"Prostitution or the Prostituted" in America's Early Political Writings
The way “prostitution” or “prostituted” is used in politics shows the whorephobia that’s all over our culture, and within history. I’m reading over how politicians and the founding fathers especially used prostitution because (1) I’m curious and bored (2) to demonstrate that the use of these terms is a slur. I don’t believe prostitution or prostituted can be reclaimed or be benevolent when used by outsiders to talk about sex workers. The reason why those who oppose the label “sex work” prefer these terms is because they want to maintain the oppression and shame society places on us. To be a prostitute, or a prostituted person means to be othered, dehumanized, an enemy, turned into a symbol for destruction by the virtuous people.
Dr Kate Lister: “It’s telling that those who support the abolition of the sex trade generally do not use the term ‘sex worker’ (the preferred term of use by those who sell sexual services); rather the word ‘prostitute’ or ‘prostituted women’ is used.”
The Declaration of Independence is what it sounds like; the 13 colonies were declaring war and independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. It included a bunch of grievances against the crown, below is one of them. This passage was later removed from the final draft because it denounced slavery. This passage does something very interesting. It makes the colonists innocent of the institution of slavery. As if it was forced upon them and the colonists have been trying to stop it/limit it but the crown keeps vetoing it (prostituting himself and his power/vote). The colonists, and Jefferson himself, benefited from slavery, they helped create it, and kept it going. Being against slavery, in word and voice alone is very easy to do.
III. Jefferson’s “original Rough draught” of the Declaration of Independence, 11 June–4 July 1776
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce:11 and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
Links:
https://www.history.com/news/declaration-of-independence-deleted-anti-slavery-clause-jefferson
https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=112
To Thomas Jefferson from Elbridge Gerry, 4 May 1801
these observations I mean only to extend to the inveterate enemies & persecutors of republicanism & republicans; for whilst I hold in veneration an honest anterepublican, & in detestation a dishonest republican, yet, there is no apology in my mind, for a man, who, holding an office under a republican constitution, & bound by his oath & honor to support it, is aiming nevertheless, by the prostitution of his office, & the basest perfidy, to annul & subvert it…[Continued]
…[Continued] The last act of feudal desperation, is an attempt to sever the New England from the other states. this is as weak, as it is wicked. their own party, notwithstanding “the ægis of governing & the temples of religion & justice” may all be “prostituted” to the purpose, would revolt at the measure. the federal constitution as amended, altho not perfect, is under a republican administration, & in co-operation with the state system, an excellent one, & shall ever have my support. the parts which require amendment, I hope will meet the propositions of the next Congress for this purpose.
The following passage is just….NO WORDS. It’s one of the most violently racist things I ever read. Prostitution is used to refer to a whole group of people: Native Americans. The writer claims that no white man or woman would freely choose to have sex, marry, or have children with Native Americans. The “choice” debate around sex work functions in a similar way that’s being used in this passage. Bigots aren’t able to believe that sex among or with certain people happens, and if it does…they like to believe it’s horrible, or by force always or most of the time. So the debate is set up to have marginalized people prove that sex does happen, and can happen, consensually and normally like anyone else. This is why African Americans, other racialized people, and allies have spent many decades proving that interracial marriage and sex is possible, and can happen consensually. For most of the USA’s history, interracial sex and marriage was criminalized, there were even anti-miscegenation laws; it was illicit sex. We’re still dealing with this legacy today. There’s a reason why interracial sex in porn is still considered taboo. In our society interracial couples and families can be viewed with suspicion; they’re the most likely to be accused of human/sex trafficking. This isn’t to say that abuse can’t occur in these relationships. The obsession with “choice” debates over certain sex acts often normalizes violence. These debates often paint certain groups as “innocent”, being without agency or choice, while another group is demonized, or blamed. The end game is to create stigma, shame, and ultimately eliminate certain sex acts from happening entirely. This obviously isn’t possible, so the next best thing is to deny that it does happen, and punish people when they are caught. To be clear I’m not referring to cases of actual abuse. I’m referring to this refusal to listen or believe certain groups like POC, people with disabilities, or sex workers when we say that we can consent to sex, and people can consent to have sex with us. Many groups are told (not directly) that it’s an act of kindness or a gift to have “superior” people have sex with us. For example, people with disabilities can sometimes be made to believe that they should feel honored that someone without disabilities had sexual relations with them. Sex workers are often made to feel this from society and people. We are taught that having sex with us isn’t real sex, and people would be debasing themselves by having sex with us. Being in a relationship or marrying a sex worker is considered emasculating and horrifying. Our children are viewed as doomed to be traumatized, abused, or failures. This passage plays into this logic directly, claiming that white people would be disbasing themselves, or “prostituting themselves” by having sex with Native Americans. And that no white person would ever have sex with Native Americans by choice; they would have to be paid really really well and forced to do it.
To James Madison from Americanus, 16 April 1816
I do not wonder at such a notion being advanced by Mr. Secretary Crawford, who has practised so long in the neighborhood of the Creeks and the Cherokees, and who is well acquainted with the natives on the Oakfuskee and the head waters of Talipoosa; but a common man must have time to acquire this taste: as in the smoking segars and the chewing tobacco, certain prejudices and loathings are to be overcome, before we can reconcile ourselves to a filthy custom, for the sake of social conformity. We have no details of Mr. Crawford’s plan, to enable us to judge of the specific temptations he means to hold out for the purpose of encouraging this species of prostitution. Whether our blooming lasses are to be paid in land or in money for thus selling their embraces to the idle, haughty, drunken, ferocious savage; some kind of remuneration must be held out, for I have no more conception of our people submitting to this motley intercourse, with a view of extending the enjoyment of “civil liberty and social happiness,” than I have of their intermarrying with the stinking negroes for the same benevolent purpose.
Then the means necessary to be used, recommended by Mr. Crawford, are of the worst description of dishonesty “Let inter marriages between them and the whites (says this notable law-giver) be encouraged by the government.” Now, I say that government can give no encouragement, has not the means of giving encouragement, but by some direct or indirect method of paying or remunerating those white males or females who prostitute themselves to promote Mr. Secretary Crawford’s wild scheme. For it is absolutely incredible that any such marriages will ever take place by choice: the natural, the unsophisticated feelings of every young white man and woman, would sicken and revolt at the idea of such a strange connection. If they are encouraged to submit to it, the very lowest and most degraded alone will conform, and even they must be well paid for so doing.
The United States have no other means (I say again) of giving encouragement to such a scheme. That is, Mr. Secretary Crawford recommends, that government shall interfere to tempt by the love of gain, to pay, to bribe, our young men and women to commit prostitution, for the sake of adding to the comforts of the American savages! Who is there that does not deplore the frequency of illicit intercourse in our large cities? But the prostitution of a white woman to a white man is, virtue itself, compared to Mr. Crawford’s recommendation of yielding up the persons of our young woman, and that too for life, to the embraces of the savage, for the pay and reward of govermental encouragement; to which this benevolent and patriotic gentleman adds, the encrease of civil liberty and social happiness!!! I wish Mr. Crawford would kindly instruct the world, in the quantum of civil liberty and social happiness enjoyed by an Indian squaw!
Judge Jabez Bowen, a Yale-educated Rhode Island man gives a speech on ending slavery, and proposes a plan to liberate enslaved girls at age 10, and enslaved boys at age 21. It doesn’t go over well as you’ll see from the passage, he’s accused of “prostituting” the office, and America and is promptly kicked out of office. Interesting stuff I found, Bowen was married to Sarah Brown, from the Brown University founding family. They were all slave owners. Jabez Bowen had slaves, and even buried an 80-year-old woman named Anna. Her grave reads: “Thou a good master, I was a good slave. I now rest from labor and sleep in my grave.” I even found his house and found that he had at least 3 other enslaved people living there: Jenny, her daughter Dinah, and Fortune. [check out the links below if you want to see.] For white abolitionists, slavery was a kind of symbol. Most abolitionists didn’t actually believe in equality (they still believed Black people were inferior), they just thought slavery made them (and the country) look bad. Why does this all matter now? Because it taints our present, and all our institutions have this history. And also because our societal conversations around “human trafficking”, which is usually about immigration and sex work follows very similar trends and ideas. Modern-day “abolitionists” (usually sex trade abolitionists) suffer the same logic, hypocrisies and contradictions that plagued abolitionists of the past. They fundamentally do not think sex workers are equal, and don’t think we are worthy of the same respect as other people. That’s why their focus tends to be on rehabilitation and assimiliation.
To Thomas Jefferson from Benjamin Ragsdale, 9 May 1804
RC (ViW: Tucker-Coleman Collection); endorsed by TJ as received 14 May and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: Georgia Republican Extra, Savannah, 25 Apr. 1804, publishing a letter from editor Samuel Morse to Judge Jabez Bowen, Jr., explaining his refusal to print Bowen’s 23 Apr. charge to the Chatham County grand jury and condemning the judge’s comments as “uncommonly fraught with evil, its language disrespectful and inflammatory, and wholly extrajudicial”; also including the resolutions of a 25 Apr. meeting of Savannah citizens, Joseph Clay, chairman, unanimously declaring their approbation of the actions of the grand jury that Bowen has imprisoned and their opposition to the publication of his charge; a subscription is to be opened in support of the incarcerated jurors; the citizens call on the state legislature to investigate Bowen’s conduct and will confer with a committee of attorneys to secure the jurors’ release; they also condemn Bowen for drawing a pistol in court and using “indecent and profane language,” which has “prostituted” the dignity of his office and the respectability of the government (printed broadside in DLC: Rare Book and Special Collections Division; Sowerby, No. 3310).
conduct of judge bowen: a native of Rhode Island, Jabez Bowen, Jr., had been appointed a judge of the superior court for the eastern district of Georgia in 1802. On 23 Apr. 1804, in his charge to the grand jury of Chatham County, Bowen delivered a vehement condemnation of the institution of slavery and called on the legislature to introduce a plan of gradual emancipation in the state. Appalled by Bowen’s comments, the grand jury issued a presentment on 25 Apr. condemning the judge’s address and refused to conduct further business. The jurors further recommended that Bowen’s charge not be published, but that a copy be sent to the governor and legislature for their consideration. In retaliation, Bowen jailed the grand jury and quelled unrest in his court by presenting a pair of loaded pistols. That evening, Bowen was arrested for attempting “to excite domestic insurrection.” The grand jury was released the following day. In May, Bowen was removed from office, and he returned to Rhode Island the following month (Providence Phoenix, 4 Dec. 1802; Columbian Museum & Savannah Advertiser, 28 Apr., 26 May 1804; New-York Herald, 4 July 1804). The text of Bowen’s charge appeared in the Providence Gazette, 7 July 1804.
Links:
http://rihistoriccemeteries.org/newgravedetails.aspx?ID=96124
https://www.goprovidence.com/listing/dr-jabez-bowen-house/25019/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabez_Bowen
https://www.wm.edu/as/africanastudies/middlepassage/documents/MBA_Kruger.pdf