(I just submitted this session to Sex 2.0, which may not make it on the schedule. I’ve got to offer it somewhere somehow anyway.)

Craigslist Red, Craigslist Blue: Why we should dismantle the “internet red light district”
Melissa Gira Grant (Sexerati, Boffery) and Joanne McNeil (Tomorrow Museum)

Craigslist’s Erotic Services section. AdultFriendFinder. Adam4Adam. Your blogspot blog. Your daughter’s MySpace profile. Online spaces with “bad” sexual reputations are among the most policed, contested, and confounding, both for those who call them home and those outside them. For all the possibilities for novel interactions they offer that aren’t mirrored in offline space, they also confine sexuality to what some (of us) have called ghettos. We hear these sites make policymakers and pundits very upset, but they also seem very excited at the opportunity to smear them: what better way to get attention but to stir up an internet sex panic? While some politicians and law enforcement and cultural critics are calling for the (predictable) end of online social/sexual networking, we’re going to go one step further and imagine what a future internet without these spaces looks like. Where does sex go online when it doesn’t have a dedicated home? Without getting overly theoretical, we’re going to point to the work of Samuel Delany (in his twin essays “Times Square Red, Times Square Blue”) and propose the merits of an internet without sex confined to its “proper” place.