Sex and Censorship on Craigslist

I get so frustrated by our fear of sex. We don’t want to talk about it, see it, teach it, or even know about it (of course, with exception of the constant display of sexual innuendo to sell products, that’s O.K). 

I first heard about the Craigslist crackdown the other afternoon on NPR. It is another example how our society wants to shove sex underground. Why do we have such a problem with having a public forum available to selling sex? Do the people pushing for this censorship think if we remove the “adult services” section from Craigslist suddenly the oldest profession in the world will disappear? Of course not – it will do exactly what it is doing -- hide. Craigslist’s “adult services” postings are not gone! The posting are now hiding in the other sections of Craigslist such as the “personals”.

 I have heard the news stories in the past raising concern over some of Craigslist’s “adult services” postings like those attempting to solicit child prostitution. I agree these types of posting should absolutely be banned from the site. However, removing the “adult services” section is not going to eliminate these types of postings anymore that it will eliminate the adult prostitution ads. These postings will hide, too, making them more difficult to monitor, track, and remove. So by eliminating the “adult services” section (and the manual monitoring of each post entered into the section, as was the case) minors maybe at increased risk for unchecked sexual solicit on Craigslist.

 With the now censored Craigslist section sexual services are not as easy for the casual Craigslist user to locate on the site; however, they still exist, and are now more difficult to monitor. Politicians call this a victory.