You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (30 page)
Read You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos Online
Authors: Robert Arthur
As for the white slave trade that relit the crusade and originally armed the federal government, it was a myth. After carefully interviewing 1,106 women, a New York investigation team found no evidence of a slave trade. The results were the same everywhere. One reformer wrote in 1913:
I have entered at least 2,500 houses of ill-repute and talked face to face with possibly 15,000 of these women and I . . . do not hesitate to tell you that they are wedded to their ways and that they laugh and make fun of those who try to help them.
58
Psychologists listed a potpourri of reasons women would voluntarily resort to prostitution, which included being weak of will, unhappy, ignorant, impoverished, lonely, and the most common, neglected and abused by family. However, a more conspicuous cause, given scant attention by moralists, was the economics. Former stenographers were paid five times more as prostitutes, domestic servants up to twelve times more, and factory workers up to twenty times more.
59
Perhaps most shocking was a lesson that moral reformers had first discovered decades earlier in the battle against legalization—women enjoyed it.
60
In the mid-1800s reformers put up halfway houses for released female prisoners, many of whom were prostitutes. The reformers assumed that if given the chance to leave the city and become honest domestic servants they would surely do so. However, as Boston reformers noted it was “extremely difficult to persuade inmates of brothels to forsake their road to ruin.”
61
By and large, the prostitutes did not consider themselves fallen women, nor did they want to adopt the middle class’ frigid sexual culture.
White slavery investigators quoted one woman who said she was “tired of drudgery as a servant. . . I’d rather do this than be kicked around like a dog in a kitchen by some woman who calls herself a lady.” Another said, “there is more money and pleasure in being a sport.”
62
Sally Stanford, a madam, wrote that the numerous women begging to work in her house were a “continual nuisance” and most of them were far from destitute.
63
Debunking the white slavery myth was not as exciting as its creation. Most of the concrete examples of white slavery that led to the moral fury—“For God’s sake do something!”—were traced back to District Attorney Edwin Sims and Chicago Prosecutor Clifford Roe, who not surprisingly were friends of Congressman Mann. These few examples were blatantly exaggerated. Despite these revelations, the Bureau of Investigation continued its battle against adultery unabated.
The white slavery panic managed to end the Victorian Compromise. Famous
red-light districts that were shut down included Houston’s Happy Hollow, Chicago’s Levee, and the infamous Storyville in New Orleans. Despite this, the prostitutes and their clients did not disappear as hoped. They simply moved to the streets.
HOOVER
Repressed G-Man?
One scientific study has shown a correlation between repressed homosexuality and homophobia. This could explain J. Edgar Hoover’s sexual conservatism and zealous prosecution of consensual sex crimes despite the fact he was probably gay.
Hoover eagerly gathered evidence of homosexuality, legally and illegally, to use against political opponents. (For example, during Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential campaign, Hoover gave Eisenhower’s running mate, Richard Nixon, information on alleged homosexual crimes committed by Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson.) However, he also had FBI agents quash information about his own sexuality. Therefore, unlike the sexual reputations he illegally tarnished (such as Martin Luther King’s), his own sexual activities remain open to conjecture.
The evidence is as follows: Hoover never demonstrated any interest in women. He had effeminate characteristics. There were always rumors surrounding his sexuality. He lived with his mom until her death when he was forty-three years old. His associate of over forty years was fellow bachelor Clyde Tolson. Tolson was five years Hoover’s junior, was “ruggedly handsome,” and had a “remarkably fast ascendancy” within the Bureau to the office adjoining Hoover’s.
Hoover and Tolson were inseparable. They ate lunch together every day and dinner together almost every night. They vacationed together, staying in adjoining rooms, and they took adoring photos of each other.
When Hoover died in 1972, Tolson inherited Hoover’s estate, and moved into his home. They are now buried beside each other in the Congressional Cemetery.
—H.E. Adams, L.W. Wright, and B.A. Lohr, “Is Homophobia Associated with Homosexual Arousal?”
J. Abnorm. Psychol
., Aug. 1996, pp. 440–445; and Ronald Kessler,
Bureau
(2003), pp. 13, 30, 43–45, 93.
The wealthier prostitutes became call girls who were put in danger by meeting johns in unfamiliar locations. The poorer prostitutes became streetwalkers who faced even more danger, in addition to higher risks of imprisonment and police
harassment.
64
The safe confines of the brothel run by the madam were replaced by the often violent world of the male pimp.
One frustrated ex-mayor wrote:
Why is it constantly necessary to do something
to
people? If we can’t do something
for
them, when are we going to learn to let them alone? Or must this incessant interference, this meddling, this mauling and manhandling, go on in the world forever and ever?
65
1.
Thomas Jefferson, “Declaration of Independence,” 1776.
2.
The 1740s’ religious revival, the Great Awakening, stressed personal responsibility. John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman,
Intimate Matters
(1988), p. 40.
3.
“Mind your business” appeared on the continental dollar of the Revolutionary War. It was designed by Benjamin Franklin. “In God we trust” did not appear on American currency until 1865.
4.
Lawrence Friedman,
Crime and Punishment in American History
(1993), p. 128.
5.
Jeremy Bentham,
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
(1996, orig. pub. 1789), p. 290.
6.
Ibid., p. 291.
7.
Richard Posner,
Sex and Reason
(1992), p. 3.
8.
The terms
Victorianism
and
Victorian Era
come from Britain’s Queen Victoria (ruled 1837–1901). Her disgust with bodily functions, such as sex and breast-feeding, and her strict decorum characterized the era. For example, queens had always given birth before dozens of government officials. She limited viewing to her doctor, her nurse, and her husband. Carolly Erickson,
Her Little Majesty
(1997), pp. 90, 222, 272.
9.
Nineteenth-century intellectuals believed women were incapable of higher education. The philosopher Georg Hegel believed men were to women as animals were to plants.
10.
Nancy Cott and Elizabeth Pleck, eds.,
Heritage of Her Own
(1979), pp. 165–168.
11.
In colonial New England, pregnancy was proof of an accused rapist’s innocence because it meant the victim enjoyed it.
12.
Ruth Karras,
Sexuality in Medieval Europe
(2005), pp. 39, 80.
13.
Bernard Murstein,
Love, Sex, and Marriage
(1974), p. 254.
14.
Ronald Pearsall,
Worm in the Bud
(1969), p. 204.
15.
G.J. Barker-Benfield,
Horrors of the Half-Known Life
(1976), p. 132.
16.
John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman,
Intimate Matters
(1988), p. 70.
17.
The distinguished British physician Sir James Paget advised that a physician should never support immoral behavior even if the patient suffered because of it. Murstein,
Love, Sex, and Marriage
, p. 255.
18.
D’Emilio,
Intimate Matters
, p. 70.
19.
Ibid., p. 80.
20.
Ibid.
21.
Morton Hunt,
Natural History of Love
(1959), p. 318.
22.
William Manchester,
World Lit Only By Fire
(1992), p. 55.
23.
Ibid., p. 67.
24.
In 1840, 16.5 was the average age of the first period. M. Rees, “The Age of Menarche,”
ORGYN
, Winter 1995, pp. 2–4.
25.
Marjorie Heins,
Not in Front of the Children
(2001), p. 8.
26.
Onanism refers to masturbation. The term comes from the biblical passages about Onan in
Genesis
38:8–10. Onan “spills his seed” and then God punishes him with death. Past interpretations of “spills his seed” were that Onan masturbated, however, it is now generally recognized that Onan performed coitus interruptus,
not
masturbation. Uta Ranke-Heinemann,
Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven
(1990), pp. 85–86.
27.
Walter Kendrick,
Secret Museum
(1987), p. 89.
28.
Kellog was a Seventh Day Adventist. Their founder, Ellen White, learned in an 1863 vision from God that masturbation can turn a boy into a crippled imbecile, and in a female it can cause inward head decay. As for those children that do not curtail the habit, “They must die.” Ellen White, “An Appeal to Mothers: The Great Cause of the Physical, Mental, and Moral Ruin of Children of Our Time.” 1863.
29.
Richard Zacks,
History Laid Bare
(1994), pp. 385–386.
30.
Martha Cornog,
Big Book of Masturbation
(2003), pp. 35–36.
31.
In a 1959 study fifty percent of medical school seniors in Philadelphia and twenty percent of their faculty believed masturbation led to insanity. David Allyn,
Make Love, Not War
(2000), pp. 128–139, 321.
32.
Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy, and Clyde Martin,
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
(1948), p. 513.
33.
John Locke,
Thoughts Concerning Children
(1693).
34.
Bernard Murstein,
Love, Sex, and Marriage
(1974), p. 251.
35.
Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History
(2003).
36.
Morton Hunt,
Natural History of Love
(1959), p. 319.
37.
Ibid., p. 317.
38.
Reay Tannahill,
Sex in History
(1980), p. 356.
39.
Derived from J.J. Potterat, et al., “Estimating the Prevalence and Career Longevity of Prostitute Women,”
J. Sex Res
., May 1990, pp. 223–243.
40.
D’Emilio,
Intimate Matters
, p. 203.
41.
Ibid., p. 147.
42.
The Army set up a similar program in Nashville after it first transported all the Nashville prostitutes to Cincinnati. This relocation program was abandoned when they all came back.
43.
Lawrence Friedman,
Crime and Punishment in American History
(1993), p. 131.
44.
Ibid., p. 127.
45.
James Morone,
Hellfire Nation
(2003), p. 262.
46.
Ibid., p. 265.
47.
Ibid., p. 262.
48.
Ibid., p. 266.
49.
David Langum,
Crossing Over the Line
(1994), p. 43.
50.
Ibid., p. 49.
51.
Ronald Kessler,
Bureau
(2003), p. 9.
52.
Ibid., pp. 114–118.
53.
An early example was the Palmer Raids (1919–1920), where thousands were arrested for their political beliefs. A program marred by illegal tactics was the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), which ran from 1956 to 1971. The only reason it was stopped was because a group called the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI field office in 1971 and mailed out documentation of the program to Congress and the media. They were never caught. Ibid., pp. 96, 156.
54.
The presidents of this time, Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921) and Warren Harding (1921–1923), were both adulterers. Future president Franklin Roosevelt was also having his first extramarital affair at this time. See Appendix Two.
55.
Langum,
Crossing Over the Line
, p. 148.
56.
Ibid., p. 150.
57.
Ibid., p. 148.
58.
James Morone,
Hellfire Nation
(2003), p. 268.
59.
Ibid., p. 270.
60.
An example was Jack Johnson’s Mann Act “victim” Belle Schreiber. Schreiber, the daughter of a Milwaukee policeman, voluntarily left a Chicago secretarial job to join the “sporting life.”
