Requested topic – killing of hookers in NY

One of my faves suggested that I write about this subject, so I did a small amount of research to observe that at least eight bodies of apparent prostitutes have been found in Long Island, NY. The website "Craigslist" (which, of course, assured everyone a year or two ago that they were no longer accepting sex-for-pay ads) continues to be associated with the killings as the result of convicted killer Philip Markoff having taken the life of Julissa Brisman a couple of years ago.

The over-done removal of sex-for-pay ads from Craigslist (resulting from political pressure) merely inspired buyers and sellers of sex to move to other areas of the popular website (namely the personals sections). In fact, a dear OD friend used to tell of sifting through the plain-seeming personals on Craigslist in search of references to being "generous", as stated by males who would otherwise seem like non-descript lonely hearts posting innocent personals ads.

This OD working-girl friend didn’t even have a website or any advertising of her own. Instead she would rely on the keen eye of an associate to suss out the ads that would harbor men perfectly willing to pay money for sex via the men-for-women personals on Craigslist.

There is another website, backpage.com, which still does a banner business in the skin trade, but sadly its minimal-rules format has been tightened to restrict the use of bare-all photographs posted by women promoting themselves for sex-for-hire. The Backpage.com category for "Escorts" continues to thrive.

The difference between Craigslist and Backpage, in this area, is that Craigslist seem(s/ed) to pride itself on its claim of scrutinizing every ad to assure validity and legality, while Backpage made no such claim or attempt. The government came down on Craiglist using the very expectation of their having claimed to be policing their own ads, and screening for legality, yet still doing banner business with hookers and their customers.

What these websites have in common is that they serve as a meeting place for interested buyers and interested sellers of sex, and it is probably true that there are abundant numbers on each side. In addition, the driving forces that are sex on one side and money on the other inspire persons on either side of the ‘deals’ to ignore sensible precautions on the way toward clandestine meetings (for sex) with people from online.

Anytime a woman enters into the world of prostitution it basically becomes a given that she will be making herself considerably more vulnerable than she would be if remaining in the world outside of prostitution. For serial killer personas, Craigslist and its ilk are bonanzas in that they facilitate easy contact with women who are usually well rehearsed (and more comfortable than most females would be) at placing themselves in vulnerable situations.

A young adult woman meeting a young adult man from Facebook, in real life, for the first time, would tend to take considerable steps to keep herself safe, if not somewhat anonymous as well, upon arranging a first meeting with such a man. Her working girl counterpart, however, goes in having routinely taken her chances in performing sex acts with various men for cash, in spots which make her considerably vulnerable physically. She is both more familiar with becoming vulnerable and in greater need of privacy (which begets vulnerability), as you can’t just share oral sex in the middle of Grand Central Station.

As is so often the case, prostitutes are most often the victims of serial killers because of the extreme ease with which they will consent to exposing themselves to physical vulnerability. It is the nature of the business.

Among the most unfortunate elements of the illicit sex-for-pay industry in the U.S. is that the economic scale dictates the amount of relative safety known to female practitioners of the world’s oldest profession. If every ‘trick’ could be turned in a penthouse incall location on the Upper West Side, both by strung-out teenagers newly arrived after running away from Iowa, and by high class escorts catering to New York Governors, then the imbalance of safety might cease to exist.

In some ways, because marginalized women have to conduct their sex-for-hire business while on the run, and on the streets, they are caused to be extremely unsafe relative to what is merely a housewife who takes incalls at her home on alternate Thursdays, just to earn extra cash.

While Craigslist and its ilk does create an electronic trail of a sort, an evil-minded male need only stop in at a Times Square internet cafe to create a free Hotmail account and then begin to correspond with willing online hookers from there – virtually untraceable. Women who don’t have the means by which to maintain their own place of residence and computer don’t even have the home-court advantage for any of their ‘dates’. In an ideal world, such women would have the financial means, and the legal right to conduct such business in a safe environment. Prostitution is thriving more than ever with the advent of the internet yet there are fewer and fewer neighborhoods world-wide having to put up with the products of prostitution in their gardens, on their sidewalks, and sitting in cars in front of their homes late at night.

Police response to prostitution is heaviest in areas where local residents rightfully complain about finding used condoms, drug paraphernalia, and fornicating couples plainly visible in their neighborhoods at any hour of the day or night. Surely there are prostitutes distributed indoors and somewhat randomly across many of America’s finest neighborhoods today, but as most are rather inconspicuous, and somewhat responsible as well, they just don’t go noticed by you or me.

Clearly the reason why the serial killers so prefer prostitutes is because those prostitutes will willingly turn up and then instinctively put themselves at significant physical risk as a means to a financial end. In addition, and because of the internet, a serial killer can even winnow his selection down to petite women he can easily overpower.

I also have a feeling that the snippets of personality one might gleen from an online ad written by a prostitute may further entice various undesirables into answering her ad with an offer of sex for pay.

Prostitution as a whole is like a giant body of water while the elements of society trying to control it are like groups of sandbags being fruitlessly moved around from place to place. Sometimes you really can get a productive and purposeful wall of sandbags in certain areas, but it would far better serve society if that body of water were harnessed and guided somewhat rather than challenged head-to-head by an inferior opponent.

To address a couple of questions the OD fave who requested my foray into this subject:

Indeed, when you contact a working girl via the internet there is always an electronic record of it somewhere, but if you are at one internet cafe in Manhattan, and she is checking her e-mail at another internet cafe in Manhattan, then if you happened to create the e-mail account right there for that sole purpose, then there aren’t really going to be any easy ways to pin you down.

As for whether there is any protection (safety-wise) for working girls, it is precisely because they mus

t always stay one step ahead of the law that such women need to conduct business on the run, and then must run toward their next business, that their safety is majorly threatened.

If in another scenario every midwestern farm girl followed her dreams of living in New York City and they brought their wholesome farm girl personas to various apartments in the Big Apple, where they were allowed to work from those "incall" locations, then safety measures for the girls would be vastly improved.

Such women could have their homes cleverly equipped with defense mechanisms and/or weapons, as well as trusted neighbors who would know to respond to even the slightest scuffle. Furthermore, the mentioned farm girls could do business from one computer in steady fashion while demanding much better checks and balances in terms of sussing out their clients before a meeting takes place.

Some safety-minded women require a prospective new client to provide a land line phone number at which she can call him back prior to initial meeting.

In addition to the above, such a midwestern girl could type as much data as she can possibly amass on a new client before committing it to electronic memory via e-mailing it to herself, perhaps at an e-mail addy which a trusted friend would know how to check in the event she went missing for some time.

In summation, because the women in question are made to work on the run upon choosing the work of prostitutes, their obvious vulnerability is heightened to a point beyond which it is now considerably dangerous to prostitute oneself in New York City.

The giant imbalance between how much sex men collectively want, and what amount women collectively consent to facilitate without compensation (or promises!), assures that prostitution will always be there in considerable substance. Only someone who is considerably unrealistic would dispute this paragraph.

With that in mind, there are many, many ways that the relatively uptight U.S. society could render working prostitutes far safer than they tend to be in 2011.

Luckily, a heavy majority of sex-for-pay transactions occur smoothly and quickly without the bulk of American society ever seeing direct evidence of any of them going on. The transactions are immediately satisfying for both sides, and are shared between individuals who aren’t at that point too concerned about the future or the grand scale.

I don’t realistically envision legalization of prostitution nation-wide during the time while I can still get it up, but to reach that point would certainly change the dynamic of who is out there offering sexual services, while perhaps concurrently improving all aspects of prostitution for the better.

Thanks to one of my faves for the topic suggestion!