What Shuttered Craigslist Adult Section Means for Sex Workers, Trafficked Women and Children

Regardless of what you think about sex work, we can all agree that trafficking and abuse of women is immoral and illegal. So when want ads behemoth Craigslist closed down their adult services section without comment last week, it took a lot of folks by surprise. Craigslist has been engaged in a very public battle over their adult section for several years. Suddenly, they backed down and went silent. Or did they?

Over at the End Human Trafficking blog, Amanda Kloer wonders whether the suspension will be permanent and if legal pressure or public outcry finally led the company to close the sometimes questionable part of its online portal. This, of course, doesn't stop other sex-for-sale websites like Gawker and the Village Voice from actively promoting their "back page" section. The Associated Press reports that this will likely just send sex profiteers — legitimate sex workers as well as trafficker pimps who enslave women and children — to other venues (including other sections of Craigslist), doing nothing to solve the actual concerns and problems at hand.

As you've no doubt gathered, Craigslist has a lot of angry, frustrated opponents right now. The site is accused of turning a blind eye to the sale of enslaved child prostitutes and human trafficking, effectively condoning child rape and sexual abuse of trafficked women. But Slate's William Saletan writes that CraigsList intentionally forced this public debate when they shuttered the section last week. He claims that CraigsList is "exposing where the ads will go once 'adult services' is closed... [and] challenging human-trafficking activists and state attorneys general to shift their scrutiny to other sites that host such ads."

It's also worth noting that the Craigslist erotic services category is still active and available in non-U.S. countries. To me, this part is particularly interesting when you consider it in a larger context of services and service providers simply moving to a new location, virtual or otherwise.

Take the current state of the sex industry in Denmark and Sweden. Sweden decriminalized the sale of sex in 1999, though buying it is still illegal. Instead of punishing the sex workers, it was reasoned that buyers would be the ones to suffer fines if caught. But thanks in large part to the bridge between Malmo and Copenhagen, men simply crossed into Denmark to purchase sex, side-stepping the risks involved with being caught back home. Unfortunately not that surprising, in the last decade, the number of Swedish prostitutes has been significantly declining, while the sex trade in Denmark has exploded. Worse, many sex workers in Denmark are trafficked women from Eastern Europe and Africa. Did Sweden's laws push things to an even more extreme, dangerous situation for women and children? Some would say yes.

In all of these cases, what's particularly troubling is the "we'll have to wait and see" attitude, as if sitting back and waiting for reports of abused sex workers to surface is sufficient response. But can Craigslist do anything right in this situation? Washing their hands of the problem is a sickeningly easy way out, but many argue it isn't Craigslist's job to tackle the global human trafficking epidemic, nor is it their job to monitor legitimate sex work. If something happens in your backyard, inside the fence you built, are you responsible? For now, Craigslist is content to stay complicit and silent, effectively saying, "We don't police our backyard" — a rather cowardly stance considering what's at stake.

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