NCJ Number
107770
Date Published
1987
Length
275 pages
Annotation
This text offers a historical analysis of prostitution policy in the United States, focusing on three periods when prostitution reform became a public concern: during the evangelical religious movement of the 1840's, as part of the Progressive reform era in the first two decades of the 1900's, and in the 1970's at the height of the feminist movement.
Abstract
In each case, emphasis is on the social constituencies and political agendas involved in prostitution reform. During the Victorian era, prostitutes appeared increasingly threatening to the social order in which male and female roles were sharply delineated and in which the image of the prostitute as fallen woman or outcast was framed in terms of prevailing notions of pathology and sexual deviance. During the Progressive era, a wide range of reform groups and new theories of social science and psychoanalysis were crucial in redefining female deviance. Finally, the unsuccessful challenges to prostitution policies by feminists, civil liberties lawyers, and prostitutes themselves are examined in terms of gender equality and privacy issues. Differences in the image of prostitution and policies in Holland, Germany, and Sweden are compared with those in the United States. Illustrations, tables, chapter notes, and subject and name indexes.