Craigslist

I wanted to be beautiful. I wanted to be taken care of. I wanted to be rescued. I was sexualized long before I sexualized myself. Even as a child, I knew the way men looked at me. I knew what it meant. In Mexico, men called out in the street and hissed when I walked past. Even older men—friend’s fathers, male teachers—even as a little girl. Even in grade school, I knew what it meant to be a woman and I was no longer a little girl. At nineteen years old, I was well aware that my body had become a woman’s body. Even as a child, I knew what that was worth.

The H-Word presents first-person stories from current and former sex workers across the U.S. Maria is a 48-year-old hairdresser and artist who supplements her income selling sexual services to clients that she meets online. She talks about how petitions to shut down adult classifieds sections on sites like Craigslist and Backpage affect real women working in the industry.   

"Sometimes it was very sexy and sometimes I was attracted to the person and sometimes I had great sex. And sometimes I was just going through the motions and it was neither good nor bad. And sometimes it was really unpleasant and I just got through it."

TRIGGER WARNING: The following story includes a description of a sexual assault. 

If you’re a married congressman, it’s probably not a good idea to send shirtless photos of yourself to women you encounter on Craigslist. New York Congressman Christopher Lee found that out the hard way after a woman he’d exchanged flirtatious emails with—including the shirtless one—outed him on the gossip website Gawker. In the emails, 46-year-old Lee portrayed himself as a divorced father and lobbyist seven years his junior. When Gawker posted his deceitful exchanges with the woman—Yesha Callahan—on its site Feb. 9, Lee resigned, leading mainstream media outlets across the country to pick up the story. But in the black blogosphere there was particular buzz about the Lee scandal when word spread that Callahan, whose identity was initially kept secret, is African American.