CraigsList: Future Thinking

Assuming that CraigsList Adult Services stay down, where will everyone go? Granted, the majority of those in the business in the US aren’t advertising on CL anymore. But now civilians are enjoying the thrill of discovering what’s been online for the past 10-15 years and are publicly speculating what sites advertisers will flock to.

On the one hand, other advertising sites have been obvious all this time if you know how to use Google. The current public attention might help some girls get a little extra business in what I know is a sagging economy and a seasonally slow time of year (beginning of school). On the other hand, I’m very worried by the attention thrown at other sites. The motivation for this current state of affairs goes far beyond the usual cat-and-mouse game played by local cops. The anti-trafficking Nazis have one possible victory with CraigsList and probably feel ready to go stomping on any other site adult sex workers use.

Because it’s about ending prostitution. It’s not about helping victims.

A lot of other online advertisers require proof of age in order to post an ad. These sites comply with 2257 guidelines and are safe from accusations of child-trafficking. While I worry about an added focus on these sites, the reality is the anti-traffickers can’t do a damn thing about these sites without changing the entire structure of 2257 laws (which were originally created for the porn industry). We’re talking major time in courts – not a quick media-smear campaign like we just saw against CraigsList. This doesn’t mean that police won’t take a new look at these sites and conduct stings off them. These sites might be forced to allow authorities to look through the proof of age they’ve collected on their advertisers – part of 2257 law.

The anti-traffickers might also be tempted to get their hands even further into the legislative process and create stricter regulations around adult services advertising. If such a thing comes to pass, it’s going to create very odd circumstances: legally regulating prostitution without prostitution actually being legal. This would further expose workers to exploitation by the legal system with none of the benefits of actually being legal. It’s hard to imagine how this situation would help victims of any kind; very easy to imagine how it would create new victims.

To get around 2257 laws, some people use offshore web hosting. I wonder if the US will go so far as to ban offshore adult websites who allow adult services advertising? How much involvement is the government willing to invest in censoring the Internet over an issue (sex trafficking) that affects a minority of people? While we all know perfectly well that countries can do this (e.g. China), is this something America wants to do? Will Google start banning certain such terms in the US; terms that will allow adult service providers to be found?

The hideous irony that every online sex worker in the US already knows is that they’re sitting ducks for law enforcement. To find enough decent clients to make a living, providers must have a fairly trackable web presence. They have to be fairly aboveground and the more successful ones are well-established. They’re easy targets. The ostensible crackdown on sex traffickers simply drives the real criminals further underground and scatters them. Who’s going to be easier to find when police are forced to get their numbers of arrests up?

Despite the claims of enormous numbers of sex trafficking victims, we don’t have equally enormous numbers of exploiters arrested. There are many reasons for that: the most obvious being they’re not found and therefore not arrested. They may not even be sought. It’s much easier to run a sting and arrest a bunch of adult sex workers who need to make a living than take the time to investigate a sex trafficker.

There are also continual mutterings about CL Erotic Services in other countries. America’s military influence is felt worldwide, its morality has influenced international AIDS funding, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine the anti-prostitution crusade influencing sex work in other countries. One blog post commented that the French Erotic Services section was still up. Apparently that poster failed to realize that prostitution is legal in France (brothels and pimping are not). US anti-traffickers have made efforts to influence prostitution law in other countries so it’s not a great leap of imagination for them to target all of CL’s Erotic Services sections. I don’t see them having victory in every country but one is more than enough, really.

The difference I’m feeling with this current attention thrown at CL is the obvious desire to shut down any and all prostitution, regardless of how the sex workers feel about it. Thinking about it too much makes me feel like a target. The attention has shifted from arrests of an activity made criminal by arbitrarily-enforced laws to something a lot more sweeping, with more political power, made much more palatable to the average Joe or Jane. There aren’t a lot of people capable of standing up and making arguments against the anti-trafficking terrorists. There aren’t a lot of people seeing the huge amount of grey in what’s presented as a black and white issue. The question is whether the antis are louder right now because they really do have more power; or are they the loudest person in the room because they’re the weakest? Surely they recognize they are not on the right side of this argument. Are they afraid everyone else will discover this too?