FREE ESSAY ON PROSTITUTION: THE UNCONTROLALBLE VISE

PROSTITUTION: THE UNCONTROLALBLE VISE

"There are women who search for love, and there are those that search for money." 
Today, the term woman simply denotes one's sex. It does not define her character, morals
and values, or even her profession. However, this was not always the case. At the end of
the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, during the Progressive
Era, there was a drive for reform. Various social problems became targets for
investigation and intervention: child labour, juvenile delinquency, corruption in city
government and police departments, and prostitution. These things were newly discovered
social problems; the only differences during this period were the new assumptions,
strategies, and expectations of a broad organization of activists. Progressive reform
actively decided to take more of a role in regulating the social welfare of its citizens,
and those private and public spheres of activity could not be disentangled. Prostitution
was an issue that underscored the relationship between home life and street life, wages
of 'sin' and low wages of women workers, double sexual standards and transmission of
venereal disease. The late nineteenth century response to prostitution revealed the
competing ideologies within Progressive reform activity over social justice and social
control.
"Most attempts to 'deal with' prostitution have consisted almost exclusively of more or
less vigorous attempts to suppress it altogether - by forcing the closing of brothels,
and by increased police activities against individual prostitutes and against those
individual places, such as taverns, where prostitutes frequently solicit." 
This paper seeks to prove that the reformers were unable to stamp out prostitution during
the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century for a
variety of factors. First, I will look at why women in the late nineteenth, and early
twentieth century became prostitutes. The gender differences between sex roles will be
analyzed in relation to prostitution. Finally, the various failed attempts to abolish
prostitution will be discussed. 
"Legally [prostitution] is often defined as the hiring out of the body for sexual
intercourse." Some say that the exchange of money does not need to take place. Albert
Ellis, one well-known sexologist and author would define prostitution as, "A woman or a
man engaging in sexual relations for non-sexual and non-amotive considerations." This
definition would therefore include "...girls who trade their sexual favors for food,
entertainment or other gifts." Each individual may have different views as to what a
prostitute is or how they feel about them. During the late nineteenth century and early
twentieth century reformers, for example, wanted to eradicate prostitution. It was looked
at as the cause of all evil and poverty, among other things. But, it was over the place,
girls supplying their bodies for the males' high compulsion to satisfy their sexual
desires.
Canada's industrial development equipped many women with outlet for their skills and
energies in addition to the home and other work places. With all the improvements in
transportation and communications, growth of the cities is the availability of new
consumer goods provided in an age of national growth. However, with all of this came
economic and social tensions. Most Canadians were concerned with the presence of certain
ethnic groups, poverty in the cities and an increasing crime rate. With this new found
awareness of social problems, came the belief that by identifying and classifying
problems the nature of the world could be reformed to insure a moral, civilized society.
There are many reasons why one would choose upon a career of prostitution. They range
from quick money to language barriers (most girls were foreign born or their parents were
foreign born), from curiosity to alcoholism. "Most prostitutes are believed to have
started at a young age and despite much talk about 'white slavery', no cases were ever
found of a women unwillingly detained in a brothel." Up until about mid way through the
twentieth century a large percentage of all the women engaged in prostitution were
professional prostitutes, registered or widely known to be such, and often working in
brothels.
" A the 1916's Unemployment Commission had observed, working girls seemed to be unable to
stick out jobs for more than a few months, and many were so frivolous and irresponsible
that they were justifiably dismissed. Frustrated that they could not afford material
pleasures, they were easily 'led astray' by persuasive gentlemen ready to pay" 
Looking at the root causes of why women choose to become prostitutes will show one of the
reasons why reformers were unable to abolish it. Research and investigation done in the
early twentieth century debated the issues of why one would become a prostitute.
Prostitution was believed to be a grave social evil. Some believed that women's wages
were rather low, thus driving women to turn to prostitution. However, after "...treating
hundreds of prostitutes for seven years, the mission [Toronto rescue mission director]
had not found a single women who had been driven by low pay to her 'misdeeds'". It was
then concluded that the low pay was not the solitary of primary cause of prostitution.
"It was pointed out that girls who struggled to survive on 5-6$ per week managed to
'retain their virtue' proved, first, that it could be done and, second, that something
other than poverty namely, moral weakness accounted for women's downfall." But how could
you possibly say that women were naturally immoral when it was men that were engaging in
these acts with the prostitutes. All of these reasons explain why become harlots, but, if
it was not for men who pursued these women then there would be no money or demand for the
victims to fall into the trap of prostitution.
Physicians have always asserted the strengths of the male sex drive but have been more
ambivalent in their attitudes towards female sexuality. Women were the child bearers and
child carers, and so it was very important for them to remain ambivalent in their
attitudes towards female sexuality. Prostitution was linked to male dominance in
economic, political, and social life, and viewed the sexual double standard as an
extension of the imbalance of power between the sexes. The Victorians and many of their
descendants believed in a balanced society; each sex complimented the other thus if men
had a strong sex drive, women, in order to maintain the balance, were weaker. Sexually
active women were believed to be acting against their very nature. It is one of the
reasons that being a prostitute has long been a crime in this country. Until recently,
going to a prostitute has not; men who used the services of prostitutes were simply
succumbing to their 'natural' drives, where as the prostitutes were acting in an
unnatural fashion. In the early part of the twentieth century the medical profession gave
support to the idea that most prostitutes were feeble minded. It was the female behavior,
not male, that was considered deviant. The majority of the women were seemingly content
to submerge themselves in their families, to subordinate their own ambitions to those of
their husbands or male children, to remain uneducated and even ignorant, unable to enter
into masculine conversation, there was always the minority who did not or would not.
Often the only other thought to be alternative for such rebellious women was
prostitution. This is not to imply that women's life in the past was bleak and
unfulfilled, or to agree with the more ardent feminists that women were little better
than slaves; unlike slaves, the wife could usually deny her sexual favors to her husband.
Despite the harshness of women's lives most of them adjusted their position.
"Many were at least as well off as their husbands or brothers: the women of the frontier
shared equally with the male, as did the women of the lower classes; in pre-industrial
societies the women was usually man's economic partner. But here social life was
certainly more circumscribed, and she was still the 'weaker vessel' who could not be
trusted with her own future." 
Prostitution has persisted in our society throughout many centuries despite continuous
attempts to suppress it by religious, moral and legal prosecution. Humans all have sexual
urges that exist from the moment of birth, but paying for them is considered immoral.
"There are three major systems for dealing with prostitution. These are Regulation,
Suppression and Abolishment. None of these systems have been found apt to eliminate
anyone of the disadvantages of prostitution, although each system has managed in its own
way to restrict or reduce them." 
The nineteenth century regulation was in effect but abolition is the common route for the
twentieth century. "Regulation is a system where by women practicing prostitution are
registered with the police and are controlled by means of rules, the avowed object of
which is to safeguard public order and decency on one hand and public health on the
other." Those who upheld regulation believed that it was impossible to eradicate
prostitution therefore it should be controlled. It sounds great in theory but the amount
of energy that is involved in keeping track of who is registered and all that goes on
behind the policies eyes. 
"The suppression of prostitution is the total prohibition imposed on acts of prostitution
and other activities that promote, organize or facilitate prostitution." This makes
prostitution a criminal offence, punishing the prostitutes and the clients for engaging
in it. When applied properly, a system of suppression does not eradicate prostitution but
it drives prostitutes underground. Therefore one more system failed in the attempt to
annihilate prostitution.
The final and most commonly used system during the twentieth century was abolition.
"Abolitionists are those who oppose all statutory enactment's or police ordinates
authorizing the registration and medical examinations of prostitutes and the existence of
licensed brothels." So long as the average human male is endowed with a vital sexual urge
that cannot be generously satisfied and is economically in a position to provide some
material reward in consideration for his sexual release, prostitution will inevitably
exist.
Across Canada many upper and middle class educated women joined the movement to reform.
Many organizations formed, the largest and perhaps most influential women's organization
was the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). This group was formed to stop the
liquor trade because the women of WCTU believed that alcohol was the root of all
societies ills; crime, poverty, and sexual immorality.
Prostitution is an enigmatic and controversial subject. Streetwalking will always lead to
a corner in democratic societies with capitalist economies; it invades the ground of
intimate sexual relations yet calls for regulation. A society's response to prostitution
goes to the core of how it chooses between the rights o some persons and the protection
of others. In nearly every society past or present, the public has sought to control the
prostitution economy through the female prostitutes themselves. Yet prostitution has been
resistant to nearly all efforts to suppress it. The progressive reform portrait of the
prostitutes women enslaved was simplistic, but the present day representation of
prostitutes as female entrepreneurs is equally naive. The image of the prostitutes as
working women, featured films, books, and television and radio talk shows seem to seek to
demystify prostitution, to strip away the glamour and sensationalism. These images
represent a conscious attempt to reject the portrayal o prostitutes as outcast women,
deviant actors, and criminal types prevalent in the popular literature and scientific
journals of the last century and a half. These images of prostitution reveal a retreat
from an era of social justice campaigns that sought through economic and social programs
to remove the sources of prostitution.
Bibliography
Benjamin, Harry. Prostitution and Morality. (New York), The Julian Press, Inc., 1964.)
Bullough, Vern L. The History of Prostitution. (New Hyde Park, New York, University Books
Inc., 1964)
Report of the Special committee on Pornography and Prostitution. Pornography and
Prostitution in Canada. (Ottawa, Canada, Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1985.)
Sion, Abraham A. Prostitution and the Law. (London, England, Western Printing Services
Ltd., 1997.)
Strange, Carolyn. Toronto's Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City,
1880-1930. (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1995.)