Introduction
Prostitution can be defined as the practice of offering sexual services by an individual to another person in exchange for some form of payment. In most cases, prostitution takes place between people of the opposite sex. Individuals who engage in prostitution activities are called prostitutes. Prostitution has been considered to be one amongst the many segments of the sex industry and has been found to generate billions of dollars on a global scale.
Even though prostitution is meant to bring some economic gain to a prostitute, it is considered to be a serious abuse of a woman’s body. It is considered as violence against the women; several cases have been cited where men become violent to women prostitutes after they have been offered sexual services. It is even reported that some men seek sexual services from women prostitutes and end up not paying for the services.
According to available literature, it is indicated that what women prostitutes have to put up with during the period of their prostitution activities are actually what would otherwise be described as sexual harassment at work places. Several rights activists have argued that the exchange of money for sex is what transforms to what they consider sexual harassment and abuse at places of work into a “job” known as commercial sex work.
It is noted that the experience of prostitution is outstandingly similar for both male and female human beings. However, there are certain differences that have been noted. Majority of young males used in the practice of prostitution are heterosexual; they are said to be attracted to prostitution practices by the fact factors as those that draw women into prostitution. On the other hand, it has been found out that women used for prostitution purposes always get pregnant and give birth almost as soon as they get into commercials sex work.
Female prostitutes, who cannot afford to defend themselves, often are not able to defend even their children, especially the female ones. Consequently, the children are highly likely to become neglected, uncared for, traumatized, or even join their mother in the sex industry and hence become prostitutes in the sex industry. In this case, it is even possible for incest to take place.
Human rights activists have tried to divide prostitution into two. That is forced to prostitution and free prostitution. The human rights activist have put pressure on the need to ensure that women prostitutes only engage in free prostitution to be consistent with their right of choice. Looking at the current society, prostitution has taken a new dimension; there are now non-governmental organizations fighting for the rights of women in prostitution or commercial sex work.
In this case, these organizations, instead of encouraging women to get out of commercialized sex services, encourage women to engage in the sale of sexual services. Meanwhile, there are also other nongovernmental organizations that fight to abolish or stop women from prostitution. As such organizations, they view prostitution as a violation of human rights, in this case, women’s rights.
The fight against prostitution began many decades ago; and the driving force behind the fight against prostitution includes the fact that traditionally, the act of prostitution has always been frowned upon by the society due to its immoral nature and others have premised the fight on the argument that prostitution is a form of exploiting the body of a woman sexually.
Prostitution was not only taking place in the United States of America at the time. Other parts of the world have been known to experience the practices of prostitution, therefore. It cannot be argued that during the beginning of the 20th century, prostitution happened only in the United States of America. Available literature argues that the very religion, especially the non-Christian cults, that should be fighting such vices as prostitution are the origin of prostitution.
It is argued that prostitution had earlier been used as ritualistic activities on certain occasions. Nonetheless, the religious groups, like Christianity, which should be charged with the responsibility of ensuring morality in society, have also been linked to sexual impurities. Many church leaders have been found to engage with prostitutes for sexual gratification.
Theodore Roosevelt was born in 1858 to a very rich family in the city of New York. As a growing young child, he suffered from asthma and had other serious battles with life. He read inspirational books the entire period he suffered as a sick boy.
Theodore Roosevelt reform movements on prostitution
Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th president of the United States of America. His reform movements on prostitution must have been inspired from the time he was still an undergraduate student at Hard University. He developed his undergraduate thesis on the rights of women.
In the thesis, he argued that women should be considered equal men, and hence, they should not assume the man’s name in cases of marriage. It is crucial to mention that Theodore Roosevelt had been against sexual misuse of women since the time he had not even gotten into politics.
In colonial America, the practices of prostitution mainly took place within the confines of the ports. During the period of the 1820s and subsequent years, as America underwent urbanization, prostitution flourished and was fostered by the anonymity of lifestyle in the city. It was then that the rate of rising prostitution gained the greater attention of the people who were anti-prostitution.
Many anti-prostitution movements, including religious groups, began to form to combat the highly rising rate of prostitution with the borders of the United States of America.
Roosevelt joined civil service in 1881 when he civil-service reforms membership. The process of industrialization changing roles of gender and immigration that took place towards the end of the 19th century in New York availed the perfect social environment for the thriving of social decay and prostitution.
Before there was a civil war, the New York City had a total population of 0.7 million inhabitants amongst who were approximately 6000 practicing prostitutes; this represented a ration of one prostitute in every 117 inhabitants of the United States of America. The population continued to grow due to the constant flow of immigrants from Europe; this also led to an influx in the number of prostitutes. The immigration led to the overpopulation of the city, poverty, and underemployment.
The consequence of this was that so many women from New York to pursue the practices of prostitution to be able to take care of their financial needs. Poverty and a lack of basic resources to meet basic needs led to more and more women selling sexual services to men clients.
During the period starting from 1890, the fight in favor of suppression of the prostitution began in haste. During the same period, an English reformer is known as William Stead, who documented the popularity of prostitution in the city of London arrived in the United States of America to extend his campaigns against prostitution activities. This reformer blended well with other reformers who had the same campaign agenda in the United States; amongst these was Theodore Roosevelt.
It is important ton note that at the start of the 19th century, prostitution was not illegal and son long as the activities of prostitution took place within specifically hidden places; however, prostitutes who solicited for clients outside the designated areas were arrested as vagrants.
The legal status of the brothels and prostitution, in general, sparked heated protests from protest movements that included Christian Temperance Union for women; there was also a movement known as Social Purity Movement. All these movements championed for the abolition of prostitution and hence were the appropriate reform groups through which Theodore Roosevelt could push his support for the eradication of prostitution.
At the beginning of his presidential term in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt asserted that people must not merely talk, but should be engaged in action to favor cleanliness, decency, and righteousness in political, social and civic issues. He argued that there is no glory and prosperity can save a nation that is perverted at heart. He strongly stood for stopping of all forms of immorality within the United States of America and amongst these was prostitution.
During the period of the progressive era, which occurred between the 1890s and 1920, journalists together with civic leaders established a basis for social activism to work against prostitution and any other social situations or conditions that victimized innocent women. A journalist attempted to illuminate the lifestyle within the city’s sex districts as a form of expose and cautionary allegory.
According to the available literature on the prostitution practices in the United States during the 20th century, the city of New York had approximately 700 brothels. There were several classes of prostitutes serving different kinds of people. The most elegant prostitution establishments were known as the “Silk-hat” parlors; these served individuals with recognizable social and professional standings in the society.
Such were people were judges, physicians, lawyers, Congress members, and even the gospel ministers of the churches were known to visit the parlors. There was also the second class brothels in which were women described as desperate and served men who were very oppressive and dominating in every respect. Just before the advent of the progressive era, practicing prostitutes had minimal resources to turn to be able to meet their basic needs in life.
This is the kind of rot in the New York City, and other parts of the United States of America president Theodore Roosevelt and other reform movements wanted to eradicate prostitution. One of the reform movements he engaged in was the Progressive Movement, which was a reform group but with different views as regards the group’s main goals and objectives.
The members of the group tended to pursue so many varied goals some of which entailed putting an end to white slavery and prostitution, Americanization of immigrants, putting restrictions on immigration and rate regulation on private utilities. Theodore Roosevelt was the founder of the Progressive party which aggressively engaged in several of the above reforms.
The campaigns waged against prostitution was not marginal to Progressivism but was rather considered as integral to the way the Progressives perceived themselves and their broad-based mission. The Progressive Movement had women memberships who were great reformers. These women helped the Progressive Movement to increase its surveillance and control of you women by policing their sexuality-related activities.
Moreover, the Progressive Movement more strengths to women reformers who were now able to assert their arguments against family violence that occurred in the 19th century. It is argued that the crusade against prostitution, in which Theodore Roosevelt was a member, had a long-lasting effect on the existing penal policy for institutional and ideological reasons.
After Theodore Roosevelt had become president of the United States of America, his government continued to influence areas of social control; there was a great utilization of state-sponsored institutions in the process of reforming women and also men who were deemed to have strayed from the socially acceptable traditional norms. It is notable from available literature information that during the Progressive era, the alarm over practices of prostitution was pervasive and threatened the socials fabrics of the American society.
This attracted the attention of very prominent Americans who included Theodore Roosevelt, Walter Lippmann, and Emma Goldman. Besides, this also attracted the attention of other women membership clubs. During the period, Roosevelt declared a never wavering war on commercialized sex activities in which women were the main suppliers while men were the main clients, not talking of possible homosexuality and lesbianism.
It is important to mention that Walter Lippmann was a writer and journalists; he was one of the strong men who championed the course for the Progressive Movement. He also worked closely with President Roosevelt to control the rate of prostitution in America.
Emma Goldman is another person with whom Theodore Roosevelt worked against the practices of prostitution. Goldman was deeply concerned with the reasons behind the trade in women of almost all races. He saw exploitation as the main rationale behind the trade in women. He argued that the exploitation was perpetrated by those capitalists whose main aim was to gain more from underpaid labor; in this case, the women; they attracted many desperate women into prostitution activities.
Emma Goldman explains that the advent of the industrial system left them with no economic alternative and hence, their entrance into the prostitution industry. He further argues that no woman had ever been treated fare any different from being seen as just a sex object. According to him, women seemed to have depended so much on men who gave them everything they wanted so long as they got sexual favors from the women.
Given all these, he argues that it just an issue of the degree to which a woman is engaged whether she sells sexual favors to one man or many men it does not matter. Linked to this is the fact that the women found themselves in a situation of economic and social inferiority, which was directly responsible for their indulgence in prostitution.
Digging deep into the matter, Goldman states that the majority of women are not employed in the formal sector. Available literature indicates that during the period for which Theodore Roosevelt was involved in active politics only one out of every ten women was employed in a factory, but even the ones who were employed had to work for long hours to earn just a few dollars. Moreover, the majority of women employees had to idle for many months before getting work to do to earn.
This left the women with very limited choices amongst which prostitution was relatively the most attractive. Again, according to Goldman, this was one of the major reasons women indulged into prostitution to raise more dollars to cater for their basic needs; and also this is the why white slave trade became more dominant during the period.
With this kind of knowledge about prostitution activities in the United States of America, Emma Goldman proved to be one of the most important and key figures prominent in the fight against prostitution in the United States of America. Therefore, he was of great important toe Theodore Roosevelt.
Theodore Roosevelt’s administration funded two critical investigations on prostitution practices within the United States of America. It is stated that between 1910 and 1917, 43 cities of America did investigations about prostitution. In 1907, the Congress commissioned a commission to conduct an investigation on the trafficking of women into the United States for immoral practices, especially commercial sex.
The findings of these investigations led to the formulation of a new immigration act, which made more restrictions on matters related to prostitution activities. The government of Theodore Roosevelt left a legacy to be perpetuated by the incoming government in which the 1910 act subjected immigrant women to arrest, prosecution and probable deportation for just being found in disco hall and entertainment sites believed to be frequented mostly by prostitutes.
There are many ways in which Theodore Roosevelt attempted to thwart prostitution practices. One of these ways was through working with women groups that fought and emphasized the need for gender equality.
Several women organizations and groups campaigned against sexual misuse of women and the need to recognize that, even though there should be a difference in gender roles, there should not be inequality between the two. This was a sentiment he shared with his long time friends, with whom he was in Harvard University, who were also bored by mistreatment and rape of women prostitutes.
Theodore Roosevelt was known to be one of the City of New York reformers who formed the alliances at the beginning of the 1890s. This followed a shocking revelation that some party officials and bosses and also the police officers were in cahoots with some known prostitution ring and saloons. Even though women in New York were not yet allowed to cast votes, they were allowed to join many of reform groups that were already available like the Municipal League of women within New York.
When Theodore Roosevelt was brought back to New York and appointed as the police commissioner, he initiated several reforms; during that period, the mayor of New York City was known as William Lafayette Strong. Both the mayor and Theodore as a police commissioner worked together to initiate the necessary reforms within the city.
Theodore managed to clean up the police force department where he pushed out the chief of police after realizing that he collected bribes and also illegally received protection fees from saloons and brothels. In this case, he proved to be a serious reformer within the New York City.
It is important to point out that Theodore Roosevelt was involved in the fight against prostitution not because he only hated it as social immorality, but also because he believed that women should constitutionally be endowed with certain rights and freedoms just like their male counter parts.
He is said to have stood up for women suffrage and became probably the greatest champion of the rights and freedom of women. In this case, he viewed prostitution or subjection to prostitution as one of the worst violation of human rights a woman can ever be subjected to.
As has been discussed earlier, many women got into prostitution practices due to poverty and lack of sufficient resources to meet their basic needs. Some of the women had little children they had to take care of. One of Roosevelt’s moves that can be deemed as one of the steps towards redeeming women from prostitution was when he favored women in terms of appointive positions in the governance and political positions, even though he faced significant oppositions and criticisms regarding some of his appointments about women.
For instance, during the time he was a police commissioner, he ensured women joined the police department as employees, as a member of Progressive Party, he ensured that women were represented in the national committee. The step to open new opportunities for women to pursue various careers otherwise thought to have a preserve of men served a great deal to turn women away from prostitution activities.
The opportunities offered women a platform to strongly and successfully fight for the rights of women who were sexually abused in the form of prostitution, especially those who were illegally trafficked into the United States of America prostitution purposes.
It is most obvious that Theodore Roosevelt would zealously fight against prostitution in the United States of America. This is because he believed that prostitution is a social evil that interferes with social morality and ethics. Most importantly, he believed that for a better American society, the family plays a very significant role; but there cannot be a functional family where prostitution is becoming the order of the day. Therefore, he had to be engaged in furious campaigns against the practices of prostitution in the United States of America.
His favor of families could be revealed where he proposed high tax rates for those not having children or only having one or two; conversely, he proposed that taxes be reduced according to the number of children one had. In this case, the larger the number of children a family had, the less tax he or she paid. Furthermore, Theodore Roosevelt proposed that those who were still single, never married, should even be heavily taxed by t he government.
The efforts made by Theodore Roosevelt to stop prostitution and trafficking of women for the same purpose encountered a lot of obstacles. As much as it is said the activities involving prostitution were easily detectible, there are those who never accepted that it existed; such individuals were mostly those charged with the responsibility of ensuring morality in the American society.
Instead of eradicating prostitution, these people decided to protect brothel operators and saloons where prostitution activities were allowed to go on secretly without the attention of other government authorities. There were also those who wanted prostitution to be legalized as a right for every woman who wanted to get into the commercialized sex industry.
In overall, the fight against prostitution was a tough battle that could only be reduced but not completely eradicated as Theodore Roosevelt, and his cronies hoped to. There was a group that wanted prostitution to be made legal arguing that those who wanted it abolished never presented the prostitutes with an economic alternative.
However, Roosevelt’s government got a lot of support from Congressmen who were also disgusted by the activities of prostitution, which they referred to as a social evil and a crime. In this regard, an important bill was passed in the Congress by 1910 prohibiting certain immoral practices for which both the black and mostly the white women were trafficked into the United States of America.
The bill also sought to specify clearly what kind of commercial activities could take place between the United States and other countries or business partners. This left out prostitution activities and hence transport of white and black women either into or out of the United States of America. To ensure the effectiveness in the implementation of the new law on morality, the police force was given more authority to regulate commerce in the United States.
Their duties were also extended to moral regulation, and this placed them at a better position to deal with issues of women slavery and prostitution matters.
Even though so many reform movements came up within the United States of America, some of which were for women and fought for the rights and freedom of women and gender equality, they alone could not bring to an end the practices of prostitution. The government authorities used some legal force in which prostituting women were arrested and punished for engaging in illegal or prohibited activities. Such women were arrested and put in jails.
One of the most important reform organizations that Theodore Roosevelt used in pushing his agenda against prostitution was the Bull Moose Party for which he was the founder. Through the Bull Moose Party, Theodore Roosevelt ensured he convinced as many women as possible to participate in active political campaigns; moreover, he used the party to offer a good platform for campaigns against prostitutions. The women who joined the Bull Moose were women of high professions like lawyers, teachers, and doctors.
This gave other women a lot of inspirations, and hence, a significant number turned away from prostitution and started pursuing professional careers. In the end, the party helped the women to present their positions with regards to voting rights and misuse of other women as sex objects by men who sought sexual favors.
During the time, the Bull Moose Party proposed several reforms on which it pledged to work. Amongst these reforms were to ensure no immoral business activities took place in America and protecting the American people from people with selfish interest, destroy the invisible government, put to an end the unholy coalition between corrupt politics and the corrupt business entities.
Conclusion
Prostitution can be termed as bodily sexual services by a person to another individual for financial compensation. In most cases, prostitution takes place between people of the opposite sex. Individuals who engage in prostitution activities are called prostitutes. Prostitution has been considered to be one amongst the many segments of the sex industry and has been found to generate billions of dollars on a global scale.
It is noted that the experience of prostitution is outstandingly similar for both male and female human beings. However, there are certain differences that have been noted. Majority of young males used in the practice of prostitution are heterosexual; they are said to be attracted to prostitution practices by the fact factors as those that draw women into prostitution. On the other hand, it has been found out that women used for prostitution purposes always get pregnant and give birth almost as soon as they get into commercials sex work.
The body of human rights has attempted to divide prostitution into forced prostitution and free prostitution. The human rights activist have put pressure on the need to ensure that women prostitutes only engage in free prostitution to be consistent with their right of choice.
Looking at the current society, prostitution has taken a new dimension; there are now non-governmental organizations fighting for the rights of women in prostitution or commercial sex work. It has been argued that prostitution has also been used by religious groups in terms of ritualistic activities. So, it is may not be viable to bedevil prostitution it its entirety.
Theodore Roosevelt was born in 1858 to a very rich family in the city of New York. As a growing young child, he suffered from asthma and had other serious battles with life. He read books about explorers and great warriors were his only source of inspiration during the period he was suffering as a sick boy. In his old age, he got involved in the fight against prostitution in the United States of America.
It is important to point out that the fight against prostitution began many decades ago; and the driving force behind the fight against prostitution includes the fact that traditionally, the act of prostitution has always been frowned upon by the society due to its immoral nature and others have premised the fight on the argument that prostitution is a form of exploiting the body of a woman sexually.
Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th president of the United States of America. His reform movements on prostitution must have been inspired from the time he was still an undergraduate student at Hard University.
He developed his undergraduate thesis on the rights of women. In the thesis, he argued that women should be considered equal men, and hence, they should not assume the man’s name in cases of marriage. It is crucial to mention that Theodore Roosevelt had been against sexual misuse of women since the time he had not even gotten into politics.
Theodore engaged actively towards the civil service reforms(1881). Noteworthy is the fact that Theodore Roosevelt was involved in the fight against prostitution not because he only hated it as social immorality, but also because he believed that women should constitutionally be endowed with certain rights and freedoms just like their male counter parts.
During the period starting from 1890, the fight in favor of suppression of the prostitution began in haste; an English reformer known as William Stead who documented the popularity of prostitution in the city of London arrived in the United States of America to extend his campaigns against prostitution activities. There were circumstances where brothels and saloons were considered legal, and prostitutes were not allowed beyond them.
The legal status of the brothels and prostitution, in general, sparked heated protests from protest movements that included Christian Temperance Union for women; there was also a movement known as Social Purity Movement. All these movements championed for the abolition of prostitution and hence were the appropriate reform groups through which Theodore Roosevelt could push his support for the eradication of prostitution.
During the period of the progressive era, which occurred between the 1890s and 1920, journalists together with civic leaders established a basis for social activism to work against prostitution and any other social situations or conditions that victimized innocent women. A journalist attempted to illuminate the lifestyle within the city’s sex districts as a form of exposure and cautionary allegory.
According to the available literature on the prostitution practices in the United States during the 20th century, the city of New York had approximately 700 brothels. The brothels were divided into several classes ranging from upper to lower. The upper-class brothels had what was described as high-quality prostitutes who only served the professionals like lawyers, court judges, and church ministers.
Theodore Roosevelt used various reform movements in fighting prostitution in the United States of America. Many of the reform movements were perpetrated by women who fought for the rights of women and against the misuse of women as sexual objects by men who sought to satisfy their sexual needs.
Theodore Roosevelt was known to be one of the City of New York reformers who formed the alliances at the beginning of the 1890s. This followed a shocking revelation that some party officials and bosses and also the police officers were in cahoots with some known prostitution ring and saloons.
Even though women in New York were not yet allowed to cast votes, they were allowed to join many of reform groups that were already available like the Municipal League of women within New York and women Christian based organization. There were also individuals like Emma Goldman amongst others with whom Theodore Roosevelt worked with as he tackled the issue of prostitution in the United States of America.
Even though Roosevelt and his cronies fought hard to contain the immoral activities of prostitution in the United States of America; they could not succeed in eliminating the business of prostitution. This is because as much as they tried to publicly campaign against it, the business went on secretly underground.
But then it is important to recall that the prostitutes cannot continue existing if there were no clients. It, therefore, means that the campaigns against prostitution could not completely succeed by just focusing on the suppliers of sexual services and ignoring a large number of clients who are the incentives for the existence of the women prostitutes.
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