Immoral Response to a Moral Panic: Supporting Women’s Wrongs

        What’s the difference between a prostitute and an adult woman pursuing consensual sex with romantic partners? According to the Progressive Era’s social reformers, the difference is negligible. Between sensationalized stories by muckraking journalists and the fact that urbanization left Americans primed to embrace the idea of evils lurking in every city street, ‘white slavery’ rapidly took hold as a major fear of the early twentieth century. 

        Infantilizing treatment of sex workers was not only demeaning to the intelligence of adult women, but it also contributed to the narrative that women needed to be denied agency for their own protection. Because sex workers refused to be the perfect victim, would-be reformers changed the narrative. Women weren’t choosing to work as prostitutes because they’d weighed their options and made an informed decision with the limited choices available to them. No, that couldn’t be true. Instead, the truth had to be that women simply can’t be held accountable for their circumstances because they don’t have the wherewithal or mental power to make choices for themselves. Every white woman’s sin could be attributed to a man or – horror of horrors – a person of color. 

        Even the name of the ‘white slavery’ panic speaks to the idea of scapegoating. In the early twentieth century, most if not all Americans would be aware of the all too recent actual slavery in the American South. Southern slavery was an instance of a powerful majority race imposing cruelty and dominion over a minority. By referring to the moral panic as ‘white slavery’, there was an inherent implication that nonwhites were to blame for what was allegedly happening to young American women in cities. 

By creating a climate of fear and championing the idea of a malevolent underground syndicate of evil, the advocates of the white slavery panic were able to position themselves as underdogs fighting against a powerful force of wickedness. 

Rather than acknowledging the sociocultural and political climate that drove women to sex work, so-called advocates for those women blamed an invisible and malicious force. Rather than addressing individual problems that placed individual women into precarious situations, social reformers found it easier to blame an ‘other’. 

Fundamentally, the white slavery panic of the early twentieth century created a climate of finger-pointing and blame. What should have been a legal problem – taking action against political radicals and being upfront about the reasons behind certain arrests – became instead a moral one, a matter of saving the souls of young women. 

And, conversely, what should have been an open debate about concerns related to the changing world and changing social mores instead became a push of repressive laws that didn’t solve the actual problem and only served to inflame paranoia, racism, and paternalism. In order to actually champion a group – in this case, young white women in early twentieth century America – you must champion their right to do what they deem right with their own lives, even if you disagree or find it distasteful. Because, ultimately, when you're advocating for someone else, it's not about you.