Unknown Speaker 00:03 scholar in the feminist seventh Saturday, April 12 1980. This is panel discussion, feminist movements against prostitution, pornography and male bias, a historical review workshop conducted by Judas Markowitz from Rutgers University Unknown Speaker 00:26 the struggle against regulation in terms of the struggle against sacred relation, and today I'd like to outline some historical precedents to the current feminist attack against commercial sex and male sexual violence. As expressed in the women against pornography campaign, I'm really talking about the history and historical roots of a feminist mobilization of the sex. As a social and political movement, the Whap campaign has adopted a political style, a politics of rage that closely resembled earlier feminist moral crusades, I'd argue as well that it also shares a worldview in common with these earlier crusades. In that you look at the literature. It essentially defines men as Victorian monsters with uncontrollable sex urges that can be unleashed on innocent female victims. There is a certain depiction here of men of the male sexual aggressor, and a female victim that I'd say shares much in common with the doctrine of separate spheres. And we did notions of male and female nature that earlier informed Victorian sexual ideology. So there's a continuation of that ideology demonstrating to quote Michel Foucault, how much we are still those other Victorians I'm arguing that the current radical feminists attack on commercialized sex is old fashioned, and has its roots in earlier feminist campaigns against male bias and the double standard. Past generations of feminists attack prostitution, pornography, white slavery and homosexuality as manifestations of undifferentiated male lust. Once you come on, there are at least two seats somebody. Now these moral Crusades were brilliant organizing tactics. I wonder if I should. Maybe if we lived through messy, there probably will be more like more people coming so why don't we just can we kind of just leave some room entrance so that people can claim. Unknown Speaker 03:10 Without these Moreover, they were brilliant organizing tactics, and they arouse popular female anger they successfully helped to stimulate grassroots organizations and they mobilize women not previously or up brought into the political arena. The vitality of the women's suffrage movement in the late 19th and early 20th century cannot be understood without reference to the revivalist equality of these anti bias crusades. That often ran in tandem with a struggle for the vote. If we want to understand why people were so mobilized on the vote, we have to understand the kind of anger against male sexual license that these vice crusades which were very often feminists inspired. This kind of anger that was generated by these lies proceeds which then filtered into the struggle for the vote. Nonetheless, I'm going to try to argue also that these earlier moral campaigns were in many ways self defeating. They fail to achieve their stated goals. Reformers energies were reached channeled by forces using the issue of sex to reinforce class and gender domination under capitalist patriarchy. Feminists started a discussion on sex, but they rapidly lost control of a diversifying movement and even command over their own rank and file. That is to say, the movement expanded beyond them. And there was a real discrepancy between the feminist views of the leadership and their own followers. I'm going to mainly talk about the British case, I'll try to give some talk a little bit about the American American example but I want to leave time for discussion. Now, I think this failure is related to two things. First, the construct of sort of the contradictions and biases that were embedded in feminist Act of in these feminist attitudes. I and also their impotence to reshape the world in their own image. In both Britain and America explicitly feminist moral crusade against male bias began with a struggle against the state regulation of prostitution. In 1870, in Britain, the ladies National Association was founded as a separatist feminist organization, which committed itself to the repeal of what was called the contagious diseases Act, which established state regulation of prostitution of police and medical registration of prostitutes. Under the leadership of Josephine butler and the LMA denounced the acts as blatant examples of class and sex discrimination that not only deprived working class movement of their constitutional rights and subjected them to what they thought to be a degrading internal examination. But it all these ads also sanctioned the double standard of sexual morality. So their opposition was both moral and constitutional and anti medical and its focus. Like earlier moral reform efforts, the feminist attack on state regulation, reinforced women's self conscious participation in a and a separate women's culture. It also brought hundreds of women into the political arena for the first time by encouraging them to challenge male centers of power like parliament, the police, the medical and military establishments that were implicated in the administration of the act. So it had a real political focus, even though it celebrate women's culture. This organization, Unknown Speaker 06:39 Parliament passed these acts and what we have here is a feminist campaign to get these acts repealed, and indefensible women who were subjected to them and what we have, and basically I'm trying to talk about what are the the social and political implications of that campaign and I think that feminists are both kind of attacking the political prerogatives of men as well as their sexual prerogatives by attacking state regulation. And they're also celebrating their, their sense of distance and separation from male establishment they are, you know, they're basically supporting the issue of gender by struggling of the supporting their own sex by struggling against state regulation. Women thus rally to the fence of members of their own sex while opposing the sexual and political prerogatives of man. And let's see, let's think about the kind of position on prostitutes that this involves. They rejected the prevailing view of quote full on women has gluten submitted, and that's the basis upon which state regulation was instituted that women gave men disease, particularly prostitutes, and defended them instead is victims of male collusion as women who had been invaded by men's bodies by man's laws. And by that steel penis of speculum. In fact, this is an interesting when you think of this in turn from the Victorian context, that the speculum became the dominant image of the campaign and that the internal exam was seen as a voyeuristic intrusion into the female body. They form a quote, instrumental rate, and an espionage of enslaved goons to quote the LMA literature. Now this all entailed a very powerful identification with the fate of prostitutes. Feminists saw prostitution as the end result of certain artificial constraints placed on women's social and economic activity, inadequate wages, restrictions on their industrial employment, forced women onto the street where they took up the quote, this pay industry prostitution, it was a prostitution also served as a paradigm of the female condition establishing the archetypal relationship between men and women, that was repeated in perhaps a more subtle form within within Jenkins society. And a feminist did make a very clear analogy between prostitution and which one versus art and marriages that women had to sell themselves at a higher or lower level. But, but the condition the the restraints placed on women's autonomy forced them to be commodities one way or the other. Feminists realized that the popular center mentalization of motherhood and female influence that dominated Victorian kind of ideology, and thinly masked the an older distrust of women as the sex or sexual objects to be bought and sold by men. They realized that the treatment of women under state regulation epitomized by more pervasive and underlying misogyny so there's clear goes to things better when he's speaking. I think it's people call it before parliamentary commission. You cannot hold us in our so long as you drag our sisters in the mire. As you are unjust and cruel to them, you will become unjust and cruel to us that in substance prostitutes are the edge of the wedge, and a kind of a recognition that there is a certain essential female condition and treatment of women under male domination that they have in common with these working class women. Unknown Speaker 10:21 As mothers and sisters, feminists defended their right to to protect prostitutes, thereby invoking two different kinds of authority relationships. The assertion of a mother's right to defend code daughters, which is one way in which they position themselves towards the working class women was only partially an extension and continuation of women's traditional role within the family. It was also a political device aimed at subverting and superseding patriarchal relationships, and authority it gave mothers not fathers have the right to control sexual access to the daughters. But it wasn't sanctioned and authority relationship between older middle class women and younger working class women, that although protected and caring was also hierarchical, and Estonia, when you look at prostitutes as daughters, then you you also exert control as well as responsibility for them. In other contexts, feminists repellers approach prostitutes on a more egalitarian basis. As sisters, I'll be pulling ones whose individual rights they deserve to be protected, and who in the last analysis, had the right to sell their own bodies on the streets unmolested by the police. I would say that this was the radical message of that campaign, which was linked to an enlightened view of prostitution as a voluntary and temporary activity on the part of adult working class women who moved into prostitution in response to uneasy circumstances. But something up is a view of prostitutes as adult women who in some sense, have some control over their lives. And we're not just victims and not just symptoms of a Social Pathology. Although capable of enunciating a radical critique of prostitution, these middle class feminists still felt ambivalent about prostitutes, and the right of working class women to control their own sexuality. By and large, these anxieties remained dormant during the libertarian struggle against state regulation, but they would later surface in a more repressive campaigns against why slavering so we're moving here from the campaign against the regulation to white slavery. After the suspension of the axe in 1883, Josephine Butler and other feminists turned their attention to the agitation against why slavery and child prostitution in London. And at their request, a very well known journalist named WT Stead of the pale male Gazette published the maiden tribute of modern Babylon, which was the most successful piece of scandal journalism in the 19th century. Has anybody heard of the maiden tribute? Well, it's had a better reputation than it deserves. In literate and very curious detail. The mating tribute documented the sale of virgin was for five pounds to aristocratic rapes, rakes Excuse me. That's about right. It's really about child rape, graphically describing how these girls were drugged and entrapped and padded cells equipped with whips and, and such items. And needless to say, it had an electrifying effect on public opinion. 250,000 demonstration or 250,000 people mounted together in Hyde Park to demand rate of the that the age of consent be raised and in 1885. And for one brief moment, feminists and personal rights advocates joined with Anglican bishops and socialists to protest the aristocratic corruption of young innocents. Well, until very recently that, that basically historians have accepted reformers out there word and assume that that, in fact, there was widespread and involuntary child prostitution going on in London, and that reformers were basically motivated by a desire to protect youthful innocence from Unknown Speaker 14:31 aristocratic corruption that basically they accepted the motives of the Reformers as they establish it, and that there was in fact that this was the reality of prostitution. But recent research, including some of my own has kind of uncovered a vast discrepancy between the Reformers propaganda and the reality of working class prostitution. reformers were really unable, able to uncover only a small I'll trickle the traffic between England and continental brothels in terms of involuntary prostitution. And here the women sent over were not the young innocence that they were made out to be. They were I mean, they were disappointed when they arrived in this enclosed brothels. But they certainly were women were pretty knowledgeable that they were being sent over for purposes of prostitution. Likewise, some of the youthful child, there were child prostitutes or youthful processes on the streets of London. But here their numbers have been exaggerated, nor were they the innocent victims of false entrapment. As described by the main attribute vignette, I think that we have to recognize that this focus on the innocent child victim represents a shift from a perspective of prostitutes as adult women who can kind of control their own sexuality to child victims who are in need of protection. And if this isn't an ideological shift, and it doesn't represent, you know, that the childhood the child costume was why was by no means typical cross to that era. Unknown Speaker 16:06 Can I ask, what kind of documents you have? Yeah, I Unknown Speaker 16:09 have. Well, I read all the police files on on in terms of the of in terms of the the question of traffic and and I've looked at the Reformers evidence themselves, and they have very little evidence on on actual there's there's a small number of people of women who went over to Europe but not but the women who went over to Europe were not inexperience, children. They were women who may have been very, you know, were were upset at being put into close control brothels. But they were not. But there are women who have had some experience with prostitution to again was their testimony. Yeah, the testimony. And then in terms of child prostitutes, they just don't exist in any of the statistics. They don't exist in the venereal disease hospitals, they don't exist. When I looked at the rescue Society of London reports, and they tried to recruit the youngest prostitutes, the women have indicated their earliest sexual experiences were about six at 16. And they go on the streets when they're 17 and 18. There are just very few child prostitutes documented anywhere in the police for files and new hospital files and the rescue files. And that's negative evidence, you know, and so my sense is that most, the vast majority of prostitutes are women who go on the streets when they're 17, or 18. Now we farmers call those chose women children, and we have to think about what it means to call a working class girl who's had occupational a variety of occupational experiences who is used to be more autonomous than most work middle class voters, a child when she's 17 and 18. Okay, I'm going to talk more about that. Why then, the feminists embrace this campaign and align themselves with anti feminist and repressive moralists is anxious to sweep the streets of prostitutes as to protect young girls from aristocratic bias. I mean, they got themselves into a very uneasy alliance with a lot of anti feminists on this issue. Well, there are a number of reasons one is political expedience, they really thought that they could control popular anger and use it to secure the final repeal of the contagious diseases acts, and to launch a campaign against the double standard. They thought they could control this, they were very good at propaganda, and they thought they control the anger that they were generated that they helped to generate. Secondly, they were attracted to the radical message of this expo say of aristocratic fights, they thought it was an attack on the aristocracy, and certainly their worst suspicions were, were confirmed by the behavior of the members of parliament during the debates where they basically many of them's in the House of Lords defended prostitution as a necessary evil and that they defended access to working class girls is a time honored prerogative gentleman, certainly the these men behaved in all ways that they would have that confirmed their suspicion that these guys were no good. However, the focus on aristocratic rakes and innocent child victims inhibited a more searching and critical perspective on prostitution. By seeing prostitutes as victims of individual evil men. reformers were able to assuage their guilt, their own guilt about the sexual exploitation of working class girls, without implicating members of middle class, in their exploitation. Moreover, it was a way of bypassing an analysis of the economic system that forced them into cop to move on to streets in the first place. That made them by not looking at the fact that these girls were on the streets because their choices were so limited Have they avoided a kind of an at an examination of the exploited of general exploitive conditions of under capitalism for women? By depicting prostitutes as innocent children, reformers obscure the whole question of sexuality among working class girls, it's clear for that for feminist as well as for more repressive moralists. The desire to protect adolescent girls thinly masked certain coercive impulses to control their voluntary sexual responses. And in fact, in general, this reflects a desire to impose a Social Code on working class girls that stressed female adolescent dependency that was more in keeping with middle class notions of girlhood. Then with the working class reality, let us remember that working class girls had to leave home very often. In their early teens or late teens to work, they were more exposed, but they were also more autonomous than middle class daughters. Unknown Speaker 21:01 And feminists were very quick to defend the autonomy of adult middle of adult women. But they certainly felt much more ambivalent about female adolescent dependent on independence. And I think that this what this kind of shows here is that although feminists express solidarity with their working class sisters, this solidarity was undermined by a continuing allegiance to notions of authority that divided women along class and generational lines. What we have here is gender, class, and generation and some interesting that being being female in the 19th century was a very end and identifying with females in the 19th century was a very complicated question. Well, what was the outcome of the meaning tribute, the public fewer, which for public fewer forced the passage of the criminal law amendment after the Canadian five, which was a particularly nasty and pernicious piece of omnibus legislation, it did raise the age of consent from 13 to 16. Only for women, for girls, but a gay police much more power over women and children by providing for easy summary arrests of prostitutes and for crackdowns on brothels, a trend that brought that Josephine Butler and her circle had always traditionally oppose. Finally, it included a clause making indecent acts between consultant consenting male adults illegal and formed the illegal the basis of legal prosecution of male homosexuals in Britain until 1967. So we have this very interesting combination of an attack on prostitution and homosexuality, which I think derives from, it's hard to figure out why this all came together, but it certainly reflects kind of a sexual worldview. That assumes that both prostitution and homosexuality are reflections of male lust, particularly aristocratic male, less that aristocrats will take their pleasure or their or their perversity on that males more dependent males or young females, whatever the case may be. It doesn't reflect the view of homosexuality is so different from perverse heterosexuality that perverse heterosexuality for various homosexuality are part and parcel of this male lust impulse. In spite of the outcry against wicked aristocrats, the causes of the new bill were mainly used against working class women, not foreigners and not their social betters not the buyers of sex but the sellers of Sikhs. Under pressure from local vigilance associations, police crackdown on prostitutes, adult prostitutes and brothel keepers and and this crackdown dramatic dramatically affected the structure and organization of prostitution in the late 19th and early 20th century. In even more than the contagious diseases acid helped to drive a wedge between prostitutes and the working class community. prostitutes were uprooted and had to find new homes in the periphery because the brothels were closed down. Increasingly, their activity became more covert and furtive and cut off from any other sustaining relationship. They increasingly had to rely on pimps for emotional protection and for protection against the police. So what we have here is a shift in prostitution from a female to a male dominated trade and in some sense, the creation of Pimps is a major factor in in British prostitution, so that the brothel was destroyed as a family industry and center of specific of a specific female subculture, I would argue, adding and these acts increasingly undermine the social and economic autonomy of prostitutes and rendering them increasingly social Okay, it's quite an ironic twist from what Josephine Butler had expected to happen, and in defending him and calling for the age of raising the age of consent. These legal developments were aided and abetted by new voluntary citizen action groups that were established to promote social purity. Unknown Speaker 25:22 Initially, these were pulled in, in this in the wake of Steads shocking revelations in 1885, the National vigilance association was established, initially was established to ensure the local enforcement of this new criminal law Amendment Act. But once it got bored with that, it soon turned its attention to burning obscene books by attacking musicals theaters, new paintings, attacking birth control literature and advertisements for the board of the sent pills, as obscene. And to these moral crusade is pornographic literature thus broadly defined, including the works of Zola, those are rollaway, as well as birth control literature, which is things all obscene. These were all seen as vile expressions of the same undifferentiated male less that ultimately led to homosexuality and prostitution. These middle class Crusaders were also fearful that the masses were reading cheap pornographic literature. The thing is that pornographic that she was getting much cheaper at this time that was, I think, an important consideration of its dangerousness and that this by reading cheap porn, this would loosen their allegiance to the dominant moral order at a time when the political allegiance of the working class which was getting organized, which were listening, at least the socialist propaganda was was in question. It was a real fear of social potential social revolution at this time. So the concern with an adherence to a moral order, if not a political, political legions was particularly sensitive. Now, I want to say I'm not going to talk too much about this, but that although Social Security said middle class interest, it was extremely attracted to working men by legitimating. The prerogatives of patriarchy in and outside of the family. Basically, there was a big call to working men to protect and control their women by joining up in chat into Whitecross armies that defended that advocated both male chastity and the repression of public immorality, and it was sexual respectability was an important hallmark of a respectable working man. And as I say, you know, really reinforced a certain kind of moral legitimacy to patriarchy, by cleaning up his act, in some sense, at that time, that it wasn't just middle class, and it certainly wasn't just feminist Inspire. This is a real amalgamation of men and women and middle class and working class interest into social period. But what was the subsequent involvement of feminists and Social Security once they started this, but what happened to you know, after the fact, initially, Butler and others filled many committee positions within the national vigilance Association, but they're, but they soon resigned when the repressive tendencies of the NBA became apparent when it became apparent that that the National vigilis Association would support the crackdowns on profit, brothels and prostitutes. Were in the late 80s and 90s. Butler and others repudiated the actions of the social period societies. But their warnings were too late, that the purity movement had passed them by while absorbing a goodly number of their ln a rank and file. Conservative feminists like Millicent Fawcett and Elizabeth Blackwell remain within the ranks of social purity, but they never control the direction of the movement. On the other hand, social purity left its permanent imprint on the women's movement through to at least through the World War One we might question how much further sexual scandals like the maiden tribute ingrain the theme of the sexual wrongs done to women by men on later feminist consciousness. After the 1880s the women's revolt became, quote, a revolt that is Puritan and not bohemian. To quote, contemporary feminist source, it became essentially anti sexual, demanding in the words of the Edwardian suffragists, Christabel tankers, votes for women and chastity for men. Christabel packers is usually been depicted in his historical accounts as kind of a crazy of the militant suffrage movement as someone who fought this thing up herself, but what I'm talking about is a really long standing tradition going back to the repeal campaign, which really dealt with attack state radio ratio as a kind of sanction male bias, and that continues over, you know, a 50 or 60 year period so that by the time we get to 1914 That is a long standing legacy and commitment of British feminism as well as American feminism to an anti sexual and anti male bias position. Unknown Speaker 30:20 These are the historical links between British feminism and repressive campaigns against prostitution, pornography and homosexuality. The Libertarian struggle against state regulation evolved into a movement that use the instruments of state for repressive purposes. And I'd like to say just briefly that the story is pretty much the same in America, American feminist and others were able to forestall the introduction of state regulation into most American cities with exception being St. Louis, where Pirie forces were soon able to overturn the municipal ordinance for state regulation for municipal regulation. The basic features appear in the purity crusade seem to be very much the same. Like its British counterpart, it was hostile to working class culture, it mobilized feminists into the campaign, it was and it was basically Reg, ready to use repressive techniques to enforce a strict moral and sexual code on more than in Britain corporate interests as represented by the corporate executives who bankrolled Anthony pomp stack, and by John D. Rockefeller, Bureau of social hygiene came to dominate anti bias efforts at the National Institute and to a certain extent, at certain local levels. In 1913, for example, the Bureau of social hygiene sponsored George Newlands commercialization of bison, New York, which gave further impetus to the crackdown on red light districts in New York, in that period. Now, feminists were involved in social period, they may have very well been attracted to what seems to be an attack on aggressive male sexuality, and male bias. But I don't think they call the shots I don't think it's really unclear how much they control public policy or how for what their power was within the hierarchy of social purity itself. When you I think that the world that was remade was a world we made according to John D. Rockefeller, his image, and not necessarily the Charlotte Perkins, Gilman. So what are the moral lessons to these moral crusades? If there is a moral lesson to be learned from these moral crusades of the past? It is that commercial sex is a hot and dangerous issue for feminists in their defense of prostitutes and concern to protect women from male sexual aggression. Earlier generations of feminists were still limited by their limited by their own class bias, and I guess generational bonus, and by their continued adherence to a separate sphere ideology that stress, women's purity, moral supremacy, spirituality and domestic virtues. Moreover, feminists lack the political and cultural power to reshape the world in their own image. Although they tried to set the standards of sexual conduct, they did not control the instruments of state that would ultimately enforce these norms. There were times particularly during the anti regulation struggle that feminists were able to dominate and structure the public discourse on sex, and to arouse popular female anger at male sexual license. Yet this anger was easily re channeled into repressive campaigns against male bias and sexual variation, controlled by men and by cooperative interests whose goals are antithetical to the values and ideals of feminism. So that's my historical tale for the day, I open the discussion up to historical questions that contemporary women against pornography store. Well, I think what's interesting is how unselfconscious Women Against pornography is and the historical precedents that have already transpired. I see, as I said earlier, in terms of that there is that they base that women against pornography, in some sense shares a similar psychology about male and female sexuality, that well, this view that men have this aggressive, uncontrollable sexual urges, that that through the stimuli of pornography can be unleashed against female victims. So there is very sharp there a sense of belief that that that that have belief that men are in some sense more aggressively sexual than women. And that that stimuli, simple stimuli, like pornography can trigger the whole thing or I think Unknown Speaker 35:12 and that there's it comes close to being somewhat anti sexual, you know, the fact that sex is a violent and dangerous item to begin with. And needs to be controlled, that sexual stimuli and sexual outlets need to be controlled, and could lead to violence. And I think there's also an enlightened people who might be willing to debate that wasn't I think there's also a celebration of a politics of rage. I believe that by stimulating female that that a goal to stimulate female anger without much of a program to back it up. And this is similar, I think, also to the 19th century campaigns, which really, were terrifically successful at arousing anger, and mobilizing women to focusing attention on commercial sex as an object of women's anger. So I think that there is that that analogy as well. Unknown Speaker 36:16 And a will end and kind of what, what we what there there, there are other issues which I had an address, which certainly relate to women against pornography, that maybe someone that may later we could pick up on. One is the whole question of censorship. Now, this doesn't relate to this this question. There's also a quite the basic question of whether pornography leads to violence, and that's highly debatable. I mean, on both sides, it is a push and it is nothing completely worked out. For anyone that whether the assumption underlying Women Against pornography attack on pornography, as I understand it, is that pornography is the theory and rape is a practice that teaches men how to hate and brutalized women, which they don't act out towards women, we just don't know. But I think the analogies here are the style of a political movement that is similar to the past a certain kind of psychology about male and female sexuality, and also an A willingness, a willingness to ally with right wing forces to put forth your position. It is no accident that women against pornography has set up shop, or 42nd Street, which is not just the porn capital of the world, but as a center of prostitution. So and that their shopfront is being underwritten by real estate interest there, that, that raises interesting questions about what kind of alliances parents should be involved in. And also the kind of connection here between pornography, prostitution and homosexuality as issue as areas that were were part of a hydra headed attack in the 19th century and are also homosexuals, prostitutes, and pornographers are also the object of both right of right wing attack at this time, today, and as far as the right wing is concerned, they are all the same. So we, you know, I'm also warning about the dangers of a diversifying movement against sexual variation that certainly has a precedent in the past. Unknown Speaker 38:37 Control and non time its Unknown Speaker 38:39 birth control and abortion. Because of my work, I'd like to know who were the commercial inputs that Unknown Speaker 38:49 the YWCA? Well, no, this wasn't YMCA, I'm sorry, you're right. YMCA. These are just your local financiers and corporate interests, who ran New York and still run New York at the time Protestant groups. A Yankee Protestant corporate interests. I just asked for facts Unknown Speaker 39:18 about the role of the rock in the fall with social Unknown Speaker 39:22 hygiene bureau of social housing. Was it the same Joshy men was Unknown Speaker 39:30 very soon becoming active in the Planned Parenthood? Unknown Speaker 39:32 Right. I don't know whether it's the sun but in fact, is this whole question of popular control? That one of the reasons why sexuality becomes such a big area of state and kind of incorporated control is that it's related to quit population questions. And it also is a way in which as I think I've documented, the state is really able to intervene into working class culture to really control personal life. I, and I think we should be very careful about encouraging state intervention into personal life through the control of sexuality, it has been a major device, major technique for the control of working people's lives and women's lives. Big problems with some of this thinking. One is, you're talking about your fantasy was against pornography, or historically, prostitution has been very anti sexual. And yet you document that the feminist themselves, were perhaps co opted, or, you know, that their thinking is very clear that they were supportive of us, and that they were they were not into oppressing women, this constitutes money. So I don't really understand the conclusion of the feminists are intersexual. Well, I think that's a good point. I think it's two things. One is that there's a, there is a generational change. You know, Josephine Butler resigns from Unknown Speaker 41:06 social purity. Unknown Speaker 41:10 And then, and then a new generation of feminists do come up who are less concerned about libertarian questions, and she was, too there are generational changes, but also what I mean, even just a thing, Father, who is really, a terrifically, was really a perfectly was, was, was less permissive towards what women she saw as daughters, and she was towards men. And she says that if they were adolescents, she was very concerned about their sexual responses. And there is a kind of desire to control the sexual activity of the daughters or people who get defined as stories rather than sisters. So even there, it's understandable because male because they work a lot of male sexual violence and working class women were susceptible to sexual exploitation. But there is an important economic component that also has to be understood as well as the Constitution. You talk on the one hand about working class women not having many choices, so the prostitution becomes not really a choice. On the other hand, you talk about it being a way to control their own sexuality. Honestly, prostitution is being an expression of sexuality. On another level, I don't see selling its body in that way as being an like, my freedom to express my sexuality. That's not I wouldn't think that's a prostitutes, either. There's some sexual identity, you know what I mean? And so I have some problem with not saying anything about what we should do about prostitution, but to view it that way. So the distortion of sexuality as in seeing the problem of man as an as male lust. I think it's the issues of misogyny, women hating and violence against women, and being more the motivation and sexual lust. Right, and but even I can say to you, those are all put together. On the question of sexuality, one of the things aren't working class sexuality. Well, one of the things that's real clear from the history of many women who ultimately do move into prostitution in the past here I can't talk about today is that sexual rebellion, their rebellion did take a sexual aspect, I'm not really speaking to the consequences. But in terms of young girls experimenting with sex working class girls experiment, it did reflect a certain part of rebellion against the acquiescence and fatalism that was reflective of their class, their ability to sell, they win win win prospects. I mean, it's related economically with the fact that they had something that they could manipulate and sell independently without being domestic servants. did give them a sense of power and autonomy, and it is related to sex, but it's also related to economic kind of very hard to get those two things expected. They certainly didn't see themselves as bit as much as victims, as feminists that and they certainly chose not to be domestic servants, which is what most middle class female reformers one is, and it's very complicated. They were very limited choices. It is a telling commentary on the exploitative nature of Victorian society that women would choose to repress. I'm not saying it's wonderful, but being a domestic slave, slavery sleeping in the kitchen with a Black Beetle, maybe we're Maven. So we still see these women as women who are defining their history in their experience in some way, I think is important and isn't that that's a kind of a perspective that sometimes then this can sometimes Unknown Speaker 44:59 be so close Something that you Unknown Speaker 45:01 said and that has to do with do you see it as the feminists being responsible for that as part of the appeal in the definition? Or do you see that once again, as sort of part of the second stage of quotation by Steve, how did the feminists respond? Well, it's Unknown Speaker 45:18 very hard. They certainly accepted that. Maybe not raised. I. As I say, I think they understood homosexuality, not exclusive sexual identity, but once again as a reflection of aristocratic male look. And they also felt, by the way that the actual path Unknown Speaker 45:45 is male, sexual, oversexed, male, over over sex men who would who could you either. But but they, they had they didn't propose that they didn't propose that for us. But they accepted. It's further recruitment. It's used its application in the case of Oscar Wilde was obviously something that was that was done by mail. Interesting. Okay, that you know, how it gets used and applied. Dentists really lose control at that point of the application that legislation. And that's an important lesson to learn. Whatever your intentions about legislation, it can be applied in diametrically opposite ways, and you had intended it. Unknown Speaker 46:37 My name is Teresa. Unknown Speaker 46:40 I guess people should be introducing themselves and like when they speak up, okay, I am literally Unknown Speaker 46:44 affiliated with them and against pornography. Your description of their premises is entirely inaccurate. Although it is a criticism that's been made pretty frequently, all the criticisms which you made. If anybody is interested in knowing exactly about what all the inaccuracies are, I'll go over them. But I think that more to the point is that you seem to conclude that there's no way to oppose sexism in the arena of sexuality, no, without, without being co opted or slipping over into male bias, social purity, spirituality. problem when it against pornography does not assume that women have an innate sexual aggressiveness or are naturally more sexually aggressive, although it's obviously the case in our culture, at least in the middle class culture. And that marketplace that pornography versus today that those men do believe, and pornography assumes, and that's part of the entertainment value of it, that it reinforces that belief that men are innately, sexually aggressive, and women are passive, and that women do need to be raped in order to free their own lust so that they can come to the session partners appreciate man's effort. Which is not which is not an anachronism today. Last fall in New York Times, there was an article about a Mormon woman who's suing her husband for raping her. And his claim was that she was so taken over by the church fathers, and when she believed their ideas so much, and she left him because he wasn't adhering to the church line. And he got a hold the room writer, and he says in the quote, I wanted to free her from the whole of the church. They, they had brainwashed her and I wanted to free her. And he tried to do it with his penis. So she's seen. So that's not an anomaly today. The idea that photography is ravens practice. Obviously, there's a theory because, right, unless you assume that rape is a natural male activity. I think few people would think that. I don't think that. And I think when you say that there is no theory, therefore pornography is not the theory. You back yourself into the corner saying I'm going it's natural behavior. Unknown Speaker 49:21 I didn't say that. There was nothing. Well, but I wonder whether I mean, I don't I don't even want to debate that with your Unknown Speaker 49:28 summary of the you know, the premises of women against pornography was really suggested that she would take those positions. I think, as an organization when I guess pornography is trying to steer the way between co optation by people who have a lot to gain from cooperating the women's movement in that area. And then this line, it's very hard to to put that across they have paper every favor and flyer flyer and discuss the whole thing and people read it and and come up with the same criticisms that you come up with. And so I think it's you It's wrong to attorney that just to send this inadequate, inadequate query. So what do you think? Yeah, I mean, from what you said, I really got the impression that you think that there's no way to fight sexism in the sexual arena? Well, Unknown Speaker 50:18 I think that commercialize sex is a bit is not the right tech. I really can't. I mean, I, I think it's very the whole question of pornography. I don't like pornography. I'm not an extremely sexual libertarian. But I don't know if that's the right, you know, object to attack. I do think that there are issues relating to sexual violence, that feminists should get themselves involved did you think they should be I think it will, all this energy about pornography, I think maybe better addressed that people got to work in to work for Carozza to work. Unknown Speaker 50:52 Again, you seem to make the assumption that pornography is sexuality the same as you assume that prostitution somehow arises from either men's sexuality or women's? Unknown Speaker 51:02 Well, I don't know I, I'm it's not clear to Well, first of all, there's porn, we can get into this discussion. It's very complicated. There is pornography and there's pornography, do some pornography that is violently inspired, and they use pornography, that is, you know, rather traditional forms of hetero, expressive expression, so of heterosexuality, but to lay that aside, what I think, can we affect the area where I think feminists should be addressing the question of sexual violence is rape crisis centers, wife battering shelters, Carozza abortion issues, by the way that the right wing does not want to have anything to do with and which really dress a dress, actual sexual violence rather than, than the images of sexual violence, which we can really which which is one step, in some sense, removed. I don't really feel competent, that maybe other people want to talk about to deal with the question of the relationship between fantasies of violence and sex and the acting out of sex and violence. I'm not confident, I don't feel I don't have any authority to talk about that. I think it's problematic Unknown Speaker 52:17 comment, which is that you put yourself in a position then of saying that sexism is bad in textbooks for children sexism is bad and advertisement on TV sexism, and all these places. And yet sexism is okay. merged with sexual entertainment, even if it's not, okay merge with all of the kinds of entertainment or education materials or that kind of Unknown Speaker 52:35 stuff. Well, I think also selective boycotts and you know, people have a right to select to selectively whatever right to do a lot of things. But selective boycotting and picketing of pornographic films or whatever that are, that are really objectionable in very specific forms is one thing, a generalized attack on pornography. But I just wonder whether that is the best way for, for women to be diverting their energies on feminists cause Unknown Speaker 53:06 my name is Bernard Milburn. And I'm interested in the idea of the political labeling of the sides. In Scandinavia, I say that debaters can name isn't feminists suffering from being labeled conservatives because of their identification, religious side, and that it's not come across references that, that the opposition to regulation representation or medica was, in fact, no less decisional. Unknown Speaker 53:38 Now, there's an interesting alliance between radical working men and middle class feminists in both England and France. And it was actually a radical radical in the 19 century turns cause libertarian cause and it wasn't, it wasn't. Yeah, and so to that extent, is the it was the left liberal side of the political spectrum or pre socialist. And one time I've done a book on this, but one of the really interesting developments of the steel campaign is this alliance of middle class women with radical working men, not only against the acts but against middle class male participants within the repeal campaign, there is an alliance against middle class men who hold power as a class and gender prerogative within that campaign, that basically working with middle class and see working men as I sharing a lot of interests in common with them on on these issues. So it is it is a left issue in that sense. Yeah, my name is Mark Dressler Roberts, the House Spokesman for prostitutes Unknown Speaker 54:48 and actually wanted to say a little something about social justice in addition to our philosophy. First of all, I mean I have problems and I'm A lot of the prostitutes of the half an organized crime have a lot of serious problems, because the whole thing was was against pornography, for example, in terms of the street arrests of prostitutes, we know that even though the majority of prostitutes in this country like the majority of women who are arrested for online arms are going on. And right now, I mean, the whole the excuse of the movement against pornography and the whole thrust against pornography quite often it's really used as a crackdown. You know, again, it's specifically minority women, you know, who happened to be the streetwalkers, you know, as opposed to the cool girls. And I think that part of the problem is, is that you really have to, I mean, you talked about putting out papers and really tried to explain the idea, but I think we really have to get beyond the whole theorizing about it and begin to get together with some hookers with a prostitute woman and find out what the problems are what you know, Booker's are up against why you're in the business in the first place, how you're exploited in the business, in terms of the opposite sex industry, for example, the low wages and making the movies and all that kind of thing, getting rid of the pimps taking a strong stand for the abolition of the laws, against destroying the criminal records of Booker's who have been arrested in the past, that kind of stuff we haven't really been hearing. And I mean, here in the States, I wanted to say a little bit about England, for example, we've, you know, in the New York Prostitutes Collective, we've been working with Comey, a number of other, you know, pro organizations around the city. And we we haven't been approached by women against pornography, who would say, well, we're interested to find out what the specific problems are. And it just so happens in a New York Prostitutes Collective, a lot of those women. Some of them are also immigrant women, you know, who are also I mean, who have little problems, your immigrant meaning, you know, you're not a citizen in this country, and you're also streetwalker, you know, and then you have these feminists, you know, who are out there organizing this thing against you, I mean, it can really create some very bad relationships, and a very big tension that in terms of the black community, we have felt in the past anyway, in relation to the feminist movement. But this kind of thing is, from my point of view, from the women that we've been working with, has really made it worse, I'm not saying that there isn't anything that can be done about it, or that hookers or for violent porn, or child porn, or all this stuff that's quite often portrayed, is what you know, pornography is, you know, but at least some kind of dialogue, some finding out, you know, like, who, you know, who we are, what the problems are going to take place, because we feel that it's very much a situation of again, maybe, and I'm not saying, you know, women are doing against pornography and middle class feminists or working class feminists or whatever, but it's almost like somebody that's outside of your experience, or outside of your sector kind of dictating to you or saying, Oh, this is bad for you to be able to, or even if they're not saying this is bad for you to be into creating the kind of atmosphere that then gives the police, you know, a feminist line to ready boss, you know, to crack down you know, our workers and to do all kinds of things, you know, in the name of will be have to clean you know, the streets up. And in England, for example, the New York Prostitutes Collective is an English sister group of English collective prostitutes. And they've been organizing there with all other prostitute organizations like plan with housewives with some feminist organizations who've been interested, you know, also with the wages for housework campaign and have managed to get a bill upon them. And actually a bill called of the abolition of, of laws, the first reading of it passed, you know, last spring, but it was what really made that possible was really that kind of different sectors made the hookers and you the housewives and the social workers and the teachers and the academics and all that I mean, beginning to get together and realizing that the movement has got to be from the bottom up. I mean, it can't be from, you know, the scholar or the feminist or whatever. But you really got to get down there know what the situation is. Unknown Speaker 59:21 I'm gonna say I spoke to Dolores Alexander, who has one of the leaders of the web campaign here. And I asked her about I asked her why they said, shot on 42nd Street, and he said it was the porn capital of the world. I said, Well, other people associate other things with 42nd Street, and she says, Oh, you mean prostitution? And I said, Yes. And he says, Well, we're we're not against prostitution. And the fact is that she was also she, she was basically saying, That's not that's a non issue with us. And we are not responsible for what other people interpret our campaign against quoting Seventh Street as meaning Basically, it wasn't she didn't say, Yeah, we're really concerned to work with the prostitutes and to make it clear that we're against the profits made off pornography but not because she just said, Well, that's we're not against prostitutes, and therefore we basically we take no responsibility for what happens, as you pointed out the first people to when there's a crack down on 42nd Street, the first people who are going to get in the neck are the women on the streets. And that's there are, as I say, historical precedents for that. That's exactly what has happened in the past. I hope that, you know, this discussion will be kind of a cautionary note, not necessarily anti, just say, no, no, what you're up against. And if history can provide a cautionary note, not necessarily predictive, but it's a cautionary note about what's happened when feminists had tried to do this in the past. And they, you know, demonstrably failed in their goals. There were some Unknown Speaker 1:00:53 Yeah, I wanted to say one thing about language to clarify what's being talked about, I think that when you talk about feminists as being anti sexual, without saying that you're talking about heterosexuality, that becomes very essential, especially when you're talking about homosexual. Homosexuality is still turned out sometimes to include both lesbians and Unknown Speaker 1:01:20 it's interesting that they don't pose lesbianism as an alternative. Unknown Speaker 1:01:24 I think that lesbianism was not seen as existing basically. And it's very important to talk about that, but you cannot talk about, I really agree that prostitution cannot always be equated with in any way with sexual identity. And that it's very important to trace, you know, the beginnings of any kind of public recognition of women's sexuality, women's autonomy as sexual beings and possibility of lesbianism. And the other thing I was going to ask, which has already been addressed was whether you have looked for and found any evidence of women organizing as prostitutes in the period that you're talking about. I've been doing the work on women, prostitutes in 17th century Spain. And I find tremendous evidence of, of really very powerful alliances of women who were involved in abortion, involved in contraceptive work, you know, Pfizer, venereal disease and had tremendous support organizations at that time. I mean, of course, those are the ones rendered totally invisible historically. I mean, there's no, you know, there's very little testimony from those women and the sources are really problematic. But there is evidence when you start looking, you know, particularly in documents. Unknown Speaker 1:02:36 Well, I think that my own study had a prosecutor Nike said he would, first of all, identifies a very strong female subculture among prostitutes, kind of an informal set of female networks, they live together, they, they, they really were very self identified very much part of a female peer group. But in the campaign against these acts, basically they alive are they allied with middle class families to resist the contagious diseases acts and struggled against the police refuse to go to examination, right in the hospital. These are all forms of a really strong militancy, and they received a lot of support from other female members of the working class community prostitutes do not live in a segregated what what we presumed to be a red light district they lived among much more heterogeneous a G is a collection of a casual labor in court. And in their struggle against the police, they received help from so called respectable female neighbors. They received support from their writing housekeepers. There was an active struggle going on in the streets of Plymouth and Southampton against these acts with middle class support. So yes, there is an ally. I don't know when you there is there was a basic network of associations. And then in fact, an organization was struggle against these, I think, because they were living outside of your control. And I think that this is essential irony here of on a superficial level prostitution does look like the premiere theater supremacy where women are sold as commodities, but in fact, women control that trade and live among a subculture of other women. So it's kind of another irony of the whole question. Unknown Speaker 1:04:26 To contemporary concerns, though, that I don't think can be lost sight of one is the effective of the mass media which is male controlled to define women and my own recent response has been almost less against the porn district kind of definition of women as and war against the sportswear commercials on television, the male definition of women that is present I mean, the rapist who was brought into court the seventh graders were brought into court and actually tried the new stand in court. It has images on magazine covers, and within the magazines that show and acceptable to all those who are present violence against women and, and degradation of women and male definition. And that kind of mass media you alluded to, to some degree, but it was not present in the same way, in the 19th century, it's a contemporary concern, because I find myself, you know, looking at something intelligent, saying, well, that's not porn, but it's bringing the same responses out in me. And as a feminist, I feel that I have a very strong need to talk against that. And maybe that's one of the possible solutions in Unknown Speaker 1:05:34 terms of, you know, Unknown Speaker 1:05:36 the group of people that you're most concerned with, who are, if you speak out against porn itself, it may come back as speaking out against the prostitute bringing in Unknown Speaker 1:05:47 the woman who's, you know, Unknown Speaker 1:05:51 concerned might be getting closer to, to the center of power. Unknown Speaker 1:05:54 But the other thing is the talks about, you know, the current campaign going against pornography really comes out of a recognition of violence against women in society and what it's done to us. I think that the movement, the previous movement that's most aligned with that was actually the anti alcohol movement, which had a recognition of male violence against women and children in the home, very same roots as our temporary movement against battering women. And, and that also miserably failed in its objectives. And I just wanted to throw that out, as it was recognition, it there's there's also that thread and the need Unknown Speaker 1:06:38 to deal with those problems. Unknown Speaker 1:06:40 I think I, I certainly agree with you on that the problem of the of the objectification of women is much more extensive than just pornography itself. Unknown Speaker 1:06:51 I think this, this raises actually some of the points that were raised this morning, as as to how to bridge certain kinds of gaps within the the women's movement so that women are not caught working in a very well meaning, but unconsciously narrow way that ends up producing conflicts with other sections of the women's movement or potential sections of the women's movement. And I think that one of the crucial questions involved here is the question of Who Who do you turn to to help defend your your interests? If you're attacking pornography? Do you turn to the state to regulate pornography? And I don't think women against violence has done that. But I think there's that potential there. Just as in in attacking fascist ideology, do you turn to the state then to impose censorship? And I think that if you turn to instruments of power, which are not on the side of the very oppressed people that you're trying to defend, no matter how well meaning you are, you end up creating even greater problems. Now, I don't think the solution is therefore to shrug our shoulders and say, well, there's nothing we can do to defend women against this, this kind of violent ideology. But I think that the the, that we we have to think carefully about how to conduct these educational campaigns, how to make ourselves heard, which is very difficult when something like that the media has such immense powers without creating laws that are going to be turned against women against poor people against minorities. Unknown Speaker 1:08:45 Sort of an observation, just something that implicit in this question. It seems to me that something that unites these investigations of prostitution and pornography is also true in the area of rape that's been moved to, perhaps less with abortion, is that it seems to me that feminism, as such, does not have a theory of the state. That is, there are there are liberal, there is liberal feminism, which has a liberal theory of the state, and there is left feminism or socialist feminist Marxist Marxism or varieties of Marxist theories of the state. But for lack of a better term radical cause for what I just call feminism as such, it seems to me that historically from what you were saying, and also in contemporary terms in the debates that were going on here, isn't just a question of the fact that women do not have control of the instrumentality, power, but of the fact that the state is an institutionalized form of male power itself, that feminism doesn't have a specific Typically articulated theory of how to deal with the maleness. No, and I just do really? Well, I Unknown Speaker 1:10:10 think the traditionally feminism has been anti status precisely those reasons. And maybe that was the best position, it should have it to take the 19th century. And they, in some sense, Butler got herself into trouble when she tried to use the state to defend women. But I don't think today we can, I think you're right. But I think today, we cannot simply take an anti status position, because if we want the state, we want poor women to procure, be able to procure abortions, we have to get the state to pay for it. And if we want to protect women against rape in their homes or outside, we have to sometimes get the state to, to protect them. So we are in this really serious bind, of realizing that the state does not function in our interests. And yet, we have to somehow try to gain some sort of leverage over it and authority over to do things for women, because they can't be left alone, in the home or on the streets. Unknown Speaker 1:11:08 The pornography also deserves possibly be considered in your blood. Unknown Speaker 1:11:13 I think I think sexuality has been a major way in which the state has gained control over people's lives. And wherever paths I guess I take that, you know, wherever possible, you should think twice about calling in the state. Unknown Speaker 1:11:28 You're accepting, I think the state's current posture in relationship to those issues. If you decide that in the area of pornography, image making and objectification abroad, that you're going to leave women to the state as that now stands. But you don't resist leaving women to the state, as that now stands in rate, resist enforcement resisting prostitution. So why? Unknown Speaker 1:11:54 Well, in prostitution, I would like to stay keep, I certainly do support the decriminalization of prostitutes, which is a way of saying the state should leave prostitutes alone. Would somebody like to address that? Unknown Speaker 1:12:08 I would like to say that we need I mean, I think it's really good, what you said about we don't have an adequate theory of the state, I think we also need an adequate focus theory of what kind of economy we want. And the two things go together. I mean, the question about who is in control and making money off pornography, who is in control and making money off of that there's a big difference between a woman control grace or perhaps I don't know how women are treated. Okay. Between women who are making money Unknown Speaker 1:12:45 or collective brothel? Unknown Speaker 1:12:48 I mean, think, in general, in terms of women controlling what were the workers in an industry, in a section in a shop controlling it, and someone making a profit off it is, you know, is is the sort of thing we need to be thinking about? I'm not saying that I have an answer, or, you know, I'm not saying we should go for socialism, because so often socialism is a state system, which seems to be a, you know, a central and male control system. And all of a sudden, guys, you know, and I'm saying that we need, we need to develop both the theory of the state and the theory of an economy that will function for r&d. Unknown Speaker 1:13:27 Some of the Commission reports issued in the early 1980s In this country, which immediately preceded the crackdown on what they call device districts. There's discussion of a growing working class male homosexual subculture on the fringes of existence. And I see as you're particularly concerned about male transvestite prostitutes, and I haven't studied, probably part of the, quote unquote, these areas was, was an attempt to wipe out that emerging subculture. I just wondered, in your research across indications, and anyone in your book, they mostly scandal in some way, Unknown Speaker 1:14:11 right. It's, in some sense these attacks on homosexuality where whereas Jeffrey weeks and Michelle are informing a precipitating events for the real definition of homosexuality is an exclusive and so conscious identity. Certainly, when we think about what got Oscar Wilde he was put under the clauses of the criminal law Amendment Act of 1885 for buying services of working class boys, so it was male prostitution, that was involved and and when and if you look at the, if you read the trials, the thing that is so upsetting to these upper class dudes is the fact that he was consorting with these, these these. These lay laborers, these men who are these boys who had nothing to do, anyway, bring these boys, these working class boys to the Savoy Hotel and upset their class sensibilities. They were upset that he was, you know that he would have anything to do with manners for such a lower class. So, certainly the class element is really very important here, as well as the sexual element that he broke class ranks, was as much important as the fact that he engaged in a different conceptual purpose. Unknown Speaker 1:15:35 At the beginning of your presentation today is sort of like discard the missionary childhood. How do you account them for the power the myth in the second half of the 20th century of and late petition, and the whole notion of the construct of mothers concerned about their daughters seems to be one way of accounting for it. And yet, it seems that it was so resonant as a mirror that you don't have to that we have to account for it in other ways. And I'm sort of thinking about, to what extent was family Unknown Speaker 1:16:08 increasing? insensitive, because a metaphor for a projection event says, I think the middle class exam, I think, yeah, I think this is fantasy life. This is Freud, and not for me. Why would refuse to believe the tales that the women were telling it, but I think it may have much more to do with middle class and session may have, then then, then the actual numbers of journal presses still, generally were girls on the streets. That's not but they were a minority. And the way in which the focus on the child victim kind of overwhelmed any other perspective, uncomplicated has to be answered in ideological relevance. Unknown Speaker 1:16:48 Right? And so what I'm interested in is how does the child victim become a middle class metaphor for the way women generally are feeling victimized, maybe in terms of Victorian structures, how they're not impassioned, dismissed, or not being trained, or they have no rites of passage, with which then finally to deal with adult sexuality. And so any encounter with male even legalized with husbands from the same class feels like it seems that that's now a whole other subject that then one has to deal with about why particularly about that, because Unknown Speaker 1:17:20 then there's this whole question, and I haven't really worked this out that in fact, there is a small thing or young working class women who are breaking with traditional sexual mores more observable in America than in England. There were flappers before, they were called flappers before 1940. And they were kind of there was one of the looming problems as a progressive here was the so called problem with amateur or clandestine prostitutes, which were in prostitutes at all, but girls who were engaging, who had somewhat more liberalized sexual and social habits, who were rebelling from that kind of incredibly constricted gender role that was imposed on working class girls. And it got translated into child prostitution and got translated into prostitution, when in fact, it's, it's not necessarily commercially involved at all. And this is this raises real questions about the way a culture redefined a problem. And we have to kind of decode those those images from the past and kind of sort them out. I think there are more to there really is a problem with juvenile prostitution on the streets of New York. But it's a bigger problem today. And I think it was an American Century, partially because of for biological reasons. A girl of women didn't reach the age of men and keto they were 15 or 16. And I can century England. There they are. Many girls are having sexual experiences at a much younger age now. And for other variety of for a whole other economic variety of reasons, maybe resorting to the streets and much greater numbers today than they did in my contention. Despite all the ideology, I've seen we were later. Early, I'm sorry. Puberty comes much earlier now than I did. Unknown Speaker 1:19:07 14 year old mothers I've heard about didn't exert harm. I mean, there was seem Unknown Speaker 1:19:12 to be okay. Unknown Speaker 1:19:14 While they're there, they're made, some may have existed but in a much teenage pregnancy is a big problem today and a much to a much, much greater degree. Unknown Speaker 1:19:23 early marriages existed more than Unknown Speaker 1:19:26 women married at the age of 2425. Working class, most of them No, I mean, I mean, by and large, if there's really been a change in the demographics needed, Unknown Speaker 1:19:37 we need to be sexual, have reached any particular biological age to be sexually identified in a range of ways in terms of in the family rate. Unknown Speaker 1:19:50 Right, but most of the women who engaged in prostitution had had sexual experience in a variety of sorts before they move into prostitution had work sexual experience No, I know that. I mean, I'm not saying that you can't be Rick. But by and large, I just kind of giving some explanation to why women move on girls move on the streets to a greater extent now on a voluntary basis than in the past at a younger age, and has to do with when voluntary sexual experience for many of them is well, genital. How can you how can you? How can you make a Unknown Speaker 1:20:34 broad statement like that? What Broadstone child prostitutes are moving out of the stage voluntarily at a younger age today? Unknown Speaker 1:20:43 United Nation? Unknown Speaker 1:20:44 Well, I said I tend to I mean, I mean, in terms of my CRISPR, at least based on the perspective, I enter the information I received, there are many more younger girls on the streets now than what I understand to be true in the 19th century. Unknown Speaker 1:21:00 You know, when I first came to New York, I looked like I was 10. And I was on macdougal street and I was asked many times to join the stables of Pimps who had 10 to 12 year old Stabler prostitutes on macdougal street as in 1962. And I was a prostitute when I was 17. And I looked like I was 10. But I don't think any of those people, those girls, or myself left any police record or any other record that anybody could use to verify the 1962 there was hundreds of 12 year old going 600 Google Street, you know, and I and I just, it just sounds incredible to me that it would be so different 100 years ago, when some of the stuff that I read from them indicated that they would, you know, they were all over the place all the street urchins if they were female. Were selling snacks and if they were boys, I guess they were two packets or whatever else. Well, maybe selling sex to. Unknown Speaker 1:21:56 Well, I mean, what Unknown Speaker 1:21:58 we're gonna do on the street. Unknown Speaker 1:22:01 I can only say that it's if I might perspective, you know, the authorities who were in a position to know, we're really recruiting girls into rescue homes were in the position to know how old their girls were when they were selling themselves on the street. So that you know, it's an older age that they they move on to. Actually, I don't know what the source is.