feminism, temperance and prostitution

[iverglas]

7. I've wandered off from the prostitution aspect ;)

Another connection between the two issues, temperance and prostitution, is that in 19th century cities in England and the US alike, the women of the streets would have essentially all been alcoholics themselves, and thus especially vulnerable to abuse, and the men whose mercy they were at would commonly have been alcoholics as well, and as abusive as alcoholic men are today, without the social sanctions we have.

Ah, I see the 19th century happy hooker is alive and well:
http://www.alternet.org/books/148327/how_19th_century_prostitutes_were_among_the_freest,_wealthiest,_most_educated_women_of_their_time/?page=entire

Well, once again: yes, there was undoubtedly a privileged class of prostitutes. The women killed by Jack the Ripper weren't among them.


Just some more surfing ...

http://voices.yahoo.com/19th-century-moral-reform-rise-outcast-22816.html?cat=37

Another major part of reform is women - whether the cause of it, the supporters of it, or those benefiting from it. Consider the major reform movements of the nineteenth century. Abolitionism dealt with the intrinsic unfairness of enslaving a person in a country where every man is supposedly created equal. Slavery exposed a hideous discrepancy and therefore Americans finally moved to eradicate it. The fact that women were still not given rights as slavery was abolished exposed only more incongruity within the Nation's basic structure. Thus, the women's movement grew directly out of abolitionism.

Accordingly, women saw temperance (and later, prohibition) as a way to eliminate the decay caused by alcoholism in a family. Women living in an urban area experienced firsthand the poverty so often inflicted by an alcoholic breadwinner. Women living in an insolated rural home were forced to endure the constant terror of living with an unpredictable and possibly violent addict without any hope of being observed and rescued.# To women, temperance seemed like the perfect solution, and thus, they were able to unite in support of the movement.# Through involvement in the newly politicized arena of moral reform, they also took one more step into the public sphere of political causes and activity.

Temperance wasn't the only moral reform movement that enabled women to step out in public. Whether lobbying against prostitution, abortion, alcoholism, or slavery, women had inadvertently created an effective niche for themselves in the formerly exclusive male public world. Apart from moral reform, women were also stepping out of the private female sphere of the home into the new world of the working class woman. In this new world, women developed their lives in response to the regulations and controls of officials, in an environment much more suited to anonymity and freedom#. Of course, women's new place did not go unchallenged. In 1848, famous abolitionists and women's rights advocates Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott fashioned a new Declaration of Independence, called the Declaration of Sentiments, to include all men and women. The Mechanic's Advocate, a men's magazine, promptly published a response to the declaration, calling it a "parody," and denouncing the women who "attend these meetings <Women's Rights conventions>, no doubt at the expense of their more appropriate duties…"# This response illuminates one of the most incendiary aspects of the moral reform movements of the nineteenth century: not a battle of the sexes per se, but an undeniable emphasis on women's sexuality and their "place" in society.

... Women were perhaps the most effective instigators of reform, and probably those who benefited most from it. Trapped in the restrictive confines of the private female sphere, women were invaluable and yet their true potential was not yet unlocked. It was the sexuality of women that spurred many a reform movement and the voices of women that kept them going strong. It is a substantial understatement to say that women played a central role in the moral reform explosion of the nineteenth century, and their involvement marks the moment in history where women and the other outcasts of American society finally began to get their due.

Truly, women/feminists have been the most "intersectional" of persons and groups since they first set down their dustcloths and went out the front door and joined together.