In your face Craigslist, in your face!
Craigslist has decided to remove the “erotic services” section of its website until they can replace it with a more adequately monitored category, “adult services.” This decision was apparently reached due to the recent murder of masseuse Julissa Brisman by Philip Markoff, a 22 year old medical student at Boston University. Prior to this decision, virtually anyone could sell anything on the site with NO moderation. This included the sale of sex acts by both pimps and sex workers, and even the sale of humans themselves, most frequently women and minors.
I became outraged after I watched a film on a young girl who was sold as a sex slave via Craigslist, and still, to this day had not been able to press any charges against the many men who raped her and held her captive over a 3 day period. I wrote a post on the subject. The lack of moderation on Craigslist has lead to countless accounts of the trafficking of women and girls, and is an absolute monstrosity. Due to the ease of use of Craigslist, many people not formerly associated with the sex industry, mainly those who might have trafficked drugs or guns, got on board. It turns out that it is easier and more profitable to export or make a profit on a commodity that is grown locally, such as human beings, especially if that one human could have multiple customers.
Without completely condemning the site, I can acknowledge that in some ways Craigslist could be liberating for sex workers who had formerly relied on pimps to find their clients. If a woman can find her own clients, keep her own profits and do this from the safety of her own home, than it is probably a better option than the traditional scenario. However, usually, despite the fact that she could post and respond to emails herself, there is still a pimp involved.
While it is great that the case of Philip Markoff has lead to the demise of this service, wouldn’t it have been wonderful if any one of the undoubtedly thousands of cases that DIDN’T involve an upper class medical student, had attracted as much attention or concern.
Regardless, it’s a great day. Craigslist, IN YOUR FACE.
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Erika Szostak
J.E. Robertson
Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
I don't understand why people are so cruel to each other. Can't these people see that it's a human being their subjugating? How can you find something to be erotic when it's against another person's will. The precise reason that BDSM is so gloriously erotic is because the submissive wants to show the dominant person just how much they can and want to give into them by submitting to any safe, sane, and consensual thing that their dom can think up. Take that away, and you're just victimizing someone. If you can take pleasure from their pain, then you should be in prison, or reprogrammed, or taken out by somebody's daddy or uncle and made example of like they used to do down home... (I don't really have a "down home" but it sounded good)
I just wish people were nicer to each other. Maybe if men didn't treat women like such commodities, meant only to satisfy their lusty urges, and women didn't treat men like such creeps and rapists that have to prove their non-creepiness to the n'th degree before being let in, maybe we'd have less of this evil in our world.
As one dumbass once said in a moment of unrealized brilliance, "Can't we all just get along?"
Emo moment done, you can put the razors down now and wipe away the tears...