Victorian Feminist Interventions in Commercial Sex in the Middle of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Abstract

This essay offers a conceptualized overview of contemporary research on the political and discursive interventions of British 'first wave' feminists into the field of commercial sex regulations. Contemporary researchers have solid grounds to argue that the fight against the state regulation of brothels (and, later, against white slavery) had a significant impact on the development of the feminist project. In particular, the problematization of commercial sex helped to mobilize new supporters and provided an opportunity to articulate and legitimize other goals of the feminist movement (the right to vote, the re-evaluation of the role of women in the public sphere, the fight against 'sexual' double standards). At the same time, Victorian feminist discourses about commercial sex had a number of negative effects. Commercial sex continued to be seen as opposed to marriage and, therefore, sinful and deviant, while women engaged in it remained excluded from discursive production and political decision-making. As a result, laws criminalizing commercial sex were adopted in Britain, which only strengthened control over the sexuality of working-class women. Thus, an analysis of contemporary research allows us to view feminist policies on commercial sex as a historical and political assemblage that emerges and develops at the intersection of different forces, desires and discourses. The limitations of the early feminist project, in particular the reproduction of class hierarchies and the stigmatization of women who engage in commercial sex, have become apparent. The resulting discourse is a more complex and multifaceted picture of the 'first wave,' in which resistance and power relations are intertwined, creating new opportunities for freedom and new inequalities.