Sex Work Research 1/2/2022
It’s a personal rush for me to find lists during my trafficking/sex work research: they present a map of how various things tie together and a list to research more deeply. Today I found an inmate case file from Atlanta, listing various names and their offenses like “Mailing Obscene Letters”, “Violating White-Slave Traffic Act”, “Selling Liquor to Soldiers”, “Smuggling Opium”, etc. In my mind, all these things are related: policing speech, our private lives, anti-sex work, anti-alcohol, anti-drug policy, and protecting American military forces from outside threats. It’s fascinating to me that the individual’s names are still listed for anyone to find, many of these laws are now outdated or seen as problematic. Today I feel like digging up what “Mailing Obscene Letters” means. If I had to guess, it’s anything related to sex like masturbation, underwear, menstruation, contraceptives, abortion, having sex, etc. It would also probably include anything those in power consider to be a sin or threat to their power.
One charge of obscenity was a result of a man writing about wanting to kill themselves after their separation from their wife. You can see a part of that below reported by the DOJ.
I found a case of a Black man named, William Broughton wrongly convicted of obscene letter writing because of a bunch of “handwriting experts”.
I found a book I’m definitely adding to my bookshelf: Morality and the Mail in Nineteenth-Century America. I’m so happy all these nerds are interested in the same analysis I’m into and I can find them everywhere. READ THIS DESCRIPTION:
Morality and the Mail in Nineteenth-Century America explores the evolution of postal innovations that sparked a communication revolution in nineteenth-century America. Wayne E. Fuller examines how evangelical Protestants, the nation’s dominant religious group, struggled against those transformations in American society that they believed threatened to paganize the Christian nation they were determined to save.
Drawing on House and Senate documents, postmasters general reports, and the Congressional Record, as well as sermons, speeches, and articles from numerous religious and secular periodicals, Fuller illuminates the problems the changed postal system posed for evangelicals, from Sunday mail delivery and Sunday newspapers to an avalanche of unseemly material brought into American homes via improved mail service and reduced postage prices. Along the way, Fuller offers new perspectives on the church and state controversy in the United States as well as on publishing, politics, birth control, the lottery, censorship, Congress’s postal power, and the waning of evangelical Protestant influence.
Doesn’t it sound fabulous? There’s various sections on how these laws against “obscene letters” could be used as blackmail within families, former friends, business rivals, or former lovers.
One work banned by these laws was Cupid's Yokes, an anti-marriage pamphlet that claims marriage makes women sex workers for life. Ezra Hervey Heywood was an anarchist, American abolitionist, and advocate for free love. His wife, Angela Heywood was his partner in committing crimes against “obscenity”. She fought to be able to speak about sexual matters freely the men were able to. What’s sad to me about this is how the “free love movement” has been turned into an ugly or silly thing in the public conscious. It was a movement that supported birth control, sex ed, women talking about sex the way men were free to, etc. It was a movement that questioned the state institutionalizing, privatizing, and controlling sexual relations.
The free love movement’s goal was to separate the state from sexual matters, such as marriage, adultery, and birth control. Free love advocates unflinchingly oppose forced sexual activity, even between spouses, and advocate that the individual be free to nonviolently use her or his body in any way that she or he pleases. In other words, relationships freely entered into ought not be regulated by law.
There wasn’t a move to legally acknowledge marital rape until the 1970s. Marriage was easy to criticize as being a patriarchal institutions, but it wasn’t popular to do so. There was a time when criticizing the institution of marriage was controversial and could come with heavy punishment.
Somehow I landed on the colonial governor, George Simpson of the Hudson Bay Company. This is Canadian history (I tend to jump around). Forcing prohibition onto indigenous people allowed for greater profits for colonial rulers. Pretty interesting list here:
Missionary work usually aided efforts to colonize, and exploit indigenous populations. They worked hand and hand with corporations who would fund these weird anti-sex work, anti-drugs, and anti-alcohol morality crusades. These campaigns didn’t address the military bases or colonial rule. Liquor control and the native peoples of Western Canada goes into details. You can download the link to the analysis in that link.
Prohibition was sometimes sold as saving indigenous people from white people’s liquor. Indigenous people were cast as “survivors” of the “liquor traffic”. Policing was justified as protection from alcohol corrupting indigenous people. Most of that police force targeted indigenous people. And Europeans mainly praised these laws for making indigenous people better workers, and creating a “law and order” vibe so white people would feel safe immigrating and taking over the land.
Another interesting book Settler feminism and race making in Canada makes similar connections between moral policing, colonialism, and racism. The book cites this interesting paper on white women’s racist labor law White Female Help and Chinese-Canadian Employers: Race, Class, Gender, and Law in the Case of Yee Clun, 1924
I’m gonna end here for today. Hope you all found this interesting like I did.