The World's Oldest Profession: Labor Organizing in Prostitution

20th Century Discourses

thesocialevil

Many emerging discourses at the turn of the century continued to condemn prostitution, or the “white slave traffic”, as sex trafficking and prostitution were often conflated. Dora Forster’s Sex radicalism: As seen by an emancipated woman of the new time viewed prostitution as the “degradation of large numbers of women” and a symptom of inequality.1 A number of books from the Lisa Baskin Collection investigated the prostitution scene in Chicago, such as The social evil: its cause, effect and cure (1909) by J.H. Greer, A new conscience and an ancient evil (1912) by Jane Addams, and The second oldest profession by Ben L. Reitman (1931). These books generally reduced the motivating factors of women entering the industry to a means of livelihood, destitution, bad role models, seduction and deception, weak will and ill-treatment by parents. Many of these reasons were supported by survey results and The Social Evil report published by the Chicago Vice Commission in 1911. Some evoked the notion of morality or intelligence, positing that poor development or ignorance leads to willful enslavement:

“Unless she is built that way by the decree of heredity or fate, plus a something that is glandular, mental and environmental, she never can become an individual who will degrade herself and support a pimp. With no definite figures to back me I would say that less than one-half of one percent of females could ever become full-fledged prostitutes, and that most women are inherently and fundamentally so constituted that they will live honest, decent lives, and could not become prostitutes no matter what happened, or with whom they fell in love.”2

newconscience

Most scholars cited economic condition and the lack of opportunities to put faculties and abilities to use in society, as what primarily drove women into prostitution. They could not have willingly chosen the job, because women “instinctively shrink from sex expression unless love sanctifies it.”3 Some recognized the systemic forces that led to the prosperity of prostitution: “Modern prostitution is but the logical outcome of the centuries of abuse, oppression, and robbery; woman being the weaker sex, has suffered most and given most, but her vice is but the vice that men have pushed her into. For ages, women were not even free enough to sell the use of their bodies and receive the price themselves. Nevertheless, their bodies were used.”4 The cure to the social evil is education, higher wages and better living conditions that would deter young women from the dangers of city life.

These scholars extensively acknowledge, on the other hand, the brutal working conditions of prostitutes: they were often abused, beaten, threatened, and sometimes even mutilated by pimps. According to Reitman, they were unable to talk back, to negotiate or to escape from her job because of the asymmetrical power relationship.5 They rightly posited that laws were focused on women - in 1929 in Chicago, over five thousand women were arrested for prostitution, and only thirty-six men for pimping – and that laws have had minimal effect on the prevalence of prostitution. Reitman found that women did not have a say in the services they provide, were exploited by pimps and kept in debt to them, and the police were not on their side.These observations lay the groundwork for later activists who argued that such laws should be removed to provide women with a safer, more transparent workplace.

1. Dora Forster, Sex Radicalism : As Seen by an Emancipated Woman of the New Time (Chicago: M. Harman, 1905), 44.
2. Ben L. Reitman, The Second Oldest Profession: A Study of the Prostitute's "business Manager" (New York, NY: Vanguard Press, 1931), 192.
3. Joseph H. Greer, The Social Evil : Its Cause, Effect and Cure (Chicago: 162 North Dearborn Street, 1913), 57.
4. Ibid., 46-47.
5. Ben L. Reitman, The Second Oldest Profession: A Study of the Prostitute's "business Manager" (New York, NY: Vanguard Press, 1931), 48.
6. Ibid.

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