Josie Washburn

This book is AMAZING!!! Josie was SO ahead of her time!!! So many of the woman's issues she brings up are still being fought for and it's amazing to hear a voice that is so modern in a text from 1909. She brings up all the inherent issues of working as a prostitute as a woman in her time without any moralizing. She denounces the idea that a fallen woman is to blamed for anything—It is male governance and laws, it is cruel Christian morality, it is the lack of opportunities for women that lead them to be "forever tarnished" by the "underworld". And she doesn't even believe in tarnishing—it is only the Christian world that denies them the ability to be seen as anything but once a "fallen woman".

Her book made me realize the inherent discrimination issues of the sex industry that still need to be addressed while marveling at the incremental changes that have happened. A woman working in the sex industry has many more rights and opportunities than her late 19th-century counterpart, and it's so reassuring. But the fact that it is almost wholly directed and consumed by men makes it less than radical. I won't claim the industry is good until we can achieve complete sex equality. I do think though that in the next few decades or century it will have loosened its chains from near-complete male consumption, and we'll be able to take part without moral objection.

Anyways, this book rocks. She had some weird anti-alcohol thing going on, but I can't blame her for what she went through. In a stroke of irony I even made it to the bar named after her in Omaha, and had the "Josie Washburn" cocktail to boot :")… (plus d'informations)

From the women of negotiable virtue reading list. Self-published in 1909. There were plenty of “tell all” books about the lives of prostitutes written at about this time; most, however, were anonymous and likely invented for the titillation value. In this case, though, author Josie Washburn can be traced as an actual retired prostitute and madam; as the title suggests the book is not intended to titillate but as a polemic. There are no details of the goings-on in a bawdy house, other than the girls and their customers drank a lot of beer and wine and smoked a lot of cigarettes. Washburn is vehement and bitter about the double standard; men who are patrons and landlords of the houses are pillars of society while the women in them are forever irremediably disgraced. She operated in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska where it was technically illegal; therefore the houses and inmates were regularly fined. If the police and city were in a mellow mood, the fines could be paid by messenger; if they were feeling more obstreperous the girls had to come to the courthouse and pay them in person; if there was one of the periodic anti-vice crusades going on (a good part of the book describes the “One Year War” where the local newspapers vied for circulation by seeing which one could come down the hardest on vice) there would be a police raid and the girls (although not the customers) were taken to the station in paddy wagons and might have to spend a day or two in jail.

There are the typical stories of “good girls gone bad”; the way Washburn describes it, the typical brothel prostitute was a shop girl or recent young widow. A friendly young man invites her to a local restaurant or saloon, and one glass of wine later she’s on her back in a crib. Perhaps a little exaggerated in the segue; maybe not. I once went to hear local history professor Patricia Limerick lecture on prostitution in the old West; she claimed that many of the fortunes of well-known Western families were not earned by cattle ranching or silver mining or railroad building but got their start in a different manner. A girl would work her way up to a management position, prudently investing her takings; after retirement her children (or often nieces and/or nephews; the business tended to be hard on the reproductive system) would be sent to expensive schools in the East and would be vague about the source of the family fortune to classmates and acquaintances. The grandchildren would have no idea what sort of business Grandma had been in.

Washburn is not an accomplished writer. SHE IS ESPECIALLY FOND OF ALL CAPS, often for paragraphs at a time, and the book is disorganized – but heartfelt. Her solutions, alas, are not very practical – ban prostitution, ban drugs, ban alcohol, ban tobacco, and provide welfare for the poor; and she’s sure all these things will happen once women get the vote. She also advises that wives prevent their husbands from straying by wearing décolleté gowns, using lots of makeup, and making love a lot. At least until they get the vote.

One of the stranger passages is not in the text, but in the introduction – by history professor Sharon Wood. Wood comments on the title, saying “A sewer, after all, is not a bad thing. One might not want to spend time there, but one would not want to live in a city without one, either”. This almost seems like a suggestion that prostitution is “a necessary evil”, which seems odd for a modern and presumably feminist academic to advocate.

At any rate, a quick read. No notes or references; line drawing illustrations of various young girls tripping lightly down the wide highway to doom.… (plus d'informations)