NCJ Number
174466
Journal
Buffalo Criminal Law Review Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Dated: 1997 Pages: 109-136
Date Published
1997
Length
28 pages
Annotation
The Mann Act of 1910 and the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 are analyzed with respect to the rhetoric of captivity they use to describe the plight of certain females, as well as the functions of this rhetoric; the analysis concludes that a new rhetoric is needed that charts the progress made descries the free spaces that remain.
Abstract
Both laws aimed to punish men who committed crimes against women. The Mann Act promised to punish those who transport in interstate commerce any female for the purpose of prostitution. In contrast, the Violence Against Women Act aimed to deter violent crimes such as domestic assault, rape, and stalking. However, the legislative reports of both eras invoked metaphors of captivity. Sponsors of the Mann Act regarded marriage as the better life for which the prostitute should yearn, whereas feminist writers have characterized marriage as an institution in which women were enslaved by men both practically and legally. However, the rhetoric is deficient because it lacks a way to articulate the indisputable and not entirely mundane differences between prostitution and marriage or of noting the many changes in women's legal, social, and material status that have occurred in the past 100 years. The current rhetoric has the appearance of promoting and subjugation that the legislators ostensibly would remedy precisely because it suppresses the existence of the differences between prostitution and marriage and obscures the evolution of women's position, Therefore, a new rhetoric is needed to articulate the current situation and social roles. Footnotes