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White slavery is a term that is currently used to refer to forced prostitution. It was first used in 19th century Britain to refer to child prostitution.
Wage slavery
The term white slavery has also been used in a more general sense, to denote the enslavement of workers to wage labor in industrial Britain. The use of the term spread to the United States, where it held particular currency for Americans after the civil war who felt that freedom was defined by the ability of a man to earn a living and support one's family. As the U.S. had just abolished slavery, the right to earn a living was invoked often during Reconstruction. This use of the term "freedom" was supported by property laws and poor laws, which privileged property holders.
The expression wage slavery has replaced this term.
Forced prostitution
The Eliza Armstrong case
The term gained particular prominence during the trial and imprisonment of William Stead (editor of the Pall Mall Gazette) for kidnapping, after he published an article reporting that he had been able to purchase the thirteen-year-old daughter of a chimney-sweep for 5 pounds in order to bring attention to the problem. The publicity generated by the case led Parliament to pass the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act that raised the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen in that year.Moral panic
By the beginning of the 20th century, the term was coming to mean as well the abduction of white girls into forced prostitution, and after about 1905 it was used for this definition almost exclusively. "White slavery" was the focus of a major moral panic at the end of the Progressive Era. Although sexual slavery did and still does occur, "white slavery" is usually used to refer to this moral panic, where there was a perception that this form of abuse was a danger to every young woman.In the United States, Chinese immigrants were particularly stereotyped and demonized as white slavers and were referred to as the yellow peril during this time. As an example of this in American culture, the musical comedy Thoroughly Modern Millie features a Chinese-run prostitution ring. In Christian Europe, on the other hand, the predominant stereotype linked the term to Arab slave traders and Ottoman harems, and is strongly associated with the vilification of Islam in the 19th century. The theme of a European woman kidnapped to be sold into a Muslim harem also reappears frequently in contemporary American erotic literature.
The United States White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910 prohibited so-called white slavery. It also banned the interstate transport of females for immoral purposes. Its primary stated intent was to address prostitution and immorality. The act is better known as the Mann Act, after James Robert Mann, an American lawmaker.
Similar accusations of organizing forced prostitution have also been frequently applied against Jewish men and appear in a great deal of anti-Semitic writings.
External links
- "White Slavery" As Metaphor: Anatomy of a Moral Panic
- Loose Women or Lost Women? The re-emergence of the myth of 'white slavery' in contemporary discourses of 'trafficking in women'
- Pressured by U.S., Israel Battles a Burgeoning White Slave Trade
- White Slave Trade
"White slavery"