Thesis ID: CBB001567214

Pure Spaces and Impure Bodies: The Detention of Prostitutes in the U.S. during World War One (2010)

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Barnes, Abigail Claire (Author)


Curry, Michael R
University of California, Los Angeles


Publication Date: 2010
Edition Details: Advisor: Curry, Michael R.
Physical Details: 316 pp.
Language: English

This analysis takes a historical approach to geography by looking at the social construction of gender roles as they have been mediated through the built environment. Using War Department archives, medical journals and other sources, this study examines a federally-run campaign to eradicate venereal disease and prostitution in the U.S. during World War One. The campaign began when Congress passed Sections 12 and 13 of the 1917 Selective Service Act , establishing a five-mile wide purity zone around military bases in which prostitution and alcohol consumption were banned. By the time it ended in 1920, over a hundred red-light districts had been shuttered and a spate of municipal codes and state laws had been enacted, regulating everything from whether unmarried couples could rent hotel rooms to blood tests before marriage. I conclude that the anti-VD/anti-prostitution campaign was part of a broader Progressive effort to recast gender norms and sexual roles. It was hoped that a country of immigrants with competing allegiances could be united by a new masculine identity that emphasized moral purity, self-restraint, outdoorsmanship, and physical fitness. President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of War Newton Baker shared a vision with social hygienists and other Progressives of using military training to promote this new form of American masculinity. To do this the military training camp system was developed. The techniques of standardizing and mass producing military camps would later be adapted to create the landscapes of tract home suburbia. The War Department created the Commission on Training Camp Activities (CTCA) to see to the moral and physical improvement of inductees at the camps. Part of their mission was to keep away sexually promiscuous women. Early in the war it had been reported to Congress and the media that a vast venereal disease (VD) epidemic had been detected in the U.S. Military lore held that VD could destroy combat effectiveness. The result was a nation-wide moral panic. As a result, unknown numbers of females and some males (the War Department suggest there were thousands) were put in what was called medical quarantine. In most cases these were city jail cells. I argue that this was actually one of the 20th century's first mass detentions, that is, a spatially-organized tool used to manage social conflict. To be released, detainees were often required to take medical treatments with arsenic or mercury-based drugs. Ironically, we don't know whether detainees ever had disease. I show that the reports of a VD epidemic were fundamentally flawed because the diagnostic tests were inaccurate and diagnostic criteria were used inconsistently.

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Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 72/01, Jul 2011. Proquest Document ID: 820756221.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567214/

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Authors & Contributors
Baron, Beth
Changboo Kang
Petrungaro, Stefano
Robert Kramm
Scheer, Tamara
Zientek, Adam Derek
Concepts
Medicine and the military; medicine in war
Sexually transmitted diseases
World War I
Prostitution
Sexual hygiene
Public health
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
20th century
18th century
Places
United States
Great Britain
France
Cairo (Egypt)
Yugoslavia
Peru
Institutions
East India Company (English)
Royal Army Medical Corps
American Red Cross
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