Comments on: Craigslist erotic services ads: AJC get it so, so, so very wrong

By: Wretched and Beautiful : links for 2009-05-14

Wretched and Beautiful : links for 2009-05-14 — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:02:23 +0000

[...] Being Amber Rhea >> Craigslist erotic services ads: AJC get it so, so, so very wrong By now you might have heard that Craigslist is ending its erotic services section. [...]

By: Email to the AJC about its Craigslist article | Rusty's Blog

Email to the AJC about its Craigslist article | Rusty's Blog — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:07:45 +0000

[...] has already written a lengthy, well thought-out response to the AJC article about Craigslist shutting down its erotic services section. I emailed Megan [...]

By: Amber

Amber — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:43:34 +0000

Part of me still wants to try to write a letter to the editor. We’ll see if I have the intestinal fortitude.

By: griftdrift

griftdrift — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:17:45 +0000

That article is terrible. If I can find time to write about it later I will.

By: SnowdropExplodes

SnowdropExplodes — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:38:10 +0000

I swear, if I ever become Prime Minister, I’d go after the traffickers with the fucking SAS and intelligence services. If it means risking provoking a war with Russia, are they really going to go to war to protect fucking child molesters?

Of course, it’s easy for me to say that – the chances of me being elected PM are as close to zero as makes no difference (on account of being a commie, a sadist, gender-variant and all the rest…) – but seriously, I think that’s the level of response that’s needed to take on the problem effectively.

The trouble is, Western society wants to believe everybody is as nice as us and will do the decent thing if you just encourage them enough. That’s how come Stalin was able to conquer half of Europe at the end of WW2, and it’s how come we don’t seem to have the guts to go after the real bad guys when we need to. Much easier to pick on the little guy and blame him (or her, in the case of this Craigslist thing)

By: Aspasia

Aspasia — Thu, 14 May 2009 04:16:29 +0000

Furthermore, exactly where was this McCullough finding all this ease in “buying a girl” online?

By: Aspasia

Aspasia — Thu, 14 May 2009 04:12:17 +0000

Inappropriate dress, including oversized clothing or overtly sexy clothing

So, when are they going to start raiding the average nightclub where women dress “overtly sexy” on the weekend (who gets to judge?) or the hip-hop/house nights where everyone dresses in oversized clothing?

What continues to piss me off about the flip conflation of child sexual exploitation and adult sex work is that NO ONE who makes those comments would dare apply that to the “sacred tradition” of heterosexual weddings and marriage and the proliferation of child brides. Using that logic, the entire Western wedding industry should be persecuted to the nth degree. Churches should be ripe for raids on Saturdays because, I mean, who’s to say the woman walking down the aisle is actually doing so of her own volition and isn’t actually a child forced into the situation? Or hell, how about just plain old forced/arranged marriage?

I mean, think of the CHILDREN!!eleventy1!!

By: Jen

Jen — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:22:47 +0000

Uhm, how did we go from adult woman gets killed from psycho on Craigslist to OMG, THINK OF THE CHILDREN? I mean really. That guy could have been killing women who were selling furniture on Craigsist and they probably would decried the use of the internets.

No more meth, right?

To be fair, home grown meth labs have decreased.

But Mexican gangs have picked up the slack and are now trafficking it in the country at a greater rate. w00t!

By: Garrett

Garrett — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:04:57 +0000

Ugh. Great post.

It’s amazing that some people will brush off their hands and say “Yep, we fixed it”, when all they really did was change the name of the Craigslist section. It (sort of) reminds me of the same logic behind the ridiculous requirement that we have to show–and enter into a database–our government-issued IDs when buying pseudoephedrine at the grocery store. BECAUSE METH MANUFACTURERS WILL TOTALLY SHOW THEIR IDS. Problem solved. No more meth, right? Ridiculous.

(Of course, there’s no comparison between showing my ID when I have the sniffles and the plight of sex workers. I’m just sayin’.)

By: Rusty

Rusty — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:04:47 +0000

Excellent write-up. You should send a link to this to the writer and to the AJC’s public editor, the latter of whom is on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/ajceditor