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Government Moralism

Peter de Marneffe

in Liberalism and Prostitution

The paternalistic argument for prostitution laws does not presuppose that it is inherently wrong or immoral to exchange sex for money. Nor does it presuppose that prostitution laws could be justified ... More

The paternalistic argument for prostitution laws does not presuppose that it is inherently wrong or immoral to exchange sex for money. Nor does it presuppose that prostitution laws could be justified on this ground if it were true. Nor does this argument imply that the government is justified in limiting our sexual freedom in other ways. Prostitution laws justified on paternalistic grounds are therefore not objectionably moralistic. Although the paternalistic argument stated in chapter 1 presupposes that prostitution is “degrading,” and although John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin have argued that the fact that a form of sexual conduct is degrading cannot justify the government in prohibiting it, the paternalistic argument for prostitution laws is nonetheless compatible with liberal principles of liberty. It is misleading to characterize U.S. prostitution laws as “morals legislation” because in U.S. history, the paternalistic justification has been more influential than any purely moralistic one.Less

Legislating Women: The Push for a Prostitution Prevention Law

in Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan

This chapter addresses the female activists and legislators who worked locally and nationally to pass laws against prostitution. The Prostitution Prevention Law aimed to prevent a climate of ... More

This chapter addresses the female activists and legislators who worked locally and nationally to pass laws against prostitution. The Prostitution Prevention Law aimed to prevent a climate of prostitution. The fight to pass a national law against prostitution shows both the potential and the disappointing reality of female politicians' power in the early postwar period. The road to the legal abolition of prostitution had begun in the late nineteenth century. Japan did little to stop domestic trafficking, instead concentrated on the international trade, especially of European women. The promise of rehabilitation would prove crucial in solidifying a broad coalition of women and Christian Diet members behind a national anti-prostitution law. It is noted that Japan's failure to outlaw prostitution was an international embarrassment. Sex work had become objectionable only when the Allies occupying their country had deregulated it.Less

The High Politics of Base Pleasures: Regulating Morality for the Postwar Era

in Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan

This chapter explores how a national anti-prostitution law finally passed in 1956, when Liberal Democratic Party legislators made the cause their own. Sex work had threatened the public morals and ... More

This chapter explores how a national anti-prostitution law finally passed in 1956, when Liberal Democratic Party legislators made the cause their own. Sex work had threatened the public morals and endangered children. Servicemen played an outsize role in the Japanese sex market. The growing controversy surrounding military-base prostitution helped to consolidate support for the law and finally overcame conservative opposition. Although the law was a narrow institutional triumph for female legislators, it actually safeguarded a sex industry that left men in charge. All Japanese women were supposed to benefit from the enhanced moral climate. While the Prostitution Prevention Law was meant to protect children, a total of 54 percent of these rapes were committed by juveniles. It is shown that 1956 was a high-water mark for women's activism, demonstrating its limitations more than its achievements.Less

Sexualized Laws, Criminalized Bodies: Anti-prostitution Law and the Making of a New Socio-Sexual Order

Saheed Aderinto

in When Sex Threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism, and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900-1958

This chapter discusses how the criminal justice system assumed a prime position in the policing of prostitution. By differentiating between adult and child prostitution laws, the legal system played ... More

This chapter discusses how the criminal justice system assumed a prime position in the policing of prostitution. By differentiating between adult and child prostitution laws, the legal system played a significant role in molding public and official perceptions toward the identity of adult and underage practitioners of prostitution and the perceived menace each type of prostitution allegedly posed. Moreover, unlike the social interpretation of sex work, the new legal regime from the early 1940s institutionalized the criminalization of transactional sex as a component of social and public order. As such, prostitution became a component of the colonial state's maintenance of law and order, which was cardinal to the effective exploitation of the colonies.Less

Men, Masculinities, and the Politics of Sexual Control

Saheed Aderinto

in When Sex Threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism, and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900-1958

This chapter examines men's reactions to prostitution legislation. Different contours of masculinities informed by location and by political and economic power influenced the degree of condemnation ... More

This chapter examines men's reactions to prostitution legislation. Different contours of masculinities informed by location and by political and economic power influenced the degree of condemnation of or support for anti-prostitution laws. Men's reactions also differed depending on the age of prostitutes. A question that seemed relevant for this discussion of men's sexual politics is what it might take for moralists to become defenders of prostitutes' rights. The change of identity from being a moralist to an advocate for prostitutes' rights underscores the fluidity of debates about prostitution and the shifting positions of moralists. In “defending” prostitutes' rights against the injustice of the colonial state, men deployed the vocabularies of political and cultural nationalism, as they highlighted the integrity of “traditional” customs or criticized the British for imperial failure.Less

The Presence of the Past: Controversies over Sex Work Since 1956

in Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan

This chapter describes the consolidation of new sexual markets that persist to this day. The 1956 law resulted in the demise of licensed sex work. The Prostitution Prevention Law and the impulse to ... More

This chapter describes the consolidation of new sexual markets that persist to this day. The 1956 law resulted in the demise of licensed sex work. The Prostitution Prevention Law and the impulse to define sex work as a social evil have deeply regulated both Japan's sex industry and the lives of individual women. The Law has made it much harder for women to organize against the abuses and demand better working conditions. It is then shown that the Child Prostitution and Child Pornography Law is widely considered as a success for a transnational alliance of feminists, child welfare, and human rights activists. Japanese women had relationships and in some cases offspring with men from many countries. Furthermore, it is noted that sex work no longer plays the part in the Japanese economy that it did during the early postwar years.Less

Prostitution, Women’s Movements, and the Victim Narrative

Mina Roces

in Women's Movements and the Filipina: 1986-2008

This chapter focuses on how the women's movements represented prostitutes in their campaign for the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003. The activism over prostitution as a feminist issue ... More

This chapter focuses on how the women's movements represented prostitutes in their campaign for the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003. The activism over prostitution as a feminist issue captured much of the experiences and complex challenges encountered by these activists. In presenting these issues, the chapter introduces the double narrative of prostitution as a feminist issue: on the one hand, deployment of the victim narrative was successful in advocating laws on behalf of prostitutes; on the other hand, feminists were not keen on encouraging women to wear the badge of “victim” permanently in everyday practice. This chapter focuses largely on the former narrative, taken into context within existing cultural constructions of the feminine that idealized the woman as martyr.Less

Lagos Elite Women and the Struggle for Legitimacy

Saheed Aderinto

in When Sex Threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism, and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900-1958

This chapter focuses on Lagos elite women's sexual politics. Lagos elite women were the first to insert illicit sexuality into their long list of projects aimed at improving women's sociopolitical ... More

This chapter focuses on Lagos elite women's sexual politics. Lagos elite women were the first to insert illicit sexuality into their long list of projects aimed at improving women's sociopolitical and economic visibility. Like the male nationalists, they expressed optimism that the 1940s prohibitionist regime would help curb the menace of prostitution, especially the trafficking of girls. With time, the elite women would be disappointed by the paradoxical situation resulting from anti-prostitution laws: on the one hand, they fulfilled the demand for policing prostitutes and controlling the influx of girls into Lagos, but on the other hand, they opened up new arenas for the violation of women's rights.Less

Conclusion: Beyond Victimhood

in Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan

Sex work in Japan has been highly shaped and even formalized for 300 years. A coalition based on the rights of sex workers might have been far more efficient in fighting exploitative proprietors and ... More

Sex work in Japan has been highly shaped and even formalized for 300 years. A coalition based on the rights of sex workers might have been far more efficient in fighting exploitative proprietors and decreasing the incidence of venereal disease (VD). In Japan, sex workers were not the only ones who could find profit and opportunity during the Allied Occupation. The proprietors have managed a law that put streetwalkers out of business and solidified their control over the industry. The Prostitution Prevention Law has protected the interests of male proprietors and permitted sex work to continue in base areas and exempted clients from the risk of prosecution. Sex workers under the Occupation were unambiguously authorized, with control over their fortunes, their families, and their fates. In general, the history of Japan under occupation demonstrates that it is all too easy to treat the most vulnerable people as symbols.Less

Sugar’s Legacies: Romance, Revolution, and Wageless Life in the Fiction of Edwidge Danticat and Rosario Ferré

Angela Naimou

in Salvage Work: U.S. and Caribbean Literatures amid the Debris of Legal Personhood

This chapter explores the collision of sugar economies, sex, and legal personhood in Kara Walker’s sculptural art installation A Subtlety, Edwidge Dan¬ticat’s short story “A Wall of Fire Rising,” and ... More

This chapter explores the collision of sugar economies, sex, and legal personhood in Kara Walker’s sculptural art installation A Subtlety, Edwidge Dan¬ticat’s short story “A Wall of Fire Rising,” and Rosario Ferré’s novella Sweet Diamond Dust (Maldito Amor). These writers and artists reimagine modes of romance that underwrite the legal fictions of sugar plantation economies in the mainland United States, Haiti, and the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico. The chapter identifies aesthetic strategies for grappling with sugar’s legacies, in which legacy is not merely a metaphor for cultural heritage but also refers literally to legal inheritance. It examines how narrative modes of romance and tragedy in fiction and historiography operate to legitimate or discredit family genealo-gies, manage racialized and gendered populations through anti-prostitution laws, and shape narratives of anti-colonial revolution, imperial occupation, and economic globalization.Less