CarnalNation

No matter how you look at it, Craigslist’s decision this week to close their erotic services section and replace it with an internally-monitored “adult services” section represents big changes for sexuality on the Internet. Everyone, however, is still sorting out what exactly those changes are. Craigslist dates from the heyday of the Internet boom in the mid-90s, when the Web was growing so quickly that there was little, if any, agreement on what rules of law or etiquette applied to online activity. In the 14 years since Craig Newmark first brought Craigslist online, the law has been making up for lost time (not so much for standards of etiquette). One of the remarkable things about Craigslist is that it’s remained so open and unregulated for so long. In a way, the closing down of the erotic services ads is symbolic of how different the web is now than it was in its early days, the expunging of one of the last artifacts of the web as an open forum of unregulated speech. But for sex workers, it’s more than symbolic; the loss of Craigslist as a place to connect with clients has the potential to have very material consequences. Much of the pressure that was applied on Craigslist by attorneys general and other law-enforcement officials was done in the name of protecting the workers themselves, with much attention to “trafficking,” which apparently can be applied to street-level prostitution, naked house cleaning, professional domination, erotic massage, and escorting with equal accuracy. But despite the emphasis put on protecting sex workers, if you flip through CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews or browse countless other websites, there are very few people asking the workers themselves what they think this means for their safety or their livelihoods. In general, few if any seem to feel that their lives have become safer.

Sex worker activist organizations have been very vocal in their condemnation of the idea that closing down Craigslist’s ads will make sex workers safer. A collaborative press release authored by representatives of Sex Workers Action New York, $pread Magazine, Sex Work Awareness, Prostitutes of New York, and the Sex Workers Outreach Project says that:

Policing the masseuses, phone workers, pro-dominants, and escorts using Craigslist fails to protect those of us who are coerced into the sex industry. Preventing the use of Craigslist advertisements also eliminates the advantage of screening clients online, which makes for a safer work experience by filtering out potentially dangerous individuals. Furthermore, keeping us offline hinders police investigations of violent crime. In the Boston murder of Julissa Brisman, it was online tracking that enabled the police to identify the suspect. One has to wonder: are the Attorneys General examining the evidence or simply enforcing their moral values?

San Francisco sex worker and performance artist Sadie Lune is blunt about the economic consequences: “This maneuver is equivalent to simultaneously laying off thousands of workers across the country,” she told us.  “[It’s] re-marginalizing an already marginalized community… [and] increasing risk of arrest and physical harm to countless women, men and transpeople.” The fundamental issue is that removing Craigslist as a resource won’t eliminate the need for sex workers to work, especially in the current economy, when job options that are considered to be more legitimate are less available, especially if one has gaps in one's résumé. It’s unlikely that just because Craigslist is no longer openly available as a venue for finding clients, that the women and men who advertised there will give up sex work in favor of temping or flipping burgers. Many will try to find alternatives. Writer and sex worker Kirk Read greets the Craigslist closure defiantly. “Hookers have always been pushed out of public spaces and we always emerge somewhere else,” he says. Despite its reputation for openness, Read says that the Internet is “just like any other street. There are cops and owners who don't want us hanging around. So we'll go somewhere else. Fuck craigslist and its ugly font. Let's invent new ways to hang a shingle.”