White slavery
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
White slavery is a term that was used to refer to sexual slavery. It was first used in 19th century Britain to refer to prostitution of children.
Contents |
[edit] Forced prostitution
[edit] The Eliza Armstrong case
The term gained particular prominence during the trial and imprisonment of William Stead (editor of the Pall Mall Gazette) for kidnapping, after he published an article reporting that he had been able to purchase the thirteen-year-old daughter of a chimney-sweep for 5 pounds in order to bring attention to the problem. The publicity generated by the case led Parliament to pass the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act that raised the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen in that year.
[edit] United States reaction
By the beginning of the 20th century, the term also came to mean the abduction of white girls into forced prostitution, and after about 1905 it was used for this definition almost exclusively. "White slavery" was the focus of a major moral panic in the United States at the end of the Progressive Era. Sexual slavery did and still does occur; "white slavery" is usually used to refer to this moral panic, where there was a perception that this form of abuse was a danger to every young woman.
In the United States, Chinese immigrants were particularly marked as white slavers though it was actually restricted to the criminal section of the Chinese community (similar to the way in which organized crime from Sicily operated out of that community in the US). As an example of this in American culture, the musical comedy Thoroughly Modern Millie features a Chinese-run prostitution ring. The gangster movie Prime Cut has mid-West white slaves sold like cattle. Cities like San Francisco have made it a motive to find and take care of prostitution taking place in day spas, which hold captive young illegal Chinese immigrant women. Many of these women were either tricked out of their country, in hopes of marriage or an education.
In Christian Europe, on the other hand, the predominant image linked the term to Arab white slave traders and Ottoman harems. The theme of a European woman kidnapped to be sold into a Muslim harem also reappears frequently in contemporary American erotic literature.
Mormons, too, were often depicted as engaging in this practice for their polygamous society in Utah (see the 1925 film 'Trapped by the Mormons'). These stories tailed off after the group renounced polygamy in 1890. Recently there has been major media imposed on a polygamist bust, where many young women were forced to marry much older men. These young girls were beaten and raped and many had become mothers at very young ages.
The United States White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910 prohibited so-called white slavery. It also banned the interstate transport of females for immoral purposes. Its primary stated intent was to address prostitution and immorality. The act is better known as the Mann Act, after James Robert Mann, an American lawmaker.
That all concerns about trafficking in human beings were not unfounded is shown by the fact that it still occurs (as of 2008). A U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report from June 2003 stated "As unimaginable as it seems, slavery and bondage still persist in the early 21st century. Millions of people around the world still suffer in silence in slave-like situations of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation from which they cannot free themselves. Trafficking in persons is one of the greatest human rights challenges of our time." [1]
[edit] References
- ^ "Introduction." Trafficking in Persons Report. U.S. State Department.
- Marvin Lowenthal, The Jews of Germany: A Story of Sixteen Centuries p. 1–18
