Everybody join hands and praise the lord! The cesspool of human evil that spawned the Craigslist Killer will finally purge itself of the scourge that is prostitution! Isn’t this a wondrous day? Do you hear the angels blaring trumpets in the sky? Here are some reasons to rejoice!

First, this will surely make it impossible for women of loose morals to advertise their fleshly wares on the fiendish internet! If the mighty Craigslist bows to the will of the righteous, then no other site will swoop in to fill the void, right? It’s not like there are other online classifieds where “escorts” advertise for business. All those horrible whores would never think about trolling forums or chat rooms! Perish the thought! And when some entrepreneurial programmer creates the iPhone app that uses geolocation to show you the nearest brothels, the Forces of Purity™ will stamp that out too!

Second, if these hussies can’t post their poon online, surely they won’t have the nerve to go back to where they started — the street! Prostitution can’t possibly endure on the street, can it? Why, those ladies of the night would be visible — to police! They would be arrested immediately, like the pot-smokers and the jay-walkers! (Sniff… Sniff… Hey, what’s that funny smell?)

Third, if these tarts can’t post online and they can’t strut offline, then — dare it be said? — perhaps we will enter into a golden age when prostitution will be stamped out! No more will women or (eew!) men be able to hawk their holes for filthy lucre! Without the terrible temptations offered by harlots and strumpets, men will lay their heads contentedly on the bosoms of their wives, engaging in sex only when married and desirous of having a family, a real American family!

Cue the rainbows, cupid! Uncle Sam and Aunt Prudence are going to enter into the missionary position and make a beautiful baby! And you know what they’re going to call their little lovechild? Craig — because future generations will associate that name forever after with virtue, purity, and inanity.

(Thanks for the link to Geek Space.)

At first blush, this story is like one of those clichéd photographs that tourists like to take when they first visit New York City — you know, a homeless person sitting with his bags outside a fancy store such as Saks Fifth Avenue or Tiffany’s. The extreme contrast seems to make for poignant social commentary, and the same thing is true here: a young girl sells something dear — her flesh — for some greasy nuggets of chicken. The contrast couldn’t be any more vivid or poignant. Look how the judge goes for the easy irony: “The girl was used as if she was a piece of meat,” he said, showing all his talent for the obvious.

But if you assemble the story from a few different sources, it grows in complexity and richness. For example, consider the sleazeball who pimped out the girl. From his perspective, it was her schoolgirl friend who came up with the idea. And he wasn’t paying her in chicken nuggets. He was giving her free room and board. For that matter, he was practically a hero. Why did he drive her to her fuck meets? He “only provided transport and security for the child.”

Then again, his security can’t have amounted to much. Her commercial trysts, which included a lesbian romp with a 25-year-old woman, somehow led to her being physically harmed: “After the girl was injured during a sex session she asked if she could stop the work but Gander’s girlfriend told her if she did they could not pay the rent and she would be left homeless.” It doesn’t say that the girl was assaulted, only that she was injured — as though she slipped on a dirty condom or choked on some ejaculate. Perhaps both would have been better than the psychological abuse she suffered at the hands of her “friends.”

To look at the matter from an entirely different perspective, it is difficult not to notice how child pornography has proliferated in the early years of the Information Age. It makes you wonder, cynically, if capitalism will ever reach the extreme point where the makers of chicken nuggets hire teen hookers to promote their processed food products. “Sure, I’ll blow you,” says Lolita, “but first I’d like to share a message with you from my sponsor, Pedo Nuggets…”

Here is a photograph of Ms. Carter. Let the “hot for teacher” jokes begin. It is interesting to note that school officials “met with the students to answer questions about the allegations.” You wonder what sort of questions fourth-graders would ask about their teacher’s illicit sexual activity. Would they understand the situation? Would little boys fantasize about raising the cash to bang their teacher? Are there little girls who, because they look up to their classroom teacher, will one day start advertising their fleshly wares on Craigslist?

It’s an unfortunate story. Ms. Carter may have erred by using a school computer to arrange her “date,” but at least she was honest enough to use her personal time for the afternoon off. And if you support the legalization of prostitution, which PervScan does, it is hard to see that she did anything particularly immoral. To the contrary, the moral of the story is not that Ms. Carter is a fallen woman or that she corrupts youth. (”She’s never been involved with any disciplinary issues,” her employer stated. “She’s done a very good job.”) The moral of the story is that schoolteachers should be better remunerated for their work. It’s a tough job. Has it occurred to anyone that Ms. Carter may have engaged in prostitution in order to make it possible for her to continue working in a rewarding but underpaid job? It’s entirely conceivable that folks should be not outraged but thankful.

(Thanks to Angela St Lawrence for the link.)

It’s always interesting to see how personal decisions can be influenced by historical moments. For those who view sex work askance, the choice to become a prostitute (escort, dominatrix, PSO, stripper, etc) might demonstrate a failure of morals. Most of the time, however, that choice has nothing to do with morals and everything to do with earning money or supporting a family. Now that the failing economy has entered into an almost apocalyptic phase — causing some to dub it the econoclypse — this will be truer than ever. Employers will contract. Menial jobs will dry up. People — and especially women — will face choices such as this: Is it better to earn minimum wage slinging hash at a Denny’s restaurant? Or to earn a pretty penny servicing men in another way?

It’s a practical choice, not a moral one. When you consider that sex has been decreasingly stigmatized over the past fifty years, the choice only gets easier to make. And if your concern is to combat prostitution or to help prostitutes, the way to do it is not by moralizing or by shoving religious pamphlets into the hands of streetwalkers. The way to do it is to create more non-sex work options. Actually, that suggests a thought experiment. Men being what they are — pigs — prostitution seems like an inevitable part of society. But what would happen if all financial incentives to participate in prostitution were removed? Would some people still choose to enter the profession for non-pecuniary reasons? Or would it disappear altogether, like the smallpox virus?

Craigslist had already implemented some forms of moderation. For example, users could flag posts offering frankly illegal services (which is why you couldn’t openly buy, say, the materials to build a radioactive bomb on Craigslist). In March 2008, Craigslist added another step to post to the “erotic services” category. Anyone posting an ad had to provide a phone number at which s/he could receive a verification code. Community moderation can be effective, but this phone-code business ultimately didn’t do a thing to stop prostitution. Thus lawmakers — in a fine show of ineffectual but self-serving election-year politicking — have pressured Craigslist into taking this new step.

Is it working? Is it making Craigslist “very inhospitable” for prostitution? It doesn’t seem to have made the slightest dent in the copious “erotic services” listings for New York. These providers were already giving phone numbers. There isn’t much harm for them to give credit card numbers as well — for the simple reason that the odds of Craigslist being subpoenaed for the card info for any one provider are astronomically slim. Hookers have been strutting past cops on the street for centuries. Why would they bat a painted eyelash over the fear of a circuitous subpoena? And what’s the subpoena prove anyway — that the provider posted an ad on the internet? Big whoop. The provider can always say it was an experiment, an art project, that s/he never had the slightest intention of servicing anyone, etc., etc.

Furthermore, it’s not exactly difficult to procure a credit card number nowadays. In department stores you can buy credit cards for cash. On the internet you can download stolen card numbers. Hell, half these providers accept credit card payments. (Try to search the erotic listings for “credit card.”) Meanwhile, The Deets has already done a study showing that prostitutes have hardly gone out of business. They’ve simply started using other services and other parts of Craigslist.

In sum, it is difficult to see how any good can come from lawmakers pressuring Craigslist into taking this step. Hookers and johns will find ways to connect. So long as they’re not pandering to one another outside elementary schools and playgrounds, there doesn’t seem much point in harassing them all.

Speaking of which, PervScan has been meaning for months to post a link to Dave’s Little Book of Prostitute Poetry, a compilation of hysterical poems written and emailed to providers advertising on Craigslist. If you’re going to harass escorts, doubtless this is the best way to do it — not with guns or laws but with verse.

(Thanks to Furpo for the link.)

Talk about making sure you get bang for your buck… Plenty of people would rather be shot in the back than screw a stranger for the price of a hardcover book. If you find somebody desperate enough to climb into your car for a twenty dollar bill, you ought to feel a little gratitude, not a little homicidal impulse. Ten minutes seems like plenty for a twenty.

When you read a story such as this, you can’t help but remark how sordid and low the circumstances are. But then again, these are hard times. The stock market is tanking. Jobs are being lost. The outlook is grim. It’s the “worst financial crisis since 1929,” and it makes this seamy story look like it could well be the future — or even an allegory. The prostitute is the economy, or perhaps the middle class. And the murderous cheapskate john is — the president? the congress? Republicans? Democrats? Alan Greenspan? Greedy brokers? The rich? All or none of the above?

Be honest. When first reading that the one-legged hooker was killed, did you find it funny at all? Did the picture of a deceased peg-leg whore tickle your funny bone?

The reality behind the news story is a sad one. The woman must have lived a hard life. “A relative” posting on another site spoke about how “Elizabeth choose [sic] to live that lifestyle.” But even if she chose to be a hooker, that doesn’t mean she deserved such an ignoble end — or to be laughed at. The blog Womanist Musings expanded on the point and wrote an impassioned analysis of the media reaction to Ms. Acevedo’s sad demise:

Only in a world where women are routinely devalued could the death of a prostitute be referred to as a joke. Had a white male been killed it certainly would not be a laughing matter because their bodies count. 

It’s hard to deny that there is continued sexism against women. Would we be laughing if the victim were a white male? Odds are that if you turn the story around — “One-legged john bashed over head by hooker” — it will still be funny to anyone with a sense of black humor. Why? It has less to do with gender than with disability. It may not be moral or nice, but most folks (or at least those not afflicted with apotemnophilia) tend to view amputees as something less than the typical desideratum. To mix deformity with sexual desire seems absurd, and thus the media reaction has less to do with sexism than with ableism.

All that being said, just how gauche is it to laugh at the death of a one-legged hooker? Everyone will have to decide that for him- or herself. It is worth pointing out, however, that in a famous text called “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” Thomas De Quincey argued that it is perfectly acceptable to consider homicide from an aesthetic vantage point — provided that the murder has already been committed. If there is no longer anything you can do to prevent the murder from occurring, it is fine (De Quincey asserted) to contemplate it from an aesthetic angle. And if that’s true, would it be acceptable to consider it from a comic angle as well? Is there such a thing as the funniest murder in history?

Pahrump, where Ms. Fleiss plans to open her brothel, is only an hour or so from Las Vegas. It is the nearest place to Vegas where prostitution is legal, which is why other brothels such as the famous Chicken Ranch are located in the vicinity. In that regard, Ms. Fleiss’ plans are not so quixotic.

Then again, nobody is surprised when a man — particularly a half-inebriated conventioneer with slot winnings in his pockets — drives an hour to pay $400 for a blowjob. Would women venture that far for a romp (a “pah-romp,” perhaps)? It’s not without precedent. A few years ago, Japanese women in sexless marriages were apparently turning to male “sex volunteers.” In Tokyo there are hosuto or hosts who solicit female clients. Evidently male prostitution targeting female clients has been on the rise in India. And “inverted sex tourism” describes older women who journey to Kenya to enjoy the pleasures of younger men. If a woman would go to Kenya for sex, surely she’d go to Pahrump.

Let’s poll the ladies in the house. If you were on a trip to Vegas, would you be willing to make a side trip to engage in a legal act of prostitution with a man?

(Thanks to Some Geek for the link.)

Before arriving at the last line of that story, you may have been thinking something like this… Way to go, kiddo! Grab that bull by the horns. Live life to the fullest. Go for the gusto. Eat, drink, and be merry. Better to regret something you have done than something you haven’t… After all, don’t most men wish they’d have been able to order up a pair of hookers during their adolescence? Perhaps they’d have even done something more with them than play on an Xbox.

Once you read that last line, though, your conception of the story totally changes. The young man wants to be a politician? He’s not going for the gusto. He’s working an angle. No wonder he didn’t try to screw the hookers. It’s not a matter of lust. It’s ambition. Diverting funds to pay for personal excesses — that’s exactly what politicians do. The kid’s got it all figured out. Who’s his hero, Eliot Spitzer?

If you’re one of those PervScan readers in China or Lithuania and you haven’t heard the first thing about the sex scandal involving New York (former) governor Eliot Spitzer, consider yourself lucky. It’s such a big f’ing deal here in New York City that, even when you hear a dog bark, you imagine it’s offering the canine view on the matter.

A few people have sent links to the story — thanks — but, really, the media circus is repellent, particularly when the incident itself is commonplace enough. A politician got caught with his pants down. So what? Far from being perverse, it’s practically normal. If anything, it makes you long for the politician who wouldn’t make such a big display of contrition. Get some balls, dude. You did it. You liked it. Why not show some support for it? Come out and declare, “Yes, I have sinned — but I don’t think it should be a sin and I will do everything in my power to overturn the current legislation on sex work.”