Craigslist Agrees With State AGs To Curb "Erotic Services" Ads 402
The New York Times reports that Craigslist has reached an agreement with 40 state attorneys general to tame its notoriously unruly "erotic services" listings. Clever diplomacy: according to the article, Craigslist "said that it will charge erotic services vendors a small fee for each ad — about $10, Mr. Buckmaster said — and require that they use a credit card for the payment. It will donate the money to charities that combat child exploitation and human trafficking. This, theoretically, will let the company confirm not just a phone number but also an identity." I hope they work on cleaning the weird spammers from the ordinary personal ads, too.
FP (Score:0, Informative)
I once had sex with a mule.
Re:I've always wondered about these... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm kind of suprised ... (Score:5, Informative)
... how many /.ers are pro prostitute.
It is less "pro prostitute" and more "anti restrictions." The government should not stop me from doing anything! (Unless it is someone else doing it to me)
Big Deal (Score:2, Informative)
Re:MOD PARENT UP! (Score:1, Informative)
TER = http://www.theeroticreview.com/ [theeroticreview.com] ... good provider review site, good way to minimize LE risk and have a good idea what to expect for sorting, ranking, and choosing
BD = http://www.bigdoggie.net/ [bigdoggie.net] ... another review site (though I really don't use it that much)
The nice thing about TER is that if you post a review you get a certain number of free days premium access (BD might do the same, not sure)
And the wife doesn't know ...
Re:back on the streets (Score:3, Informative)
If prostitutes had a legal standing their position would be a much better one.
That's not a sure thing for the US. I haven't researched this in depth, this article I found (http://sisyphe.org/spip.php?article1596) seems biased against prostitution, but suggests that legalization in europe hasn't had that effect. It points out that legal, licensed prostitues have been decreasing while profits from the sex trade have increased. It suggests that the sex trade which would remain illegal under any legalization proposal, such as underage child prostituion and sex slavery, is what benefits from legalization. There's a chance that legalization of one form of prostitution will make it harder to control the clearly immoral forms of it. I say we shouldn't experiment.
In addition to the hard data, it makes sense to me that legalizing prostitution would only compound the problems. I don't know why one would think that a pimp is suddenly going to become a good employer just because his "employees" aren't breaking the law anymore.
As far as "marriage is prostitution," if you really can't tell a difference then either you came from a really fucked up home or are incredibly naive as to what prostitution actually is.
Re:back on the streets (Score:4, Informative)
Prostitutes are almost always victims in several reguards.
And making it illegal only makes that worse, which was his point.
Re:Censorship (Score:3, Informative)
Typical pay ration for girls to guys in porn is anywhere from 5:1 to 10:1, depending on the production company, the "film", etc.
Re:"No victims" (Score:3, Informative)
Who is going to work for an abusive pimp who takes an arbitrary cut from their wages if there are legal, regulated options?
The "arbitrary cut" that most pimps take out of the earnings of the prostitutes who work for them is 100 percent. That's right, your typical streetwalker makes nothing, zero, zip. The pimp "takes care of the money for her," because she's "no good with money." If you don't believe me, ask a pimp. Read Iceberg Slim. Or, the Hughes Brothers made a documentary called American Pimp, which wasn't very good overall, but was pretty clear on this point.
So, while I understand what you're getting at, I'll ask a counter-question: Who is going to work for an abusive pimp, even if there is no legal, regulated option, when the pimp is going to take all their money? That's not a business. That's just being, uh ... victimized, maybe?
You ask who would work for an abusive pimp if there were any other options. Let's get past this idea that prostitutes work as prostitutes completely by choice, and throw the question out there as-is. Who would work for an abusive pimp if there were any other options? Yet it happens all the time. It happens because this is the nature of the abuse.
Women who work in a sex industry that caters 99.9 percent to the basest desires of men stand a very high chance of being abused or victimized -- if not physically, then emotionally, financially, etc. This is going to be true whether society formally condones prostitution or not. The act of seeking sexual gratification without concern for your partner is an asocial act, and as such it should be (at minimum) monitored carefully.
Re:"No victims" (Score:3, Informative)
pop quiz: does making it illegal make prostitution more or less susceptible to criminal influence?
Trick question. If you stop calling the people participating in the act "criminals," then the criminal influence disappears. The behavior does not, however. The question is whether it is healthy for society to condone the behaviors associated with the prostitution industry.
Living in San Francisco, I have seen firsthand what happens when you condone prostitution. Our former district attorney, Terrence Hallinan, basically made it known that prostitution offenses would not get prosecuted in the City of San Francisco a few years back. The result was totally predictable. The corner of 17th and Capp, which previously had been a known location for crack whores, gradually became a full-on outdoor brothel. Pimps drove in vans full of hookers from Richmond and Oakland and had them work the corners. Where once you had filthy, toothless women in sweatpants, now you had women in plastic hot pants and six inch heels, ducking behind cars when the police rolled by. Three blocks over on 20th Street, pimps would beat up prostitutes out in front of the steps of my friend's house, you'd have men cruising around the neighborhood accosting women alone on the street, and hookers would be using drugs in people's doorways.
So when you folks talk about victimless prostitution and legalizing it, please be a little more specific. Cuz just not calling the people criminals anymore ain't going to work.
Downtown in San Francisco, you have countless Asian massage parlors, many of which are staffed by women who have been trafficked from mainland China on promises of good jobs, etc. Once they get here they are basically held hostage, forced to "work off their travel expenses" -- which will never be worked off, because their debts to their kidnappers mysteriously keep growing. Across town, in the sleepy avenues of the Sunset District, there are whole houses full of these women. These women are not choosing to work for their pimps for protection, or because they can't make an honest living as prostitutes any other way. They are victims of international crime rings who have friends and family thousands of miles away, some of which will never see them again.
I'm sorry, but you Slashdotters are talking like typical men. All you want to see is the hot chick who's willing to have sex with you. The truth is that prostitution has destroyed the lives of thousands of women. The happy-go-lucky, sex-positive female who chose the sex industry as a fun, hot way to make a living is the minority. The majority are people who are living on the margins of life, many of whom do not know how to get out and return to normalcy. If you legalize prostitution itself, the people who prey on these women will only marginalize them some other way -- by giving them a drug habit, for example, or through emotional and physical abuse.
Oh, and by the way -- that district attorney I mentioned? Know what he's doing now? He's counsel for the Mitchell Bros. O'Farrell Theatre, which is widely acknowledged as being essentially a legalized brothel. Legalized, in the sense that the cops turn a blind eye to it. You can get pretty much whatever you want at the Mitchell Bros. if you have enough money. And that's the key to it -- these are the types of people who are going to push to bring more vice into communities, because they want the money that it will bring. They don't give a damn about the lives that are being ruined in the streets and behind closed doors, so long as they can get a steady stream of coeds to be strippers-turned-hookers in their clubs.
To me, this is a part of our society to be ashamed of -- not condoned.