Now, slightly more difficult to buy sex on Craigslist

So, the adult services section of Craigslist, which had been blocked by a censored bar for two weeks, is gone for good it seems. At least, CL’s public relations director, William Clinton Powell said as much in front of the House Judiciary Committee on sex trafficking.

When I logged on to Craigslist after I first read about this story, I honestly didn’t notice much of a difference. Granted, I’ve never gotten a hooker off the site, but it always seemed to me that casual encounters afforded plenty of room to buy and sell pretty much anything (100 roses for a blowjob anyone?), and that was still up and running.

Craigslist was pressured by 17 attorney generals to take down the section in an open letter, which cited child trafficking and, weirdly enough, rampant prostitution as their justification.

The gesture seems totally hollow to me–if you want to take steps to get rid of child traffickers, you don’t scatter the sex workers to various dark corners of the internet–and, after knowing why the asked it to be taken down, makes Craigslist’s noodley acquiesence that much lamer.

Maybe it did make a dent in in child trafficking, but all it really seems to have accomplished is to make it harder for young women to earn a little extra scratch without having to wait tables. Which, frankly, ain’t that big of a deal.

From here, it just looks like another sting by the morality police who don’t want people to suck cock for money. It’s not the most wholesome prospect, but that’s not the point. The point is that it shouldn’t be anybody’s business if you want to accept “100 roses” for a blow job. By letting the vice squad railroad them, Craigslist just reinforced the idea that strangers ‘who know better’ have the right to run your life.