feminism, temperance and prostitution [View all]

[iverglas]

This had been my first thought for a discussion here when the group was proposed.

Those "moral crusades" women are apparently so fond of ...

http://www.geocities.com/~svpress/articles/fwillard.html

An early figure in those crusades in the US: Frances Willard, who died in 1898.

Each year, as president of the WCTU, Willard published an address. In this long paper she proposed a plan of work and ideas for the betterment of society. Her messages always went beyond the issue of alcohol. During the year, she spoke and traveled and used her personal influence to accomplish the wide range of items on her agenda. At first, Willard campaigned for women's suffrage in a muted vocabulary, framing the issue in terms of giving women the ability to vote for "home protection." In this way, she gradually brought the WCTU along with her.

Her life as president of the WCTU was one of constant travel in the United States and Europe. Her style was winsome, evangelical, inspiring, and conciliatory. One biographer makes frequent mention of her ability to compromise and to slowly win her constituency over to her opinion. As she traveled around the country, she hired local secretaries to carry on her massive correspondence. She was said to keep six secretaries busy simultaneously. Material written in her own hand is voluminous but extremely hurried and virtually illegible.

Nothing concerning women escaped Willard's attention. She campaigned for change in prostitution laws, attacking grievous situations that were allowed to flourish. Prostitution in some lumber camps amounted to child slavery. The age of consent in twenty states was a mere ten years of age, and in one it was seven. According to Willard, the laws of purity were to be equally binding on men and women. The sexual crimes of men must not go unpunished. The men who patronized a prostitute should be equally guilty under the law as the prostitute who served him.

On the subject of rape, Willard wrote, "It is by holding men to the same standard of morality that society shall rise to higher levels, and by punishing with extreme penalties such men as inflict upon women atrocities compared with which death would be infinitely welcome. When we reflect that in Massachusetts and Vermont it is a greater crime to steal a cow than to abduct and <rape> a girl, and that in Illinois <rape> is not considered a crime, it is a marvel not to be explained that we go the even tenor of our way, too delicate, too refined, too prudish to make any allusion to these awful facts, much less take up arms against these awful crimes. We have been the victims of conventional cowardice too long."

Under Willard, the WCTU worked for the development of Traveler Aid to assist women in their attempt to remain pure while searching for work. They also established homes for the reclamation of prostitutes.

There was some pretty advanced thinking going on over a century ago (in reaction to some pretty horrific stuff that was going on as recently as that). And over the years since, the women doing it, and busting their bums to improve the lives of other women, have come to be dismissed as, yes, pearl-clutchers. They deserve a lot more attention and recognition for what they really were: brave and important social reformers, and feminists.