With Backpage in the news so much, and various government actors vomiting out so many egregious lies about it, I thought it might be a good idea to recap how this whole shitshow developed from its roots in the previous “sex trafficking” moral panic to the present political circus. See, while the politicians want you to believe that Backpage is some sort of magical pimp machine the likes of which has never been seen before, the truth is that Backpage ads are the end result of a slow and steady progression of advertising starting roughly a century ago, just after prostitution was criminalized in the US at the height of the last go-round of hysteria over “sex trafficking” (or as it was called then, “white slavery”). Once brothels could no longer operate openly, escort services appeared, while some women chose to frequent hotels and such and others preferred to take out personal ads in newspapers. Once the alternative weeklies appeared in the 1960s, the latter approach became far more popular; escorts were able to be more blunt than they could in major newspapers, though not remotely as blatant as they later became once those weeklies went online. Even the name “Backpage” is a tribute to the site’s origin as an online version of the back pages of alt-weeklies, where the classified ads (including escort ads) were located. In fact, the only important differences between the online version and its print ancestors are those directly related to the differences between the online medium and the print medium, such as ease of access and speed of both posting and reply (ask a whore who worked prior to the late ’90s about going to one’s PO Box to pick up actual paper letters from clients answering one’s ad, requesting appointments days or weeks in the future).
So when Craigslist first appeared in 1996 as an online classified ad site, it was a foregone conclusion that whores would post ads in its classified and massage sections, just as they had in newspaper sections. It wasn’t any kind of “revolution”; it just sped things up and made them more efficient. But whenever a new technology is involved, you can be absolutely sure the Puritans and Luddites will insist that it’s the source of all manner of new evils, and that it will surely bring about the end of civilization (usually by corrupting women and harming children, naturally). It took them over ten years, however; though Craigslist had a dedicated “erotic services” section by 2002 (I’m not sure of the exact date it was added), the “sex trafficking” fetishists, at that time far less numerous and vociferous than they are now, did not really begin to take note of it until sometime after 2005. That was the year bureaucrats from the San Francisco Department of Public Health embarked on a campaign to blame the site’s personals section for a rise in syphilis among gay men, using the typical government argument that adults are so stupid and passive that they need to be “encouraged” or “facilitated” by some corporation or communications medium to do things like have sex. The blame-game seemed to attract the attention of the “sex trafficking” fetishists, and by the following year they were starting to put pressure in the site to “do something” about their favorite imaginary problem. A group of 40 state attorneys general demanded that Craigslist facilitate pigs’ attempts to arrest sex workers (under guise of “stopping “trafficking”, naturally) and the site responded by requiring a working phone number and charging a fee to post in the erotic services section (to keep underage people out). Of course, that wasn’t enough; the following year Craigslist renamed the section to “adult services” while prohibitionists blathered about how much money the company was making from the fee they had forced it to charge. Finally, in 2010 the site shuttered the section, putting up a “censored” bar over the link to it, and advertisers either migrated to Backpage (founded in 2004 specifically as a competitor to Craigslist) or went back to advertising in the personals & massage sections as they did before the “erotic services” category was established.
Drunk with their victory, the prohibitionists immediately turned to Backpage; within weeks of Craigslist’s defeat they sent a similar letter to the one they had sent Craigslist, no doubt expecting a similar reaction. Instead, they got a fight which has gone on for over six years, with Backpage winning at every turn for the simple reason that the government’s demands are blatantly unconstitutional. But the evil don’t stop being evil merely because they’re wrong; faced with repeated defeats in their attempts to take legal action against the company, government prohibitionists decided to simply take illegal actions instead, ranging from Tom Dart’s threats against credit card companies to Senate “hearings” of the same sort previously held to intimidate moviemakers, comic book publishers and the music industry. Then in October, California attorney general Kamala Harris upped the ante by committing the blatantly criminal act of arresting the CEO and both owners of Backpage and filing charges against them that she absolutely knew were illegal for her to file. Naturally, a judge slapped her down, and she replied by filing even more ridiculous charges, shitting all over the dying protection against double jeopardy in her quest to be a hero to fanatics. Exhausted and facing the prospect of an infinite succession of similar nuisance charges from criminal tyrants the courts seem unwilling to charge or even rein in, Backpage finally followed in Craigslist’s footsteps and censored its adult ads one week ago today.
But while the mainstream reaction to Craigslist’s defeat was largely a collective yawn, the same is not true this time around. While Craigslist’s resistance and eventual surrender was generally conducted rather quietly, the war on Backpage has been extremely noisy and impossible to ignore; as a result there have been many articles about it already. The best of these, as usual, is by Elizabeth Nolan Brown; David Meyer Lindenberg of Fault Lines and Mike Ludwig of Truthout, both strong and dependable allies, also wrote on the topic, and Alison Bass ridiculed Nicholas Kristof’s predictably-ridiculous take on the subject. Sex workers are coming together to help each other find alternative advertising resources, and other groups such as free-speech advocates and anarchists are chiming in as well. Backpage has vowed to continue the fight, and I certainly hope they do, because as soon as they stop struggling the prohibitionists will need to find another advertising site to turn into a monster. Their campaign of eternal outrage needs a target for its hate, or else it means the end of all the accumulation of money and power which is the true aim of this ugly anti-sex crusade.
Reblogged this on O LADO ESCURO DA LUA.
My son is in the 8th grade. He said they watched a documentary on human trafficking in school the other day. I thought ‘oh Lord what did they have those kids watching…’ No, thankfully. It was on real human trafficking- children brought to the Ivory Coast for cocoa farming.
I remember reading a snippet of an article from the late-19th/early-20th century, with ppl fretting over ice cream parlors because “unescorted girls” could be “ensnared” by urban Lotharios. And why not? After all, so many of these establishments were owned and run by “foreigners” – mercy me, heavens to Betsy!! After all, those middle-class pearl-clutchers can’t trust other women to run their own lives.
What Backpage has been going through sounds like a SLAPP. Aren’t there laws in the US against that kind of tactic, or is it OK when it’s the government doing it?
The Problem is Power Not Prostitution.
“From Human Trafficking to Human Rights”
Reblogged this on Aiken Area Progressive and commented:
There needs to be international laws allowing for sex workers outside of the United States to sue the federal government and any US state government over illegally shutting down the Erotic Services of any classifieds web page.
I fear that we are only seeing the beginning of this sort of thing. I suspect that the Trump administration, especially with VP Pence in charge of “domestic affairs,” is going to declare open season on providers, johns and advertising media. They will ignore the real human trafficking that Laura mentioned above: People brought into a country to work in conditions little different from slavery, all in the name of the almighty dollar.
The movie for your poster is actually on Youtube! 28 min of lurid propaganda! Well worth the watch/lulz. It’s not over the top, hysterical or fabricated at all. Nosirree. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZHihjo_eBQ
Listening to a show on public radio recently, I learned that ANYONE with 9 or 10k and a line of credit can buy a hospital in the U.S. As a result, convicted felons have bought small hospitals in rural areas and hired people off the street to administer. The new owner of the hospital has authority to bill all insurance, the most lucrative being government insurance. The felon diverts all the payments to their own bank account, and by the time the government shuts down the hospital no charges are ever filed against the owner because it is deemed too difficult to pursue. Apparently one such owner profited 8 million dollars and only has to pay $500,000 while avoiding jail time. Yet we independent ladies of mature age who in my case earn just enough to pay a very small mortgage payment on my tiny house is “Considered worse than a shoplifter by the Sheriff department”. According to a friend who is a former police officer who offered the statement as a friendly warning to me. I would never consider shoplifting anything, ever. And yes, I claim all my income to the IRS and pay taxes every month.
Come to think of it, I think this LE mindset of “worse than a shoplifter”, yet a person of some means financially with no qualifications can buy a hospital and fraudulently collect insurance payments is where the line is drawn. A person who shoplifts is frequently poor, and women who escort are frequently women who find they can earn much more money escorting than via a regular job. I think it all stems from condemnation of the poor, who frequently are women and or minorities. It makes absolutely no sense financially to deem a fraud of 8 million dollars “not worth pursuing” yet misdemeanor escort solicitation crackdowns are considered important. There was a time when courts offered leniency to adults charged with escorting solicitation, the courts were concerned about issuing such a serious charge and were hesitant to do so. Not so nowadays, an almost gleeful approach is used in vice and even defense attorneys are happy to solicit defense of such. Once in the courtroom, a paid defense attorney with weeks of back round preparation will appear last minute at the proceedings and simply advise their client who was not even caught in a motel room, had all their clothes on and was approached by the “client” while sitting in their car, is told by their counsel to plead guilty because there is too much evidence against them. I know this for a fact.
[…] were able to lock in cages were insufficient to sustain the required level of mindless hysteria, Backpage was chosen for that role after Craigslist took a dive. Unfortunately for legions of busybodies, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin were veteran newsmen of […]
[…] Creating a Monster […]