Punitive Purity

        The problem with punitive purity is that it aims to protect someone who doesn’t exist. Vice in the early 1900s wasn’t seen as subjective. Not only that, it wasn’t seen as natural. Vice, such as women consenting to sex work, was thought to be only possible through a secret ‘white slavery’ network. 

        The slippery slope that early twentieth century America fell into is easy to see and heartbreaking to watch. Shame eclipsed acceptance. Idealism eclipsed the harsh reality of women’s lives, particularly with limited rights and unequal work opportunities and pay rates. 

        The ideal target of the Progressive Era’s social reformers is a perfect young woman, imminently threatened with corruption but not complicit in any part of what’s happening to her, blameless in any ‘sin’ she’s been involved with, and eager to trustingly run into the arms of the first rescuers she encounters. 

        The problem is that this woman does not exist. And, worst of all, the social reformers of the early twentieth century blamed sex workers and other women in urban settings for not being this perfect victim. 

The Mann Act was a point of culmination for the idea of solving a societal moral panic through legal punishment rather than social movement. The objective of those in power was to repress ‘immoral’ actions. Notably, though, the goal was never to help real people. The goal was to punish the flesh-and-blood in defense of the hypothetical. 

Repressive legislation leads to regressive actions, and the ramifications of that can be seen in the ways that the Mann Act was used by the federal government to enact punishment on those that were deemed unworthy, such as black men in interracial relationships and women who chose to work in prostitution. Moralists of the era created a culture of punitive purity: defining a good person and viciously excluding and moralizing against anyone who fails to fit the mold. 

        In pursuit of the perfect victim, moralists of the 1900s rejected or even outright harmed hundreds and thousands more ‘imperfect’ victims. 

I would argue that vice and purity do not exist at opposite ends of a spectrum, but as different ways of forcing labels onto human behaviors. Furthermore, I believe that purity is not a worthwhile goal. When purity is externally-imposed, it has no inherent superiority to other moral frameworks such as utilitarianism, Deontology, or rights-based ethics. When purity is internally imposed on oneself, I would encourage the moralist to question why the goal is to never do anything wrong, rather than to see to it that one ultimately puts more good into the world than bad. 

I speak from a personal standpoint, but I can safely say that I would rather make a hundred mistakes for the sake of helping a thousand people than never make a single mistake, but also never help a single person. 

Comments

  1. williams.dan7621 October 2025 at 11:10

    Thanks, Emily, Great insights into early Progessive perspectives. A lot of idealism and desire to reform, but little practical knowledge of the new urban environments.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Witch Trials And Deep Fakes: Seeing Isn't Believing

I find myself drawing a connection between the Salem witch trials entering dreams into evidence as valid testimony, and the increasing prevalence of deepfakes. Both involve the possible defamation of one’s character as a result of their likeness in a situation without their involvement or consent. One was due to the hysteria of witchcraft, and the other is a modern phenomenon due to technology that has advanced faster than the laws that regulate it. Both say troubling things about justice, innocence, guilt, and the ability to prove any of those things one way or the other.  An interesting similarity between witchcraft allegations and deepfakes is that the victims of both are likely to experience a strong sensation of helplessness. Someone who is not a witch – as was the case for all those accused in Massachusetts – has little recourse against their community vilifying them as a practitioner of the dark arts. Likewise, someone whose video likeness is stolen and misused – or, in ...
Read more

You Should Be Afraid of Fear: How Phishing Uses the Psychology of Fear

A common phrase used in recognizing a scam is to question whether something is too good to be true. However, when it comes to phishing scams, I think it’s equally useful to question if something is too bad to be true. Often, scammers get their victims to panic into letting their guards down by catastrophizing. Email subject lines such as ‘YOUR IDENTITY MAY BE AT RISK’ and scam phone calls that claim the government is involved and they aren’t happy with you have become commonplace. I want to discuss this new take on an old scam.            I think the biggest reason for this shift in scam framing is that scammers have learned to take advantage of people's fear of loss. A quote from Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale states that “the fear of loss is greater than the desire for gain.” Scammers have realized the truth of this phenomenon in recent years and are adapting their phishing strategies to take advantage of it. Most people would appreciate ...
Read more

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 could...
Read more