US & Britain: On Selling Sex Online

America is America and Britain is Britain and the twain shall never meet (with apologies to Kipling). The latest instance shows how the two countries differ, at least in their approach to sex, while reacting to the ads placed in the classifieds website Craigslist.

Well, the US is certainly more short-tempered when it comes to selling sex online, reports The Times. “Last week the classifieds website Craigslist finally bowed to pressure from antivice campaigners and removed the erotic services section from its pages in America.

“Since June last year, police in 40 states have used adverts in this section of the site to conduct antiprostitution stings. Female officers posed online as prostitutes to catch out male clients, while male officers posed as customers to catch women selling sex.

“There have been hundreds of arrests on both sides; the state of Illinois even threatened to file a lawsuit against Craigslist, claiming it was the single largest source of prostitution in America…”

What has been the British government’s response? “Whether advertising for sex is morally acceptable or not, it’s interesting that the government continues to turn a blind eye to soliciting.

“The (British) Home Office simply claims that a ban on advertising sexual services online and in local newspapers wouldn’t be effective. A spokesman said: ‘The vast majority of adverts don’t explicitly state that sexual services are available, referring to massages and saunas, making it extremely difficult to prove that a business is operating as a brothel’.

“But it’s common knowledge that terms such as ‘massage’, ‘in-calls’ and ‘hourly rate’ refer to sexual services.” More here…

So whenever I read about prostitution or “war on terror”, I am reminded about Will Durant’s prophetic words in The Pleasures of Philosophy: “Human conduct and belief are now undergoing transformations profounder and more disturbing than any since the appearance of wealth and philosophy put an end to the traditional religion of the Greeks.

“It is the age of Socrates again, our moral life is threatened, and our intellectual life is quickened and enlarged, by the disintegration of ancient customs and beliefs. Everything is new and experimental in our ideas and our actions; nothing is established or certain any more.

“From this confusion the one escape worthy of a mature mind is to rise out of the moment and the part, and contemplate the whole. What we have lost above all is total perspective. Life seems too intricate and mobile for us to grasp its unity and significance; we cease to be citizens and become only individuals.

“We have no purposes that look beyond our death; we are fragments of men, and nothing more. No one dares today to survey life in its entirety; analysis leaps and synthesis lags; we fear the experts in every field, and keep ourselves, for safety’s sake, lashed to our narrow specialties.

“Everyone knows his part, but is ignorant of its meaning in the play. Life itself grows meaningless, and becomes empty just when it seemed most full.”

If Will Durant’s quotes have whetted your appetite please click here…

And click here to visit the Will Durant Foundation to understand the difference/similarity between Science and Philosophy…