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

oh darn

[ravenspear]

now all the prostitutes will post in casual encounters

Re:oh darn

[ravenspear]

I agree completely and have nothing against prostitution, it's just that this will clog up the casual encounters section for people that aren't looking to pay money for sex. That's why it made much more sense to have a separate section for it.

Re:oh darn

[Anonymous Coward]

the point was, that people do all kinds of things when they are desperate for money, and they aren't illegal. so why single out prostitution as being somehow worse than the other ones? whether or not they *want* to, they are *willing* to in order to make a lot of money in a very short period of time.

Re:oh darn

[fredmosby]

When people were working in factories under horrible conditions for little pay they didn't solve the problem by making working in factories illegal, the workers unionized and the government passed minimum wage and safety laws. If we banned all the jobs that people only do for money there wouldn't be very many legal jobs.

Re:oh darn

[dissy]

But it's without foundation to bring up the "lots of women want to do it" argument. And "want to do it", whatever the tedious capitalist he-may-be-interned-in-a-factory-but-at-least-he's-not-dying-in-the-fields armchair philosophers will tell you, must not be confused with "is desperate for money and willing to do it because there is no viable alternative".

So instead of a situation of a desperate woman being a prostitute to pay the bills, you instead would rather that desperate woman be a prostitute to pay the bills AND be a criminal.
That's rather nice of you :/

Look, we both know the problem is desperation, and that is what needs to be solved.
Clearly neither of us have that solution, nor do the women doing this.

Why make them criminals just because they are already in a fucked up situation?
Because outlawing something does not stop it, especially when you are that desperate already.

If it was simply taxed and regulated like any other legal job, we wouldn't have any of the Other problems we get today with prostitution, and will be making the exact same dent in the desperation problem as now (read None)

Then a lot of those desperate women will not be criminals as well, and might have a better chance of improving their situation without a police record to follow them forever.

Right now it's very hard to help improve any of those peoples lives, as with a criminal record they can't easily do quite a lot of things we take for granted, such as getting a job.

Remove that one little barrier and it becomes that much easier to provide some real help.

Re:oh darn

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this simple argument: if person A wants to fuck person B, and person B wants to pay them to do it, who the fuck are you to tell them that they're not allowed to?

Re:oh darn

[snowgirl]

I speak from anecdotal evidence, so I know this does not apply to everyone in the field. There certainly are women who don't really want to do the job, and these people certainly deserve a path out of their professional field, but there are a number of people like that in almost all careers.

You'd be surprised that it doesn't take a big stretch for a woman to get to the 6 figure mark, or at least what would be a 6 figure income if their pay is used as "take home", and we extrapolate what they would be earning if they were paying their proper taxes, etc.

I know one particular former call girl who willingly and knowingly entered into the field of her own free will, and felt more honest about her earnings than when she was working as a computer programmer.

Most people object to prostitution on two grounds: human trafficking, which should be wrong anyways, mistreatment by their pimps, or the dangers presented by clients. Most people who are against prostitution are not against the prostitutes themselves. They see them as "trapped" in a position where they have a high likelihood of harm. Yet, if we legalized it, then human trafficking would still be wrong, mistreatment by their pimps could be handled by police and other governmental authorities, and protection against clients is guaranteed the same way.

In Sweden, prostitution is not illegal, but being a pimp and frequenting a prostitute are illegal. Imagine the wonderful nature of your transaction of: "if you stiff me, I can call the cops, and they'll arrest you, and I walk away." Clients won't screw their prostitutes in this case. The same with pimps. "Go ahead, slap me... I'll call the cops, and they'll haul you away, and I can admit openly that I'm a prostitute, and I won't get taken away."

How about making prostitution a SAFE profession, rather than demanding it be illegal to stop people from doing it? If you're concerned about their health from the sex alone, either physical and/or mental, then when shall we expect an intent to make promiscuity itself illegal?

Re:oh darn

[xtracto]

There's one reason why some people call prostitution the oldest profession...

I think the main reason why prostitutes exist is because there is demand for it. And I believe there will always be.

The fact that in today's society it is "morally incorrect" to sell sexual services is just a temporary (in the hundreds of years span) thing.

But even if government would be able to ban all prostitution the only thing that would happen is that the service would become more expensive, and the people who provide the service would have less rights.

However, if prostitution was completely legal, open and accepted then it will only be a matter of calling a private number and safely providing/consuming those service at home.

The fact that some people choose to be prostitutes is because it gives them a certain amount of income for another certain amount of work. Sure, those same persons may be able to change their jobs but that would mean doing more work for less payment.

BTW, I remembered an interview a guy in Mexico made to 2 "male prostitutes" (Gigolos) from Mexico City. The two guys were professionals, one of them was a doctor. When asked why did they decide to prostitute they answered that it was because they earned a high salary doing this job whereas doing their day job was not profitable enough *for their lifestyle*

 

Re:oh darn

[jez9999]

Here in Italy, an extremely high percentage of prostitutes are essentially Russian women who are slaves to crime organizations.

And that's just Berlusconi's women!

Re:oh darn

[FuckingNickName]

but many times that I have sex with a "normal woman" I become somewhat poorer (although usually not 200$)

Every time I've had sex, it's been a progression of a friendship into a kissy relationship into a fully sexual relationship. I've never targeted anyone - certainly not by buying anything. I've never counted up how much I've spent in some way benefitting that person up to the point I first had sex with them. I've not considered having sex a goal, or the end of anything. It just happens. It's nice but it's not essential.

It's weird to see so many people here talk of sex as the result of an investment. Perhaps well regulated prostitutes would be the moral option for them if it were established that the prostitutes were physically and mentally healthy and had full freedom of choice. Or perhaps they need a fuck buddy. Or friends who will take a tenner and give you a BJ. I'm not sure.

Re:oh darn

[Jawnn]

By your logic, lots of dangerous occupations should be made illegal because they are dangerous or psychologically stressful. Of course, this is complete rubbish and we're left again with nothing but the puritanical notion that sex is "dirty" and that sex for money is especially dirty, which also, of course, is complete rubbish.

:rolleyes:

[KingAlanI]

Prostitution control is about as effective as drug control and gun control.

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:Idiots

[snowgirl]

There is a lot of belief in politics that if we make something illegal, people will stop doing it.

This idea is retarded, and recognizably inconsistent with reality.