In the dark street there are ladies of the evening that avoid those who are there to extend a hand of compassion and presence. There are women who can easily be alienated if someone with a collar extends a hand of friendship. A collar seen as a safety when working in the middle of the night the perception if they see I am clergy they will not harm me. I began asking questions of these women when I came to the grand realization that some were Muslim. I was not aware that Muslim women were prostitutes. I honestly did not know and it has become my passion to learn more. The more I have learned the more confused I have become. The more confused I have become, the more determined to be educated. This paper has been a very difficult journey, but one that I take with honor as I learn about the strong women that continue to endure persecution. Equality between all male and female should be universal regardless of class or religious affiliation; however, that is not the case in the world we live. There is still …show more content…
a struggle for women on so many different levels to receive that human equality that is their birthright. How can we sit back, as women in the United States, and not become active when we were once so actively fighting for our own rights? Receiving our rights of suffrage took about 144 years of waiting and 72 years of unrest, arrests and protests , will it take that long to find freedom for those who continue to be persecuted because of their gender? How is it that we have come so far with our own rights and have not become a louder voice for the injustices in the world, especially for our sisters who are suffering great cruelty? As I carry the voices and spirits of the women who have come before me, I recognize all they have made possible for what I can do or be. We, as women, fought for our right to vote. We fought for our right to be heard. We fought to be seen. We fought to hold occupations and wages equal to those of men. We are still fighting. We have won many battles and we have lost others. But our fight and our responsibilities to our sisters around the world have not ended simply because we can now vote for the next president. There is so much more we must do. The courageous women of the past went beyond the walls of just voting rights they also fought to eliminate trafficking of young girls (though that is still a struggle) through the Mann Act.
Prostitution and adultery being my focus, it is only fair that I show the struggles we in the United States have had with it ourselves. A Century of Women: The most influential events in 20th Century Women’s History by Deborah G. Felder states, “The passage of the Mann Act, which aimed at stopping the perceived threat of what was then called “white slavery” –the forcing of women into prostitution. It was only one legislative victory for Progressive Era antivice reformers to enforce a changed attitude to prostitution and legalize morality. Felder also points out that the attempt early in the century to deal with the unsettling image of the fallen woman as well as the trafficking of sexual favors, ran counter to the prevailing notion of female purity and decency.” (Felder,
1999) Prostitution has been and is a great problem here and around the world. It is the one thing that links all of us together. It is a horrendous crisis that plaques not only the bodies and souls of the women who directly suffer, but the souls of all women. It is not just an individual problem, it is a systematic problem. Many times when a woman is forced into prostitution, lack of resources or a history of past abuse can be seen as the root cause of their enslavement. Felder continues to enlighten us by stating, “Between 1910 and 1917 forty-three cities conducted formal investigations of prostitution and the political connection that was suspected in its maintenance. Driving most of these investigations was the question of why women would become prostitutes in the first place, and though many answers, such as poverty and personal inclination, were suggested, it was the specter of the white slave trade that captured the public’s imagination and helped fuel a growing hysteria that culminated in the passing of the Mann Act in 1910.” (Felder, 1999) The fear of slavery being turned back on White people forced the hands of the 1910 Congress and American citizens, but it has never really been about “white slavery,” it has been about slavery. Forced prostitution (which, I would argue, is all prostitution) defies borders, race, and gender, but remains a women’s issue, an “in house” problem that we must speak into if not as human beings, as women. Felder showed that struggle when she says, “The facts revealed that the majority of international procurers were not ‘foreigners’ suspected in recruiting young girls into prostitution: of the men convicted under the Mann Act, 72.5 percent were native-born Americans.” (Felder, 1999)
Throughout most of documented history women of all cultures and civilizations have lived under patriarchal circumstances. In almost every religion and civilization women's status was not equal to that of a man's. Women in most cultures are looked at as subservient, obedient creatures that were put on this world for very few reasons, mainly to bear children and do what their husbands require of them. In fact, religions are a big part of the reason of this oppression due to the religion's reinforcement and justification of patriarchal conditions. In this week's selected readings from different aspects of Islamic, Byzantine Christian, and Western Christian cultures, it is very apparent as to how these three religions did reinforce and justify the patriarchal conditions in which women were struggling to live in. Also, by reading the selections one can see how different religions could make a difference for women and how they lived their lives.
After the success of antislavery movement in the early nineteenth century, activist women in the United States took another step toward claiming themselves a voice in politics. They were known as the suffragists. It took those women a lot of efforts and some decades to seek for the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In her essay “The Next Generation of Suffragists: Harriot Stanton Blatch and Grassroots Politics,” Ellen Carol Dubois notes some hardships American suffragists faced in order to achieve the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Along with that essay, the film Iron-Jawed Angels somehow helps to paint a vivid image of the obstacles in the fight for women’s suffrage. In the essay “Gender at Work: The Sexual Division of Labor during World War II,” Ruth Milkman highlights the segregation between men and women at works during wartime some decades after the success of women suffrage movement. Similarly, women in the Glamour Girls of 1943 were segregated by men that they could only do the jobs temporarily and would not able to go back to work once the war over. In other words, many American women did help to claim themselves a voice by voting and giving hands in World War II but they were not fully great enough to change the public eyes about women.
Charity Girls are very important to women’s history because they are what began the “New Woman.” They are the women who finally decided to change the way women should act. Charity Girls began in 1880 and lasted until about 1920 in New York City. They were very promiscuous women for this time period; however, they differed from prostitutes because they did not accept money from men. These women were more open about their sexuality and did what they wanted, when they wanted, and did not care what others thought about them. During this time, chastity was very important so many people looked down on this new idea women had for them. This is why it’s so important to study these women because it is an important change in women’s history.
Abu-Lughod, Lila. "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections On Cultural Relativism And Its Others." American Anthropologist 104.3 (2002): 783-790. Print.
Marnia Lazreg wrote about an 1852 skit of two Afghan girls and a free Christian France. In the nineteenth century, missionaries made it their mission to save Muslim women. One record talks about the plight of Muslim women and how Christian women must help them. A century later, the sentiment is still being echoed and is used to explain the “War on Terrorism.” It is also doing more harm than good.
Mahmood, S. (2005). Politics of piety: the Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
The overwhelming reason for 19th century prostitution can be attributed to the need of survival. There are few people who would argue that jobs for women were scarce in whatever part of the country in the 1800’s. Was it superior to penalize the women who prostituted themselves or offer them ways in which they could “better” themselves? Jail time, fines, social reform was all ways society judged the working women.
“The Harem Within” is a pioneering work that opens discussion of women’s rights in Islamic societies. With her humble life story Mernissi gives not only a voice to Moroccan women, but stands her advocacy for individual freedom and battle against the harem within. The narrative is a literature example that figures the women discrimination and appeal for
principles, from religious dedication to personal liberty. Some fought against prostitution as a moral or social injustice while others charged prostitution as an injustice against women. Beginning in the colonies and continuing even up to present day America, this research will present the philosophies and management behind
Women have been treated unequally since the beginning of time. Just recently have things began to change for the better for women and the future of our society. The increase in women’s equality rights will take time, but some day women and men will be treated equally. This cannot happen until each of us is able to look at a person and just see another individual, not a male or a female, white or black, rich or poor… a person as just a person.
In some form or other, prostitution has been recognized throughout history and all over the world. There has been alternating phases of repression and toleration of prostitution. Official Christian morality has always opposed prostitution, but in big cities prostitution has been rather open and tolerated in Christian societies until the sixteenth century when venereal disease became a major public problem. At that time public authorities began denouncing prostitution and took severe measures to eliminate it. By the nineteenth century, official enforcement of rules against prostitution had become lax in the U.S. and England; while in nations such as France had rather wide open houses of prostitution in major cities. The U.S. launched a campaign to suppress prostitution. Industrialization and mass communication seem to have been associated with increased repression of deviance in general and sexual deviance in particular.
Sex is a topic that is rarely openly discussed in America. Some would say that is an example of moral decency, others might argue that this is just a prudish mindset we inherited from early puritan settlers. Sex for pay or prostitution, is one concept so at odds with this taboo that it has been declared immoral and illegal. Forty-eight out of fifty states have decided that prostitution should be illegal. On the surface, this widespread ban on prostitution may appear to combat the spread disease and sex slavery, but, upon further inspection, this assertion might not be supported by facts. The creation of a legal and highly-regulated form of prostitution in the United States could help slow the rate at which sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are spread, lower the demand for sex slaves, and improve the quality of life for the prostitutes that already operate in the United States, and should be implemented despite any moral or ethical objections some individuals may have.
Do Muslim women really need saving? Yes, they do! In her most known and controversial article “Do Muslim women really need saving?” Lila Abu-Lughod tries to break the western persistent stereotype that Muslim women are generally oppressed in both the Eastern and the Middle Eastern countries that they all need to be rescued from their governments and even from Muslim men.
The viewpoints that are the most vehemently opposed to legalizing prostitution in the United States stem from religious ideals. Charles Clark, senior editor at the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, suggests that sex out of marriage is a large factor in the disapproval of prostitution from religious Americans (1993). The religious perspective offers something than many prostitution arguments lack. A series of guidelines and clear cut rules on the matter. Evelina Giobbe (as cited in Clark, 1993), director of Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution, implies that most religious groups find that prostitution is immoral (1993). The idea that prostitution is immoral makes making policy on the matter easy. Those who prescribe to the religious way of thinking seem to suggest that prostitution should not be allowed and therefore criminalized. On the other hand there are arguments against prostitution that feel that it is immoral for other reasons.
Equality is a concept mankind never is able to grasp correctly. Of course humans will always search for different solutions to create fairness, but factors such as human greed, ignorance of mass populations, and even biological aspects stagnates the process of equality. The oldest and most relevant discussion on equality lies with the difference of sex; man versus woman. Initially, men, because of their physical superiority, were given the prospects many women never even dreamt to have. Conversely, as time has progressed, women have fought this unfair treatment with demands of suffrage and similar rights to those of their male equivalents. Greatly enough, this generation has done an exceptional job in the challenge of overcoming sexism and inequality. However, will this search for equality ever end? When can we say we have created an equal race of men and women? The fact of the matter is that it is truly impossible to have equality between the sexes because of predisposed circumstances that are not easily controllable in the slightest bit.