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>> 129 6 Policing Prostitution Public officials in the early Republic had the unquestionable authority to police prostitution. Generally, they could count on parental, political, and judicial support for their efforts to arrest prostitutes and to shutdown brothels, and they expected the concurrence of neighbors, ministers, and reformers for crusades against public licentiousness and commercial sex. Given so much support, policing prostitution became the ultimate testing ground for determining how serious, how dedicated, and how steadfast politicians were when it came to policing sex in early America. We shall see in this chapter that their commitment to policing sex was quite limited . It was a relatively low-priority matter for politicians and their public agenda. During the colonial period, there was not much prostitution to police. People complained about “debauchery” in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City, but “there was relatively little commercial sex in the colonies and the early republic.”1 Barbara Hobson claims that moral reformers “discovered ” prostitution as a troublesome social problem in the first decades of nineteenth century.2 They interpreted prostitution as a manifestation of widespread licentiousness among both males and females, and they urged public officials to prosecute offenders consistently, to punish them severely, and altogether to eradicate the practice—despite the fact that, historically, prostitution had been “resistant to nearly all efforts to suppress it.”3 Politicians and other public officials verbally agreed on the need to attack prostitution but then used their discretion to decide whether to police it. Usually, they chose to tolerate it among male patrons and only periodically prosecute it among female sex workers. 130 > 131 single women along with adulterous and bigamist wives were sometimes lumped together with prostitutes. Self-supporting single women and women “on the town” were often linked to prostitution. Women who entered taverns without proper male escorts might be labeled prostitutes.7 Indeed, any woman who appeared to be idle, dissolute, inebriated, or disorderly in public was apt to be identified as a prostitute or an associate of prostitutes and other vice-ridden members of the vicious classes.8 Public discourse about prostitution focused primarily on women. Respectable citizens and political authorities identified prostitution with the fallen souls of the female sex. Moralists saw commercial sex as a problem involving women who had descended, usually irretrievably, to the depths of immorality. Carole Pateman observes that “the patriarchal assumption that prostitution is a problem about women ensures that the other participant in the prostitution contract escapes scrutiny.”9 Missing from most public discussion was recognition that prostitution was based on traditional, patriarchal notions of male sex-right (men’s right to access women’s bodies). Few commentators showed concern that prostitution was sustained by patrons “who must have been men who approved prostitution, at least for themselves, even though they could not state such approval publicly.”10 A few moral reformers did discuss male culpability, but public discourse generally identified prostitution as a significant social problem created by women, perpetuated by women, and ultimately suffered by women.11 Moral reformers, civic leaders, public officials, and social commentators argued that prostitution was a problem that demanded public policing. William Novak points out that the legality, ideology, and practice of moral policing was commonplace in nineteenth-century America. It was considered “one of the matter-of-fact obligations of government in a well-regulated society.” Although reformers were committed to the power of moral suasion, they regularly agitated for new laws, for example, to suppress intemperance or to close down brothels. They applauded public officials who exercised discretion and employed state coercion to pass laws, to devise policies, and to make decisions intended to support public morality along with widely accepted moral standards and moral prohibitions.12 Moral choices were seen as especially consequential when they were made by youths and potentially influenced the next generation. Reformers who were concerned with juvenile delinquency (as well as with adult criminality) located the first causes of antisocial behavior in the “bad example” set by “parents and guardians.” Fathers, mothers, and guardians who exhibited a lack of self-control, who failed to transmit healthy values, 132 > 133 that was harmful to women. Critics claimed that the report exaggerated the number of prostitutes in New York City, estimating the number at ten thousand women engaged in commercial sex. That made it seem likely that any woman in public was a prostitute and could be treated as such.18 Women’s voices were generally absent or devalued in public discussions about sex. Consider...

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