Another Sex Blog

In case you have no idea what the craigslist sex scandal IS, see Violet Blue’s synopsis.

That page also contains links to info about the “prank”.

(Oh, and for those guys that think us women who complain about the misspellings and just-not-nice emails we get, take a look at some of the responses at http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/RFJason_CL_Experiment

These are the kinds of responses we ALL get — even those who do NOT post “I like it rough and nasty” ads.)

Very simply summed up: rjfason posts ad on Seattle craigslist that is supposedly from a submissive female seeking sex with a dom male. “Supposedly” because I read that he copied the ad from another place and just used it. The ad doesn’t read at all, to me, like a real ad. I think even the original was probably a fake… but anyway… so he gets all the scuzzy email responses that all women who post online in any sort of remotely sexually related way gets. Then he proceeds to post these responses online in their entirety — including any identifying info he received.

People are debating. Did he break the law? Is this unethical? Did these guys who responded and are now being outed (for lack of a better term) deserve it? Is this a fabulous way to teach people that they shouldn’t give out private info to someone they don’t know? Is this even a big deal?

I’m kind of amazed at how controversial it all is.

I don’t know if he broke the law. I honestly thought that any correspondence I received from someone was mine to do with as I wished, but apparently there *are* laws against that in some places.

Damn YES it’s unethical! He’s a jerk. His only motivation is to BE a jerk. I read a piece where someone compared him to the people who pose as underagers to catch pedophiles. Well, I think that’s kind of shitty, too, but it’s NOT the same. Yeah, motivation matters. Even in the law it matters. That’s the main difference between murder and manslaughter, isn’t it?

Then there’s the argument that no one should give out their private info to a stranger and people should be more cautious blah blah blah. Look, whoever you are reading this, you give out your personal info to people you don’t know ALL THE TIME. I thought phishing was actually illegal. Why do people get upset about it if all it is is a scammer pretending to be someone/something he/she is not and getting your info in the process? According to this logic, it shouldn’t matter at all that you assumed your information was going to a different person or that it was going to be used in a different way. Or identity theft. All that person is doing is using information about you that you yourself made available in *some* way.

But, some argue, these are slimy sleazy guys who are sending dick pics and offensive words and are looking to be the top in a bdsm relationship. Guys who want to fuck and fuck up some girl. Uh, yeah… so? I know others have made the point that this would be seen differently by a lot of people (though certainly not all) if it were an “experiment” (as rfjason calls it) to publicly out gays or lesbians. But since it’s guys who most people see as, well, icky, then it’s ok. Afterall, if they hadn’t responded to *that kind* of ad then they wouldn’t have to worry about all this. Yeah. And if that girl hadn’t worn that short skirt on her date, she wouldn’t have been raped. It’s ALL HER FAULT. Silly of her to have trusted a guy she hardly knew enough to let him drive her home. Well, yeah, actually, that IS stupid.. er, silly of her. But it doesn’t excuse the guy from being EVIL for raping her. Get the analogy?

Also — rfjason claims to be ignorant of how this could possibly hurt anyone’s life. He claims that no one could be fired, for example, over this. First, sexual preference is NOT automatically protected from discrimination everywhere. It’s local, not federal. Then there’s the fact that that only refers to sexual orientation — gay, straight, bi. NOT kinky vs vanilla. There’s no law protecting people from being fired for having a picture of their genitals online. Personally, I think there *should* be a law that says employers can’t fire you for what you do outside of work, but there’s not. And there’s definitely no law that protects people from having their friends or family reject them. Even for sexual orientation. *MY* friends and family wouldn’t. I’m assuming from his attitude that rfjason’s wouldn’t either. But that’s SO not true for lots, if not most, people.

I also read someone suggest that maybe this would keep some of those jerks who aren’t *really* responding to the ads and are just being assholes from responding to ads in the future. I doubt it. They’ll still respond, only now some of them will use fake info or set up anon email addresses. It’s the guys who are sincere who will no longer respond. And for those of us women who really ARE sincerely posting ads, we lose out. Yeah, it’s a pain to dig through all the drudge and slime to find the few gems, but they really are out there. I’ve met some and had some fabulous experiences. I wonder if some of those men will no longer answer ads. Or will no longer send me a face photo when I ask for one… which means I will NOT be meeting with them.

This is just another time when I have to ask “Why can’t we just all be nice?”

I know it’s so naive, but it’s still the only solution to most of the world’s misery. IMHO.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Bdsm, Casual Encounters, Personals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.