To Whisper or to Howl?
Subjects of Prostitution
Regulation Debate Oppression
by Mary Powell (e-mail: MPowell@liberator.net) [Updated February 19th, 2005]
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There is
little disagreement that prostitution is the oldest profession, that it has
been around as long as humans, very sexual beings, first started bartering and
bargaining their services. For just as
long, however, there has been pervasive disagreement over the appropriateness
and viability of this work. The United States,
a relatively young sex market, has had its share of tumultuous moments
regarding the regulation of sex work, starting with the first immigration laws
and speckling the legislative landscape up into the 21st century.
Four
particularly telling moments in the history of prostitution regulation in the US are the Page Law of 1875, the conclusions of
the federal Immigration Commission of 1911, World War Two prostitution in Hawaii, and the legalization of sex work in Nevada in 1971. This investigation will explore these four
moments in history while examining different sides of the debate, including the
views of sex workers themselves and of the general public.
Organizations
of current and former sex workers provide clear, though often contradictory,
insight into the personal and political spheres of this profession and its legislation. Though different perspectives have colored
regulation of this institution, an overarching blame has historically been
placed on the hegemonic attitudes of society, blaming men for the creation and
perpetuation of prostitution.
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| “There is a movement of outsiders, people unaffiliated with the profession itself, who argue for the legalization of prostitution. These people generally appeal to humanism and state their goal to make the world safer for women.” |
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In a time
marked by Chinese Exclusion and increasingly discriminatory policies regarding
immigration and whiteness, the Page Law, passed in 1875, further tightened
restriction on nonwhite women coming into the United States. Because many of the Asians coming to the West
Coast were single male laborers, a majority of whites in the area were
concerned that the men would frequent brothels instead of bringing their
families. Indeed, by the 1880s the ratio
of Chinese men to women in California
was twenty to one.
To prevent
the immoral actions of unattached lower class men, the government decided to
restrict women’s immigration to only wives.
The idea was that if men would begin bringing their families to the
country, perhaps the immoral prostitution in California’s
Chinatowns would decrease and men could be
civilized by their women. One advocate
of Chinese Exclusion and the Page Law claimed in 1888 that 576 of the 1,394
Chinese women living in Chinatown were
prostitutes (i.e. over 40%).
At first
glance it would seem that Californians were doggedly opposed to the Chinese
prostitutes themselves, but in reading the text of the Page Law it becomes
clear that its goal was actually to punish the males who forced women into
contracts to prostitute themselves. The
greatest punishment, five years in prison or a $5,000 fine, was given mostly to
“who[m]ever shall knowingly and willfully hold, or attempt to hold” women for
the purpose of prostitution.
In this
legislation we see the beginnings of an attitude trend that continues to this
day. Though women may themselves choose
to go into this profession, many people—prostitutes, law-makers, and laypeople
alike—believe that the real culprits are the men who force them to go into the
profession. Due to this reasoning, the
Page Law provided punishment for only the ship owners or businessmen who
transported and made contracts for the women, not for the women
themselves.
By the
beginning of the next century a new tide of immigrants had wash upon the shores
of the U.S.
and the country began to worry about the effects and influences of these “New
Immigrants” on society. In response to
this panic, Congress created the Immigration Commission in 1909, chaired by
William Dillingham and composed of nine commissioners. Their goal was to explore every aspect of
immigrant life and culture and make recommendations to Congress for immigration
restriction.
The final
report of the Commission consisted of forty volumes—over 20,000 pages—on topics
ranging from children in school and immigrants’ skull sizes to prostitution and
women’s fertility. One 75-page section
was entitled “The Importation and Harboring of Women for Immoral Purposes,”
which gave a charged, opinionated account of the prostitution market for
immigrants.
Whereas
several of the volumes contained tens of pages of stark, unanalyzed data, this
section provided rich commentary on the same type of importation of women that
the Page Law had restricted. The report,
once again, targeted the men bringing European women into the country and,
while it did say that some of the women were themselves immoral, the “pimps”
were considered the vilest. Under
recommendation by the Commission, the current law was made stricter, causing
the number of deportations of women to increase from 65 in 1907 to 261 in 1909.
The
language of the report reflects most clearly the views of that age of
government officials. Though the women
entered the country to improve their standards of living, the real culprits
were not the generally “young and affectionate” women, but the “keepers of the
houses, the pimps, and the procurers, who live[d] by their exploitation.” The most telling phrase in the report is
“white-slave traffic” which demonstrates the firm belief that women are coerced
into selling their bodies and have little control over their fate. According to the report, even a woman who
“revolts bitterly” against the work is eventually forced to submit, or else
face beatings, rape, or murder by her pimp.
During
World War Two, a slightly different situation was present in Honolulu.
During the war, over 7 million men were stationed in or passed through
the city on their way to fight in the South Pacific. This, of course, provided a high demand for
sex work, as some of the men coming through town hadn’t seen a woman for
months. At any given time, over 200
women who had come over from the mainland were working on Hotel Street, a block full of brothels
that charged three dollars for three minutes.
Though the
women were required to have regular medical checks, which resulted in a
surprisingly low rate of venereal diseases, there were many other strict
regulations over the women’s actions.
Some of these were that: prostitutes were not to be seen in public with
army officers, they were not to wire money home to their families, were not to
own cars and they were not to have bank accounts.
The
prostitutes and the madams who ran the assembly line-like brothels paid taxes
on their respective yearly incomes of up to $40,000 and up to $150,000
(madams). Because the women were making
such huge sums of money and yet still had men constantly lined up on street,
they decided to raise their prices. The
chief of police (and strong opposition to the brothels), Frank Steer, said,
“The price of meat [is] still three dollars,” dehumanizing the women and
signifying a contempt of the lucrative profession.
In
response, all of the prostitutes on Hotel
Street broke with precedent and went on strike on
August 28, 1942. The strike lasted for
22 days and, not surprisingly, caused enormous uproar among the servicemen who
counted on having women to visit during their R&R. As a result, the women gained the rights to
live and roam wherever they pleased, though the women were still not allowed to
raise their prices.
Two years
later, near the end of the war, Hawaiian Governor Stainbeck enforced the
closing of the bordellos on Hotel Street, but the situation and organization of
the women of Hotel Street were pivotal moments in the history of women’s
rights. The women in Hawaii
were working to feed their families just as the Rosie the Riveters were doing
back home, and were influential, assertive, and, in a perverse way, respected
by the Honolulu
community.
When the
brothels were closed many people expressed concern that the soldiers and
riffraff who had frequented the brothels would pour out onto the streets and
that the women would continue to sell their bodies, but in a less safe
manner. In examining this Hawaii anomaly
next to the previous Page and Dillingham legislations and recommendations it
becomes unclear whether the males in control were forcing women to go into sex
work or whether they were the ones forcing them out of sex work. One former sex worker on Hotel Street said, “I see here that this
paper says we can’t practice prostitution any more. Heck, I don’t practice, I’m
an expert.”
Twenty-five
years later, the country had moved out of the Great Wars, the Cold War, and
McCarthyism, and was in the midst of the Vietnam War. Tensions were high and threats of communist
and undemocratic immorality had settled like a fever. In Nevada,
prostitution had been a tradition of its first settlers and many wanted it to
become a legal tradition. Because of fierce struggle over prostitution,
a law was passed in 1971 declaring that brothels could legally exist in
counties with fewer than 400,000 people.
In the
brothels, regular medical checks are required for all prostitutes and condoms
are required in all interactions with prostitutes. Because of these requirements, including the
rule that prostitution must be confined to managed, tax paying houses, Nevada
prostitution is safer than it the profession is in other states in which
prostitution is illegal.
Websites
online outline the many services each brothel provides, and have pictures of
the women available. One brothel has
over 200 women posted on its website, and accepts all major credit or debit
cards, and has an ATM on the ranch if customers would prefer to use cash. Most ranches, such as one called the Chicken
Ranch, have female managers similar to the madams of Hotel Street. Business men can reserve “parties” at the
ranches in which many men patronize the women, or can hold cocktail parties
where men mingle and then pair off with the woman of their choice.
Although
many of these women seem to be choosing the business for themselves, the
combination of the economic conditions causing influencing their decisions and
the assembly-line structure of the brothels contributes to both sides of the
regulation debate. Despite the safer conditions
of these women, there are still new propositions nearly every year in the Nevada legislature to
illegalize prostitution.
There is a
movement of outsiders, people unaffiliated with the profession itself, who
argue for the legalization of prostitution.
These people generally appeal to humanism and state their goal to make
the world safer for women. One Chicago high school teacher, “Mark Liberator” writes
online about his pro-legalization views by comparing the United States
to various countries that regulate prostitution.
Liberator
argues that HIV/AIDS rates and crime (including rape) are roughly the same or
higher in the United States
than in countries such as Canada
and the Netherlands,
which have legal prostitution. He also
evokes the image of women getting illegal abortions before Roe vs. Wade in
1973—before the Supreme Court decision, he says, 5,000 women died from botched
abortions each year. He compares this statistic to those regarding
rape in the United States
and suggests that prostitution would be safer for women if it were legal. This argument, thought
coming from an upper-middle class man, ties in directly with one group of
former prostitutes who advocate its legalization. By looking at groups of prostitutes or former
prostitutes, we are able to see the personal side of this condition.
COYOTE, or
Call off your Old Tired Ethics, is an organization founded by an ex-prostitute
in 1973. The group advocates the
legalization of prostitution because it believes that prostitutes’ issues are
women’s issues and that no one at that time was publicly addressing those
issues, particularly not from the prostitute’s side. The backbone of COYOTE’s stance is that
prostitution is a viable profession, that women should be free to choose
whatever profession will help them the most economically and that by keeping
prostitution legal we will be keeping women safe.
Organizations
such as COYOTE and the National Task Force on Prostitution hold the belief that
women join the profession because of circumstance, and that by improving
standard of living women can liberate themselves. This side of the debate still possesses some
of the Page/Dillingham/Hotel
Street ideology that men are the cause of this
profession, that the women are victims unless they are making their own safe
choices.
The counter
argument, held by prostitute organizations such as WHISPER, or Women Hurt in
Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt, share the belief that men are
perpetuating the institution, but believe that just helping women and educating
them is not enough. An advocate for
WHISPER states that the fact that seventy-five percent of prostitutes have been
victims of paternal sexual abuse shows a causal relationship between male
hegemony and entrance into the profession. The organization rejects the notions that
prostitution provides agency and a means of wealth for women, and place
responsibility on men who are in both the “conservative right and the liberal
left male hierarchies collude to teach and keep women in prostitution.”
This view
is nearly exactly that held by the Immigration Commission, but with a more
womanist side, blaming even the system of marriage for forcing women to remain
submissive. The main difference seen
here between early male ideas of prostitution and these women’s organizations
is that while William Dillingham blamed men for the direct coercion of women,
WHISPER’s members go even deeper and hold men accountable for putting women in
a state in which they think prostitution is their only choice. WHISPER believes that the active and
responsible approach to ending this oppressive coercion is to stop the
institution in its tracks by arresting the male oppressors rather than the
women themselves, because, according to WHISPER, women are the true victims of
this very tangible crime.
In
scrutinizing aspects of US
prostitution history as it is enveloped in public and person opinion, it
becomes clear that a majority holds the masculine hierarchy responsible for the
perpetuation of this institution. Even
those opposed to prostitution, such as the Dillingham Commissioners and Chinese
Exclusionists, held firmly to the belief that the women themselves were not to
blame for their immoral behavior.
Statistics
and recounts of both sides of the argument clearly reflect indecision on the
women’s parts. Even women who feel they
are making the decision to join the sex work industry are, according to many
ex-prostitutes, not wholly making the decision; women have been socialized to
believe that it is acceptable for men to exert often violent power over women,
and this causes them to view prostitution as a viable option. COYOTE believes that the only way to make
prostitution safe is to regulate it, however both the howling and whispering
sides of this constant debate share one fundamental belief: women deserve
better than this.
References
Daniels, Roger. Coming to America
(New York:
Perennial Publishers, 2002), 241.
Delacoste, Frederique, and Priscilla
Alexander, Eds. Sex Work:
Writings by Women in the Sex Industry.
(Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1987).
Dillingham, William P., Commission Chairman. “Importation and Harboring
of Women for Immoral Purposes,” Dillingham Immigration Commission Report.
Vol. 37, Pt. 2.
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1911)
Farwell, William. “Why the Chinese Must Be Excluded,” The
Forum Vol. 6, (1888)
Greer, Richard.
“Dousing Honolulu’s
Red Lights,” The Hawaiian Journal of History, Vol. 34, (Hawaiian
Historical Society: 2000). http://www.chinatownhi.com/dousing.asp
Liberator, Mark.
“Legalized Prostitution: Regulating the Oldest Profession.” The Liberator, (December, 2003). http://www.liberator.net/articles/prostitution.html
Page Law. Forty-Third Congress,
Session II. Ch.
141. March 3, 1875. (San Francisco
Chinatown: October, 2004). http://www.sanfranciscochinatown.com/history/1875pagelaw.html
Statutes of Nevada, NRS 244.345, Chapter 244.
Counties: Government General Positions. (2001)
http://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-244.html#NRS244Sec345