are prostitutes because they are poor?

Don't you remember the girl which messed up the governors life? She became a prostitute in order to become rich very fast. I personally knew a prostitute which owned and rented several apartments.

Some women try to find a rich man just because they want to become rich ASAP. What is the difference with a prostitute then? (except that some of them agree to be exclusive by signing a marriage contract).

Re:oh darn

[TooMuchToDo]

After working in the adult entertainment industry on the tech side, let me tell you that you're half-correct. Some girls do it because they're desperate. The other side of it (that you get wrong) is that there are girls who enjoy making $150K+/yr from sex. Hence, the need for a regulated sex industry (see: Amsterdam).