Craigslist changes
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark shut down the website's Erotic Services boards yesterday in response to mounting legal pressure upon the high-profile arrest of the suspected and so-called "Craigslist Killer" late last month. Do you know who's thrilled about this news? Street pimps.Since prostitution will always be a fact of life, what sense does it make to shut down a service that actually made safer the transaction of sex for money? Booking clients online, dictating the terms of a meeting, and having a way to track down clients is much safer for sex trade workers than standing on a street corner and making yourself available to anyone capable of rolling down a car window.
The step in the opposite direction should be taken, of course, and that is to legalize prostitution-- bringing it up from underground, weakening the black market dominated by pimps and thugs, putting an end to some ethically-dubious law enforcement techniques, and giving public health officials a fighting chance against the pandemics of sexually-transmitted disease and violence against women. The criminalization of prostitution should have gone out long ago, along with the concept of abstinence-only sex education. (Oops, my bad.)
Sex-for-hire offers will naturally still exist on Craigslist and websites similar, only in a modified, subtler form. The dangerous charade of "protecting" women (and men) by prosecuting them will continue unabated.
posted by CM @ 5:24 PM
2 Comments:
I love this libertarian thinking. I also love that you’re not calling for regulating the hell out of it after it is legalized.
TA
Oops. I forgot to mention the part where we unionize them.
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