The current Anti-Sex Trafficking
movement made famous by celebrities and lawmakers alike has its traces back as
early to the days of slavery when the call to protect the bodies and fragility
of white women rang loudly in the minds of Southern men. The modern Anti-Sex Trafficking movements
began in the early 1990s when it came to the attention of lawmakers that an
influx of white women were entering into the sex industry, a reality that
seemed unfathomable to the public. The
idea that white women were being stripped of their virtue and that their bodies
were being commodified left people outraged and sparked the creation of
feminist organizations that aimed at helping victims of sex trafficking and
eliminating the sex industry as a whole on the basis that it was not a
liberation of the female body, but a form of modern oppression.
This
level of public outrage and call for change was not present in 1940s Memphis
when two young black women were raped at the hands of police officers and then
forced to spend a few days in prison away from their families. There was also no mass protest over sex
workers being forced to endure invasive STD testing during the 1960s and 1970s
in Memphis despite this being a direct violation of the female body. The difference between these occurrences and
those of the 1990s were that the individuals forced to endure invasive physical
tests or recruited at the ages 10-13 to join the sex industry were
predominately black women. Black sex
workers were charged with the loss of tourists to the city of Memphis and for
causing rifts in the family dynamic. If
these women went to the police with reports of assault, they were arrested for
admitting to being a part of the sex industry, rather than being sent to
counselors in place to help them process what had happened. This indifference and general disdain towards
black sex workers allowed for an article to be published detailing the life of
a 16 year old sex worker who went to school and worked for a “pimp” during the
afternoons into early evenings. This
story was sensationalized as a glimpse into the life of a young sex worker. If
this same article had been written about a young white woman in the early 1990s
then this story would have served as both a warning and a call to arms to
defend the purity of young women.
This
distinction between the treatment of black sex workers in Memphis during the mid-twentieth
century leading up until the 1990s, showcases the idea that the white public
does not care for the well-being of all women, but the well-being of white
women.
Very eye-opening and moving post. Your final statement begs the question of whether or not this is still a problem today. I would like to think that it is. So many times you hear of white women participating in sex work or things of that matter because they have been traumatized in some sort of way and are not psychologically right. On the other hand, if a black woman does it, she is just a (insert degrading comment about prostitutes here) who wants the extra money. Nothing more.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that "white slavery" is a term that people decided to use is yet more evidence of discrimination against black women. "White slavery" is supposed to refer to human trafficking for sex work - but why is it called "white slavery"? Why not just "slavery"? Why is the enslavement of white women somehow more outrageous than the enslavement of women of color, so that it needed its own term? The answer I think has to do with what we discussed about the purity of white womanhood, like you mentioned - the defilement of white women is seen as a disparagement of white manhood. And of course, the powerful people (white men) in mainstream American society couldn't have that, could they?
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