Chinese Prostitutes Research Articles

The Commodification of Chinese Women in Spain

There has been a patriarchal economic alliance between Spain and China in recent years, with the main victims being poor Chinese women without support networks and who are destined for prostitution in Spain. Twentieth century China, an important provider of goods, also supplies women to the Spanish prostitution market. This article is based on participant observation research in the private spaces related to Chinese prostitution in Madrid. Taking into account the prostitutes and their “managers” as primary information sources, we can know what is behind the advertising of Chinese prostitution to Spanish or non-Chinese buyers of sexual services, how this type of exchange works; we can also come to understand the protagonists’ life-stories through their own testimonies.

Sex, Marriage, and State Surveillance of the Intimate in Progressive-Era America

Sex, Marriage, and State Surveillance of the Intimate in Progressive-Era America Kellie Wilson-Buford (bio) Jessica R. Pliley. Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015. 295pp. Notes on sources, notes, and index. $29.95. Erica J. Ryan. Red War on the Family: Sex, Gender, and Americanism in the First Red Scare. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015. xii + 220 pp. Notes and index. $69.50. Contributing to the growing literature on state surveillance of the intimate in U.S. history, Jessica R. Pliley and Erica J. Ryan reveal that policing women’s sexuality and protecting the sanctity of heterosexual monogamous marriage were central concerns of state officials and progressive reformers in the first half of the twentieth century. Where Pliley focuses on the Mann Act’s key role in transforming the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into a national investigative agency, Ryan zooms in on the 1920s to examine how the First Red Scare initiated an era of gender and sexual conformity. While both books are important contributions to the fields of the Progressive Era, immigration history, gender and sexuality studies, and the history of marriage and the family, Red War on the Family is a more specialized must-read for anyone interested in the First Red Scare, discursive constructions of communism and Americanism in post–Russian Revolution America, and the formation of conservative political coalitions. Likewise, Policing Sexuality will appeal to legal historians, scholars of sex trafficking and prostitution, and anyone interested in the creation of the modern police state. Based on nearly 1,000 Mann Act cases from 1910 to 1941 and a wealth of other Bureau of Investigation files, Pliley persuasively argues that the expansion of the FBI in the early twentieth century into the nation’s premier police agency depended in large part on the passage of the Mann Act, the nation’s first anti–sex-trafficking law. The Mann Act criminalized the transport of women over state lines for prostitution or “any other immoral purposes.” Originally intended to protect white, native-born women from being seduced and sold [End Page 484] into sexual slavery, the Mann Act’s vague “any other immoral purpose” clause paved the way for the Bureau’s surveillance of women’s sexual behavior in brothels and the intimate spaces of their own bedrooms. Yet Bureau officials excluded most African American and immigrant women from the protections of the Mann Act, feeding into popular constructions of chastity and respectability as characteristics only white women could possess. By enforcing the Mann Act along decidedly gendered lines that protected the patriarchal nuclear family, traditional gender roles, and husbands’ sole rights to their wives’ sexual services, the Bureau helped normalize heterosexual, monogamous marriage as the bulwark of American stability and values amidst feminist, anticapitalist, and modernist challenges to the status quo. Discourses on sex trafficking emerged in the United States in the 1870s in the context of Chinese immigration and the disproportionate number of Chinese women working as prostitutes, or “yellow slaves,” in the West. Fearful of the influence “yellow slavery” might have on morals and institutions, missionaries and purity activists rescued “enslaved” Chinese prostitutes and agitated for legal reform that would bar the entry of Chinese immigrants into the country. Progressive journalist Dr. Kate C. Bushnell’s 1888 report for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) on sex-trafficking in Wisconsin lumber camps ignited panic among social-purity activists about white slavery. Uncovering evidence that foreign men working in the lumber camps were trafficking young American women, these activists packaged a “myth” of white slavery to the public, portraying sex-trafficking as a crime with specifically immigrant origins. The anti–white slavery movement did not gain full force until 1907, when the Immigration Bureau and Dillingham Commission investigated the amorphous white slavery problem in response to rumors that Chicago was the center of the trade. Investigators articulated a vision of white slavery that located vice and criminality in the bodies of poor, foreign-born women who constituted a disproportionate number of prostitutes in Chicago. Publicity surrounding the investigation fueled nativist concerns about the moral threat immigrants posed to American values and institutions. In...

The “Fake Marriage” Test in Taiwan: Gender, Sexuality, and Border Control

According to many reports, migrant sex workers often use marriages of convenience to cross national borders in order to avoid laws criminalizing commercial sex in many destination countries. Taiwan is one of the countries developing strategies to prevent this illicit migration, particularly through the application of a fake marriage test. Based on in-depth interviews with eighteen Chinese migrant sex workers and thirteen officers of Taiwan’s National Immigration Agency (NIA), this article argues, first, that the discourse of “national security” has been widely drawn on to justify Taiwan’s rigid border control at the expense of stigmatized Chinese prostitutes who have been scapegoated. Border control is therefore not only racialized or classed but also sexualized, to the extent that all Chinese migrant women are considered potential prostitutes. Second, this article reveals how the exclusion of and hostility toward Chinese sex workers are simultaneously linked with a gender regime that seeks to exclude Chinese spouses who deviate from Taiwanese gender and social norms. The border is therefore a contested site where gender, sexuality, and nationality are interwoven.

‘Shanghai Beauties’ and African Desires: Migration, Trade and Chinese Prostitution in Cameroon

This paper discusses the ambivalent attitude of local men towards Chinese migrant sex workers who have become key players in the growing sex business in Cameroon. The main argument of this paper is that ‘Shanghai beauties’, as Cameroonians generally refer to Chinese migrant prostitutes, are part of the cheap and depreciated commodities that China is exporting to this country through its well-organised trade networks mostly controlled by Chinese traders from overseas. As such, the equivocal perception of these Asian sex workers by the native population as both cheap bodies and junk sex only reflects the general perception of China-sourced goods at large.

Northern Chinese women in Paris: the illegal immigration—prostitution nexus

Some Northern Chinese migrant women end up prostituting themselves after their arrival in Paris. If one must relate this phenomenon to their illegal status and their lack of information about the host society, this article shows nevertheless that Chinese prostitutes in Paris have developed know-how and tactics to survive in an extremely precarious situation. Focusing on those coping strategies allows us to understand that, despite a form of resignation, prostitution is seen as the best way to bridge the gap between the reality these women face in France and the dreams they had before departure.

Governing buyers of sex in the People's Republic of China

This paper examines the developing body of Chinese prostitution law, and the nature of its implementation, with reference to mainstream media controversy surrounding the case of a male academic penalized as a buyer of commercial sexual services in late 2004. It argues that the protagonist's highly public ‘fall from grace’ may owe more to the Chinese media's new capacity to act as part of a disciplinary apparatus that extends beyond the purview of the Party-state – via its claim to promote freedom of information – than the presumed repressive ethos of the Chinese Communist Party.

Chinese Prostitution: Consequences and Solutions in the Post-Mao Era

Chinese Prostitution: Consequences and Solutions in the Post-Mao Era

Chinese Prostitution: Consequences and Solutions in the Post-Mao Era

This paper examines the development of Chinese prostitution in pre-communist China during the Mao regime and the post-Mao era, drawing lessons from the Chinese Government's efforts to eradicate prostitution. It discusses the relationship between prostitution and sexual disease, and argues that China's market economy, lack of religious beliefs and diverse cultures have contributed to the revival of prostitution in the post-Mao era. In order to effectively control the problem, it is necessary to adopt a comprehensive approach to change Chinese people's beliefs and ways of life.

If They Don't Bring Their Women Here: Chinese Female Immigration before Exclusion

Seven years before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 comprehensively disqualified all members of China's laboring class from immigration status, the Page Law sought to stem the tide of Chinese prostitutes entering the United States. Yet during these seven years it was not just prostitutes but all Chinese females who encountered at best hostility and at worst expulsion when they reached the Golden Door. In this first detailed account of Chinese American women's lives in the preexclusion era, George Anthony Peffer investigates how administrative agencies and federal courts enforced immigration laws. Peffer documents the habeas corpus trials in which the wives and daughters of Chinese laborers were required to prove their status as legal immigrants or be returned to China. He also surveys the virulently anti- Chinese coverage these trials and the issue of Chinese immigration received in California newspapers, confirming that Chinatown's prostitution industry so dominated the popular imagination as to render other classes of female immigrants all but invisible. In the words of one immigration judge, the United States remained favorable to Chinese immigration in the preexclusion period if they don't bring their women here. This important study amplifies the voices of immigrant women who did not fit into the preconceived categories American officials created and establishes a place for them within the historiographic framework of Chinese American studies.

Opium smoking, anti‐Chinese attitudes, and the American medical community, 1850–1890

During the 1870s and early 1880s, members of the American medical community sought to exclude the Chinese from immigrating to the United States because these physicians believed that the Chinese opium smoking habit threatened the moral system of the country. Doctors were especially concerned about the supposed effects of opium smoking on sexual behavior, arguing that it both heightened male and female desire and endangered the nation's reproductive capacity. They also feared that opium smoking and Chinese prostitution would encourage miscegenation, and that use of the drug could ultimately harm America's socio‐economic progress. The conclusions of these physicians fed into the anti‐Chinese campaign that resulted in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.

Clothing Borders

Clothing Borders

Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco. Benson TongNightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club. Anne Allison

<i>Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco</i>. Benson Tong<i>Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club</i>. Anne Allison

Review: UNSUBMISSIVE WOMEN: CHINESE PROSTITUTION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY SAN FRANCISCO, by Benson Tong

Book Review| April 01 1997 Review: UNSUBMISSIVE WOMEN: CHINESE PROSTITUTION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY SAN FRANCISCO, by Benson Tong UNSUBMISSIVE WOMEN: CHINESE PROSTITUTION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY SAN FRANCISCOBenson Tong Nadine Ishitani Hata Nadine Ishitani Hata Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Southern California Quarterly (1997) 79 (1): 130–132. https://doi.org/10.2307/41171844 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Nadine Ishitani Hata; Review: UNSUBMISSIVE WOMEN: CHINESE PROSTITUTION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY SAN FRANCISCO, by Benson Tong. Southern California Quarterly 1 April 1997; 79 (1): 130–132. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41171844 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentSouthern California Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1997 Historical Society of Southern California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Benson Tong. &lt;italic&gt;Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco&lt;/italic&gt;. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1994. Pp. xix, 300. $24.95

Benson Tong. Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1994. Pp. xix, 300. $24.95 Get access Tong Benson. Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1994. Pp. xix, 300. $24.95. David J. Pivar David J. Pivar California State University, Fullerton Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 101, Issue 2, April 1996, Pages 574–575, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/101.2.574-a Published: 01 April 1996

Book Review: Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco.

Book Review: Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco.

Review: Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco, by Benson Tong

Review: <i>Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco</i>, by Benson Tong

Unsubmissive women: Chinese prostitutes in nineteenth-century San Francisco

Unsubmissive women: Chinese prostitutes in nineteenth-century San Francisco

Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco

Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco

Relations of rescue: the search for female moral authority in the American west, 1874-1939

In this study of late nineteenth-century moral reform, Peggy Pascoe examines four specific cases-a home for Chinese prostitutes in San Francisco, California; a home for polygamous Mormon women in Salt Lake City, Utah; a home for unmarried mothers in Denver, Colorado; and a program for American Indians on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska-to tell the story of the women who established missionary rescue homes for women in the American West. Focusing on two sets of relationships-those between women reformers and their male opponents, and those between women reformers and the various groups of women they sought to shelter-Pascoe traces the gender relations that framed the reformers' search for female moral authority, analyzes the interaction between women reformers and the women who entered the rescue homes, and raises provocative questions about historians' understanding of the dynamics of social feminism, social control, and intercultural relations.

Beautiful Merchandise: Prostitution in China, 1860-1936

Contents Foreword * Powder Faces and Wild Chickens: Chinese Prostitution 1860-1911 * Law, Li, and Popular Mentality * Sexual Economy * Transformations and Transvaluations 1911-1936 * A Picture of Twentieth-Century Prostitution * Prostitution and Profit: The Contradictions of Revenue and Reform * Reference Notes Included * Bibliography * Index