April 27, 2016 • 61 mins
Wartime prostitution is American as Uncle Sam and apple pie. Cristen and Caroline shares the hidden history of military STDs, government-sanctioned brothels, and the surveillance of civilian women to provide a "buffer of whores" to keep soldiers sexually satisfied.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, a host of the new house
Stuff Works Now podcast. Every week, I'll be bringing you
three stories from our team about the weird and wondrous
developments we've seen in science, technology, and culture. Fresh episodes
will be out every Monday on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music,
and everywhere else that find podcasts are found. Welcome to
(00:25):
stuff Mom Never told You from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline.
And the last podcast episode we did, we talked about
the comfort women's system in Japan during World War Two,
(00:47):
and I feel like when it comes to World War
Two in particular and uh sex, slavery, rape, and prostitution,
that Japan and comfort women get most of our attention
and there is a misconception that it was really isolated
to that part of the world. But once we started
(01:10):
doing some research on war and prostitution and looking at
huh did did anything like this happen with the Allies
during World War Two? We ended up in in quite
a rabbit hole, friends um of learning about how when
(01:31):
it comes to the military, the US military and prostitution,
it's really as American as apple pie. Uh yeah, And
while I knew this on a surface level, I had
never taken this much time to really fully understand how
(01:54):
war and rape and sex work, whether it is coerced
or not, how inextricably linked they are, how in so
many ways, like women who survived wars are nonetheless the
casualties of war, Yeah, without a doubt. And I mean
we could do, you know, fifteen or thirty episodes about this,
(02:19):
about wartime prostitutions, stretching back through the dawn of freaking time,
but we we opted to limit ourselves. Yeah, So we're
gonna this this episode is going to focus on the
United States from the Civil War up to World War Two,
because we're gonna come full circle and up back in Japan.
(02:42):
And one thing that jumped out to me really quickly, Caroline,
when we first started reading about this issue, and even
with contemporary stories focusing on the U. S Military and
especially military contractors who are still stationed in South Korea
and the sex trade, so stayed with that, even those
(03:02):
we just have these blanket statements as a given about
how you know, the U. S. Military and sex and
prostitution have always been you know, inextricably linked in order
to keep morale up and in order to keep soldiers happy.
And it makes sense. But at the same time, I
was like, this wasn't none of my history books. Why
(03:23):
am I just now learning about this in detail? Oh
so many reasons why it's not in your history book,
of course, But I mean it goes back to it
echoes for sure. What we talked about in our episode
on comfort women about this like underlying assumption that boys
will be boys, and we need to both support and
(03:45):
control They're like sexual appetite in a in an environment
where uh, you know they're gonna do it. They're gonna
either rape or have sex, so we better at least
set up a system where we can keep an eye
on them. Well. And it's the whole thing of women
being the spoils of war um. And we do need
(04:09):
to make an important distinction at this point between you
know what we're going to talk about, which has more
to do with sex workers and voluntary prostitution in these cases,
compared to sex slavery that was happening with the comfort
stations in the Japan where women were literally lied to, kidnapped, etcetera.
(04:33):
And and forcibly coerced into those comfort stations. But at
the same time too, you can't get away from the
fact that a lot of the reasons why these women,
you know, who were servicing Allied soldiers, the reason why
they were doing is because they were economically coerced. Yeah,
(04:54):
I mean, I mean they had no other choice. You
see this in the American Civil War too, where uh,
with their husband's away or dead, or just not making
any money. During the Civil War, Uh, women could make
a lot more money being prostitutes, especially once and not
to spoil too much, but especially once systems were regulated
(05:16):
and fees were standardized and increased in in certain areas. Uh,
you could make a time more money selling sex then
you could, you know, stitching uniforms. Yeah. And and sex
work was nothing new during the Civil War. I mean
it was pretty common actually, I mean probably to a
(05:37):
surprising degree when we think about nineteenth century prudery. Um.
But there was a piece you're reading from case Western
Reserve University about this massive problem that STDs caused during
the Civil War. UM Court martial records list over one
hundred thousand instances of sexual misconduct. First of all, UM,
(06:02):
and the way the Army responded to this was Okay,
we don't need all of these assaults happening, But I mean,
what else is going to happen. You have these guys
who are young, they've grown up, you know, on farms
and in small towns, and this is the first time
they're really out in the war. They're you know, hanging out,
(06:26):
putting their lives on the line. They're drinking, like rates
of drinking were really high, and they were encountering, you know,
prostitutes for the first time. So, I mean things are
going to happen. I mean, this is when you first
start to see this. Listen, boys will be boys kind
of attitude. So so what are we gonna do to
placate those natural proclivities as they were treated? Yeah, and
(06:51):
so as you can imagine with this sort of permissive attitude,
that's that's like I feel like it echoes like I'm
at college for the first time and condoms don't really
exist yet in a way that to use plus prostitutes,
um college plus prostitutes. And one of the consequences during
(07:12):
the Civil War is that the Surgeon General of the U. S.
Army documented more than a hundred and eighty three thousand
cases of venereal disease. And so I mean, just imagine
how much higher that would be if you also counted
the Confederate Army. You had more than seventy three thousand
cases of syphilis, more than a hundred nine thousand cases
(07:34):
of gonorrhea. And I'm not laughing. I'm laughing, but I'm not.
I just like stupefied uh that were treated by surgeons
for the Union army. And this adds up to a
documented eight point two percent of Union troops who contracted
wartime STDs and f y. I there was this assumption
(07:58):
by the white leader ship that black soldiers, UM surely
had much higher rates of STDs, so they were considered
kind of more more of a liability. But in fact,
both alcoholism and STD rates amongst black soldiers was way, way,
way lower than the white Union soldiers. Just just a
(08:22):
side note there, UM. This case Western Reserve University piece
we're reading also cites soldiers letter home to his wife,
UM complaining that you would think that there was not
a married man in the regiment and there was heaven. Yeah.
And then there was another soldier who wrote home complaining
of the pox and the clap I mean, this is
(08:43):
just this is just a part of you know, a
soldier's life. You get the clap and then you die. Well,
the army wanted to prevent that as much as they could.
Between eighteen sixty three and eighteen sixty five, v D
so out of control in the Union Army that the
(09:04):
government started sanctioning prostitution outposts in the lovely hamlet of Nashville, Tennessee,
which had fallen to the Union in eighteen sixty two,
and in Memphis. And these outposts included regular STD checkups
for the women. Oh thank goodness, it's not like again.
(09:24):
They were treating you know, colds and coughs, though they
were mainly concerned about what was going on with STDs.
But here's a thing. So this is where we get
into the issue of these sex workers being there voluntarily,
and um they were actually like alright, cool, I'm I'm
(09:44):
down for some medical care, healthcare, thanks Obama. Um. So,
the way this whole thing went down was that General
George Spalding, who was essentially just like one, you know,
notch below h Ulysses S. Grant, came down to Nashville
(10:04):
where all these Union soldiers were, and there had already
been like it wasn't necessarily legalized. But there was Smoky
Row in Nashville, which was the their known kind of
red light district, and the union soldiers were up to
no good hanging out on Smoky roll Row all the
time contracting STDs, which I mean the STD problem wasn't
(10:27):
so much moral prudery but an issue of just downtime.
I mean, you would you would you were out, like
you couldn't fight if you ended up contracting an STD
and had to get it treated. Um. So he's like, Okay,
what am I gonna do? This is a bad situation. Oh,
I know, I'm going to try to like ship all
(10:49):
of these prostitutes out of Nashville. I'm just gonna like
round them up and get him out. And there was
even like a newspaper announcement on the day that like
all of the sex workers were put on the train. Oh,
I mean the press followed, the press followed that boat.
It's oh no, no, they put those women on a riverboat.
(11:10):
It was a brand this this guy's brand new riverboat
which he bought, you know, to be a riverboat. But
what's his name? Spalding was like, yeah, cool, here are
a bunch of prostitutes. I believe there were a hundred
and eleven plus some children. And the press followed this
with such glee. They reported, and I'm I'm I hope
(11:33):
when you're imagining this with me, please have some Binny
Hill music playing in your head as well, because the
boat at each stop was turned away. So just picture
this as the boat is going up the river up north,
and they're like, we'll just get rid of them in Cincinnati. Nope,
Cincinnati turns them away. They like every stop up the river.
(11:57):
These cities, even though they themselves undoubtedly had prostitutes working
within their city walls, they were like, we don't want
your prostitutes. We don't want to be known as the
city that accepted the river boat of prostitutes. And so
you know, the women aren't happy, right the liquor ran
(12:17):
out on day two. Uh, they're stuck on this boat.
They don't get Bravos so they can't watch real housewives.
I mean, come on, people, and the crew there was
a crew three men for all of these women, plus
some kids. And finally, I think it's like they left
in August August in the South. They left on this
(12:39):
boat in August. By October, they literally stayed on the
river through the fall. In October, they have to come
back to Nashville because the dudes like, guys, my boat
is destroyed. Like love the ladies. Everything's great. However, the
boat never recovered. This guy didn't get capen sated for
(13:00):
his destroyed boat until after the war. He spent the
entire war like writing letters like m dear sirs, please,
my boat is destroyed. Uh. And when he finally did
get compensated, he was like, I can't. I can't use
this boat for anything else. It was and will remain
a floating whorehouse. Well, I'm not so much concerned about
(13:21):
the boats well being, but the inhumane and unsanitary conditions
these women had to live in. Because clearly Spalding did
not think this thing through. He had no real destination.
He was like, just get him out. Women are just
you know, it's just property. Just move him around. Um.
So obviously that blows up in his face and he's
like fine. So Spalding then goes to Plan B. And
(13:45):
Plan B is government sanctioned prostitution in Nashville. That's right, friends,
Nashville legalized prostitution during the Civil War. So with this
was like, okay, prostitutes, you can stay, but you have
to get licensed for five dollars. For five dollars, and
(14:07):
with that licensing, you have to get a medical check up,
um to screen you for any st d S and
treat him if you got them. And we're going to
regulate this whole thing. And the money was actually pretty good.
You have sex workers from the North actually coming down
to Nashville being like, hey, I want some healthcare. Yeah,
I'll go to Nashville. Um, And at least from the
(14:30):
reports that we read, these women were like, this is
pretty good. We're actually being treated like employees and not
just property. So um, we don't we don't really mind
this too much. And a surgeon general who helped hatch
this plan really patted himself on the back as well,
because he was like, you know what I mean, Yeah,
it's still prostitution, but at least our STD rates are
(14:54):
under control, So I mean, this is this is just
one instance of how this happens. So off course, after
the Civil War prostitution is shut down, they're like okay, nope, okay,
now we've gotta pull the plug. Smoky row, you gotta
you gotta clean up your act now. Yeah. And I
feel like it was the surge in general. It might
be somebody else who took note of how this shift
(15:15):
from pre to post regulation the women were suddenly like
a vision of propriety. They went from being these depraved
hoores in the back alleys who were dirty and unkempt,
to being you know, happy and healthy, making more money well,
and to that point of dirtiness versus cleanliness. This is
(15:41):
also where we start to get that stigmatizing rhetoric that
is still very much alive and well, um when it
comes to STDs today, the idea that contracting and STD
makes you dirty, right, you know, I mean it's just
the moralizing of the whole thing and de incentivizing it. Um.
Because I mean the government had a very vested interest
(16:03):
in keeping STD rates low so they could keep their
military mobility high. Um. And even though you know, not
all soldiers frequented brothels um, it was still possible for
them to mail order French safes as old school condoms
were called, um, along with erotic magazines and literature and pictures.
(16:28):
I mean, they had like guys kind of who were
their runners to make sure that they whether they were
going to someone in person or someone in print that
they could have their you know, their their sexual needs relieved.
So that gets us through the Civil War, and when
we get to World War One, this is when we
(16:49):
really see the rise of slut shaming STD propaganda. Really
reinforcing women is just dangerous, but also STDs as this dirt, dirty,
shameful thing and patriotic condoms. Um yeah, I mean std
s were still a massive problem, as you might imagine.
(17:12):
As Mother Jones reported during World War One, the army
lost seven million person days and discharged more than ten
thousand men because they were sick from STDs, things like
gna rhea, having to be laid up in bed, getting
treatment um frequently in different branches of the hospital that
(17:36):
were considered to have less great conditions, in less great
care um and so you lost your pay essentially if
you had an STD and had to be in the
hospital to be treated for it. And trench foot, for instance,
is uh a kind of nasty disease that was really
associated with life in World War One of literally like
(17:58):
life in the trenches, how unsanitary that could get UM.
But Allied soldiers were five times likelier to be admitted
to a hospital for an STD than trench foot um.
And to that point about how the hospitals were segregated, um,
they were it was it was considered like a thing
of dishonor if you were there for STD. So they
(18:20):
were like often their own dishonorable ward. But on the upside,
because this was such a problem, and again government vested
interest in this. This laid the foundation for sex education,
which in the United States again it could still use
some work, but that was when they finally the medical
(18:41):
community finally started paying closer attention, being like, Okay, we
might need to really investigate how this works and maybe
educate people about how these things are contracted and spread
and what they due to your bodies and how to
treat in all of that. You imagine that. So there's
I mean glass half foul Carroll line sex education. Yeah,
(19:02):
and so thanks to the war, thanks to the war,
because of the war. During the war, uh, suddenly you've
got all of these men experiencing and using condoms for
the first time, except really for American men because morality
and the ever present opinion among so many Americans that
(19:26):
if you present men, women, girls, boys, whoever with birth
control or contraception options. Uh, it will only promote vice
and sexual deviance in some way. Yeah, So the government
would not give American soldiers condoms on moral grounds were like,
(19:50):
that is a bridge too far, save sex. Uh, Instead,
we're going to give them dough boy prophylactic kits. And
it's it's it just it was basically a kit to
treat an STD. Once you had it, it was like,
come on, that's not propyle access at all. I know, Um,
(20:10):
that's post file axis. Thankfully, by World War two, things
would be a little bit better in terms of uh
the STD rates and better is very much um in quotes.
But France at the time offered a quote unquote safe
brothel for U. S. Soldiers to use because the STD
(20:33):
rate was so high. And France was like listen, we
you know, kind of harkening back to that system in
Nashville's like we we gotta set up here, like everyone's
checked out, it's STD free. But of course government officials
just blanched at the very idea. UM. Germany, meanwhile, was
far more liberal slash smarter UM. They started giving soldiers
(20:56):
condoms in nineteen fourteen, and finally in nineteen seventeen, British
soldiers began receiving them, but mostly from volunteers and government
sanctioned brothels. So so interesting, Uh, give guys a helmet,
but don't give him a condom. Interesting. So we're not
(21:17):
giving them condoms and they're having sex with people, and
somehow though, this is the women's fault. And you know,
we see this a lot in that propaganda, in the
posters promoting health and safe sex and don't get syphilis
you guys. But so many of those posters, which are
(21:39):
funny to post on pinterest, uh and Tumblr, so many
of them are just slut shamy. Oh yeah, I mean.
And the thing is this is all about patriotism and morale,
so there's no possible way that they could pin any
responsibility on the soldiers themselves. So of course the women
are the obvious targets. Um. And I mean this, this
(22:01):
idea of women being sexual temptresses is by no means
new anyway. Um. And the thing about that propaganda, which
is you know, very pinnable, is that so many of
the you know, Internet posts that I see is so
like oh winky face nostalgia about it. But it's I mean,
(22:21):
when you really start to look at it. It's horrifying
and explains so much about rape culture today. Um. So
you have this one group, the American Social Hygiene Association,
which produced a lot of these and boy, boy howdy,
Uh they were doozies. Um. One of their posters taglines
(22:44):
was a girl who would yield to one man, has
probably had relations with another, very likely she is diseased.
I mean that sounds just like like a Reddit post,
you know, I was just gonna say that, it sounds
exactly like what, you know, like a nice guy of
Okay Cupid would say. Um. You also have one where
(23:06):
I think they were trying to be a kind of funny. Um,
they referred to like a drawing of an attractive woman
on a poster as a booby trap. Watch out, fellas,
she's gonna get you. And you also have STDs being
anthropomorphized as women. So you have renderings again of like,
(23:28):
you know, conventionally attractive white woman who is wearing a
label venereal carrier, who's like waiting around a corner as
a soldiers, like walking up as if she's gonna pounce
on him. You know, watch out, guys, you gotta you
gotta stay away, because what women love to do more
than anything else is give people STDs. I don't know
(23:49):
if you know this about it, but it's true. Um.
So the whole message is like women are poisonous temptresses,
you cannot be trusted, or women who I've had sex
before our temptresses. And also STDs equal dirty shame, dirty shame. Yeah.
And there was this woman, Eddie Route in New Zealand
(24:12):
while she was a New Zealand nurse in Egypt, and
she was like, sick of all of this. It's not
exactly productive to have this like handwringing moralizing over STDs
and sex when you could just be treating and preventing
STDs from happening in the first place. Uh. She was
convinced that rather than treat STDs as like a moral failing,
(24:35):
treat them as a medical issue, which they are and
which they were. And so her solution was to create
these prophylactic kits that were actually prophylactic kits and not
like postphylactic um and they included condoms. And her solution
was to create these put together these prophylactic kits that
(24:56):
included condoms. And she also advocated for clean brothels. And
you would have thought this woman was like advocating for
just the entire world to be a nudist colony, like
let's all have orgies together. People freaked out, And in
New Zealand, if you printed her name you faced a fine.
(25:16):
I was so surprised to read this too, because in
terms of women's rights, at least, New Zealand has been
historically very progressive. Shout out Kiwi's listening. Um, So I was, yeah,
I was surprised to see how how Eddie was treated
like her Yeah, her name was not allowed to be
printed in newspapers. But the French, again, we're like you guys, listen,
(25:42):
we can do this. Um. They were super chill about it.
They of course supported Routes ideas about the quote unquote
clean brothels. Right, we shouldn't say clean. That clean. Dirty
language is super stigmatizing, so the licensed and regulated brothels
to be more accurate. Um. So in nineteen eighteen, Route
(26:06):
establishes a hygienic brothel in Paris for troops from New Zealand.
Um and you also have the French reviving that sanctioned
prostitution system. Um that we saw similar to Nashville during
the Civil War. That helped keep the sex trade going
on there std free because here's the thing, they knew
(26:30):
that during wartime women are usually destitute and have to
turn to prostitution. You have that economic coersion factor, so
better to keep them healthy in the process. And then
we start to see some maneuvers that essentially legally and
officially placed blame on sex workers and prostitutes. Uh. In
(26:52):
a move that the US would replicate during World War Two.
Britain in nineteen sixteen made it a crime for a
prostitute you solicit a man in uniform, and in nineteen
eighteen it became illegal for women with venereal disease to
have sex with any soldiers, and police could medically examine
(27:13):
suspected not actual literal licensed, but suspected prostitutes. Yeah, I mean.
And and when it comes to British soldiers and studs
during World War One, their most effective defense was actually
cutting their wages because then they just couldn't afford to
(27:36):
go to a brothel. That was the only thing. It
was just like if if the soldiers had enough money,
they were gonna go, right. So you see, during this time,
Canadian and Australian soldiers who earned significantly more money than
their British counterparts, uh, contracting super high rates of STDs,
(27:56):
and the bore Brits, the literally poor Brits, were kind
of protected because once you bought your food and you know,
whatever other essentials you needed, it really didn't leave you
much money to go get your kicks and a brothel
licensed or not. But with all of this you can
see how again the sex trade goes part and parcel
(28:19):
with warfare. And we're going to talk about World War
two when we come right back from a quick break.
There's really no one quite like Nancy Conger my mom,
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(28:41):
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World War two at least penicillin exists. This is very
good News for the treatment of STDs because prior to
(30:31):
its arrival, syphilis was the fourth leading cause of death
in the US. That's crazy, yeah, like beat out like
only by cancer. Well, and also two other things, because
it was the fourth, but I mean it was that widespread,
partially just because we didn't have treatments. Um so, Rather though,
than focusing so much on World War prostitution happening overseas,
(30:55):
which it absolutely did, what we really want to talk
about is the survey aliens of women's sex lives on
the American home front and the rise of what some
people in the government called patriot tuts. Yeah, this was history. Again,
like no idea, I had no idea. Mind blowing. My
mind was blown. And this is coming from a fabulously
(31:17):
titled book by Maryland Haggardy called Victory Girls, Khaki Wackys
and Patriot Tuts. The regulation of female sexuality during World
War Two and geez regulated it was. I mean, you
women could barely walk down the street because authorities were
so convinced that any woman out on her own was
(31:40):
clearly some suspicious prostitute. And if she wasn't a prostitute yet,
she probably would be. She was a walking STD. So
here's a fact that blew my mind, Caroline. The US
government effectively established a wartime sexual support system, as Hagardy
described it in the United States, um in around military
(32:01):
bases to ensure soldiers could get plenty of play, but
without the STDs. So you have like the closer that
you get to barracks, you know, the more and more
like regulated things become. Um. But also with women increasingly
stepping into traditional men's jobs and roles outside of the
home a k a. Rosie the riveters, this gender panic
(32:25):
helps fuel the sexual surveillance on women on the home front.
It's like, oh, man, women are leaving the home, what
are they going to do next? Are they going to
be like us and feel like they deserve sex all
the time. And when it comes so to that surveillance,
working class women and women of color were the most scrutinized,
and black men were also assumed to be vectors of
(32:45):
venarial disease because racism. So we just see the layers
of classism and racism intertwined with this. And again we
still have this interpretation of STDs as a moral failing
rather than a biological process. Yeah, and I mean, you know,
not to go off on too much of a tangent,
but that's echoes and lingering sentiments from the progressive era
(33:10):
when you viewed, for instance, poverty as a character failing.
You viewed illness, sickness, any of that as something that
reflected on the morality of the person who experienced it
rather than an institutional or systematic problem. And so the
same attitude applied to racist ideas about black people being
(33:34):
more prone to carrying venereal diseases, or you know, poor
people being dirty and wanted and not being able to
control their sexuality. Well, and if you put this in
the backdrop to in an era of extreme patriotism, you know,
std s were just downright an American, you know, I
mean there there's so many, so many ways that the
(33:57):
government was trying to, you know, regulate our lives, to
to just ensure that, you know, the soldiers stayed as
healthy as possible. And in the process of this, a
U S Public Health Service physician named Otis Anderson coined
the term patriot tute to both stigmatize the women in
the military who were installed at us O dance halls
(34:19):
and servicemen's clubs to maintain morale, you know, have some
pretty gals around, and also to tour soldiers from going
to prostitutes. So I mean this is this is a
similar kind of like sexual servicing where women were I
mean it was voluntary, yes, but women were nonetheless recruited.
Attractive women were recruited to come to these dance halls,
(34:41):
like come dance with an old soldier before he goes
off to war. Gals give a man a smile in
the hopes that with these quote unquote good and clean
girls around, they wouldn't need to go to a prostitute.
But who's to say that these soldiers also were not
(35:02):
having their way with these women too. Yeah, but you
get these weird attitudes reflected about what constitutes a good girl,
appear and clean girl, which is again holdovers from that
progressive era attitude about true womanhood and that a true
woman was a pure, chased white woman in the home,
(35:26):
you know, versus like sex workers who were just they
were necessary in these military men's minds, and they were
often sanctioned by the military and licensed to you know,
especially in Europe as we saw. But yet we we
hate them and fear them and and call them sluts
and prostitutes. Yeah, I mean there was this whole dichotomy
(35:47):
at work of thinking of women as sexually dangerous, particularly
if they're sex workers, but also they're sexually alluring morale builders,
potentially these quote unquote patriot tuts that we can only
assume have you know, never participated in any kind of
sexual exploration whatsoever. And those two things were still conflated
(36:11):
at the same time. And Haggardy describes this mindset as
sensual patriotism. It's like this, the sensual sensual patriotism that
those quote good girls possessed versus s t d s.
And the USO did directly advertise for proper white girls
to come, but there was this fine line because that
(36:34):
surveillance was still happening. So if you were one of
those gals of the dance halls, just given a fellow
smile before he ships off, if you seem to be
getting a little too cozy with that soldier boy not
to be confused with the rapper um, the government might
label you a prostitute. I had to really like think
(36:56):
for that reference. For us, I know that's already becoming
a deep cut. I'm aging so quickly, and we see
this handwringing over women's role in the spread of v D.
We see it just continue. In n there's an author
pens this piece called v D Menace and Challenge, where she, yes,
(37:20):
she the author writes about the quote problem of the
non commercial girl who is supplanting the prostitute as the
main source of venereal infection in the arms services. It
is she who is in large part responsible for the
increase of venereal disease in this country. As if women
like they just sneeze and v D is just spread
(37:43):
to these innocent, helpless men. So much vintage slut shaming um.
And we also speaking of which like we had in
World War Two, we have all of that anti STD
propaganda come up yet again, I mean, and and a
lot that she was I mean funded obviously by the government.
You have some of them that are I mean, the
(38:05):
graphic design is really cool, you know, the stuff that
came out of the works Progress administration. Um. But it's
just reinforced that idea of female sexuality is dangerous. So
in addition to posters, you had films, including the two
US Navy film The Ship of Shame, which urged semen
(38:30):
to quote put it on before you put it in, Fellas,
I like my eyeballs fell out of my head when
I read that, Like, I couldn't believe put it on
before you put it in was on an official poster. Well,
it was in the it was in the video kind
of like one of those awkward sex said videos, except
it all took place on a boat, well, the ship
of shame, the Ship of Shame. And then you have
(38:51):
posters with taglines like she may look clean, but dot
dot dot again we have all of that clean, dirty
language going on, and then uh, this one that just
got really to the point, loose women may also be
loaded all caps with disease. Yeah, and they were big
(39:11):
into showing and telling because that poster had a woman
winking and it also had a picture of a gun. Well, Caroline,
I also have to describe this one last poster to you. Uh,
it depicts an attractive woman sitting in an armchair and
she's wearing a dress, which of course is labeled vinereal disease,
And you have are we sure that's just not her name,
(39:34):
it's just sewed onto a dress scenario? I mean, venereal
does sound like, you know, like a nineties name. Um,
and she on the wall. Behind her, there's a portrait
of an Army guy, an Air Force guy, and a navyman,
a man in the Navy, and the tagline above it
is don't be her pin up boy. You have gender
(39:57):
role reversal, slight shaming, injurious sexuality everything in this one poster. Well,
there were some other tactics too. There was one poster
uh that featured a really sad lady Liberty behind these
two military members uh, and the tagline was like, y'all, sister, sweetheart,
(40:20):
old wife might not know that you have VD, but
I do and I will suffer for it. God Lady
Liberties like, God, yeah, she she is. And there was
another poster to that sort of tried to play on
men's shame. It didn't. It actually didn't shame women, which
is mind boggling. It was trying to shame the soldiers themselves.
(40:42):
And it showed a wife in an armchair with two
children playing on the floor in front of her, and
it basically said, like, you know, I I can't believe
how syphilis almost hurt my family. But in a way,
doesn't that still bring shame to the wife Because it's
like if you bring home syphilis to that woman. You're
(41:02):
going to make her dirty too. And I feel like
it's still it's you're still only seeing the women being
affected by all of this. This is true. I am
not letting those propaganda posters off the hook, nor nor
should you. Um. Prior to Pearl Harbor, though, the Army, Navy,
Federal Security Agency, state health departments, and the American Social
(41:24):
Hygiene Association collectively outlined the eight point agreement on v
D control, including the repression of prostitution and contact reporting.
And contact reporting it just means letting the informing the
military who you've had sex with. And in her book,
Hegardy observes these eight points marked the official start of
(41:46):
wartime socio political efforts to control female sexuality. And from
there we start to get legislation around this. Yeah, in
Congress passes the May Act, which makes prostitution around on
domestic military basis a federal crime. We also see the
establishment of the Social Protection Division, overseen by FBI legend
(42:10):
elliott Ness to basically monitor fretfully women's and angrily women's morality. Yeah,
I mean, we had talked about the surveillance that started
going on before the US entered the war, and it
was really focused around the military basis. But with this,
(42:30):
I mean they were blanketing the entire country really to
kind of uproot all of those those bad girls, those
women who are going to ensnare their soldiers. And records
from the Social Protection Division contain a veritable the sourus
of slutty descriptors that they came up with for women,
(42:51):
including disorderly girls, vagrance, pre delinquents, suspected prostitute, potentially promiscuous woman,
possibly foolish and immoral women, non adaptable, grass grabbers, hordes
of horrors, good time Charlotte's, and patriot tuts. There's old
(43:12):
patriot tutes coming up again. Patriot tutes Caroline was like
used in official government documentation. Yeah, that's what blows my
mind that this wasn't just like dismissive language that someone
found in some memo that someone shot off, Like this
was official language about women. And I mean these efforts
contributed to this hyper sexualization of women to the point
(43:36):
of labeling many under surveillance as prostitutes and promiscuous with
the objective of socially rehabilitating them. Both prostitutes and other
perceived sexually delinquent women, and local officials detained and forcibly
tested women identified by soldiers who had contracted STDs and
(43:59):
report to them as sexual contacts and whether single are married.
If you were a woman alone in public, you could
arouse suspicion and for instance, in June nineteen, six months
after Pearl Harbor in Oklahoma City, nine hundred girls and
women were arrested on morals charges. That same year, during
(44:22):
one six month period, authorities arrested women in fifteen states
on morals charges. My eyes are about to pop out
of my head, Caroline, Well, because what's going on is
the penalization of gender essentially, like if you were a woman,
you were just like guilty, you were presumed to be
(44:44):
guilty by association almost. But the scary thing is too,
the power that the government gave law enforcement at the
time to stop women and girls on the street, take
them forcibly to a health clinic for STD test and
ki who knows what happened in between all of that time,
(45:05):
you know, Yeah, there was one case of a woman
who was eating at a diner alone. Her husband was
what he was, in the military, so he was away,
and they were like, oh my god, a woman alone,
they dragged her off. She tests negative for any STDs,
and it's like, thank goodness, because, as the writer points out,
if she had tested positive for whatever reason and for
(45:28):
whatever STD, she probably would have gone to jail and
been forcibly treated. So also in this cultural climate to
this wasn't just surveillance happening among female civilians. You also
have suspicion of members of the Women's Army Corps thinking
(45:49):
that they might have been prostitutes and lesbians in disguise.
I'm just like I'm picturing I'm picturing again the Benny
Hill music, and like all of these paranoid, insane men
in the government and in law enforcement and in the
military who were just in an absolute panic over women.
(46:13):
They were just like seeing things. But if there were
a Leslie Nope style binder of like war plans that
the US used and they opened it up, I mean,
this is what protocol from the past wars, you know.
I mean, it's it's always the responsibility for this stuff
(46:33):
is always fallen on the women, and soldiers absolutely internalized
the message of female sex and sexuality as patriotic benefits
to their disposal. So while women are being demonized and
singled out for possibly being dangerous. Soldiers are also receiving
the message that they should nonetheless have access to quote
(46:56):
unquote clean women. Um, there's sense of military training in
World War Two around safer sex under the presumption that again,
boys will be boys. So it's like, listen, you're gonna
do what you're gonna do. We would prefer that you
not rape anyone, and when you have sex, make sure
that you don't contracting STD because that will, you know,
(47:19):
take you out of off the battlefield. Yeah, and and
we see this this I don't want to say emergence
because it's more of a perpetuation and almost an amplification
of both sexual bravado and hyper masculinity as almost necessary
attributes to display as a military man. And hegrid He
(47:39):
writes about this. She says the constant attention paid to sex,
including safe sex through lectures, films, pamphlets, and posters, along
with the military practice of providing instruction and profile access,
finally uh created dissonance between any notion of male continence
or sexual reserve in the stereotype of the virile aggress
(48:00):
of military mail. They're getting mixed messages essentially about what
it means to be a true man or a true
military man and being responsible and practicing safe sex. And
you have anecdotal reports too of soldiers who are about
to ship out aggressively and sometimes non consensually demanding sex
(48:20):
with the whole thought process of well, if I'm about
to go put my life on the line for the
US of A, then I deserve unfettered access to women's bodies.
And Caroline, this brings to mine Greece too, and that
scene where the guy tricks the girl uh into having
sex with him and they sing that whole song let's
(48:41):
do it for our country. You know what it reminds
me of, like rape culture? Well yeah, in in the world. Yeah. Um.
But the government, though, Caroline, they had a solution for
all of this, especially you know, for making sure that
the soldiers stayed as healthy as possible, kept them all
you know in commission policymakers, both military and civilians, generally
(49:06):
agreed that male soldiers shouldn't it really couldn't be sexually restrained.
Come on, and any attempts to do so would only
result in quote rape and seduction. Again. It's like, I mean,
you know what's gonna happen. Uh. So, as a result,
the military considered sanctioned brothels to provide as some people
(49:28):
called it, a buffer of horrors that is direct language.
Is that like a murder of crows? Yeah, a buffer
of horrors to protect the good women in the surrounding
areas from would be rapists being the soldiers. Yeah, I
(49:49):
mean this was we're we're not sitting here as feminists
like coming up with this narrative. People like, this is
what military and government officials we're putting together in their reports.
These were the conclusions that they were reaching. And what
brings this episode focusing on the American military, uh full
(50:13):
circle and meets with our previous episodes topic of comfort
women and sexual slavery in well in Asian countries propagated
by Japanese soldiers, is the fact that the comfort women's
system was essentially reintroduced slash never left because of the
(50:39):
American soldiers who then came in. Yeah, once you know,
Japan surrendered, Japanese officials knew that American troops would then
be coming in to occupy and that they would want
sex and kind of like that whole buffer of horace mindset.
They were like listen, we don't want these white guys
coming in and rapeing all of our women, so we
(51:01):
need to revive the comfort stations. And in two thousand eleven,
the Associated Press reported that American authorities were complicit in
the Japanese re establishing those brothels that did include forest
prostitution and the number of American gis who frequented them.
And we should note that Americans one hundred percent knew
(51:25):
about the horrors of the comfort women's system by this point,
like the government knew that that was that that had happened,
but they were still like, you know what, okay. And
the official history of the Ibakari Prefectural Police Department, whose
jurisdiction is just northeast of Tokyo, says, quote sadly, we
(51:49):
police had the set up sexual comfort stations for the
occupation troops. The strategy was through the special work of
experienced women to create a breakwater to protect regular women
and girls. Those women were regular women and girls, and
the ones who had experience quote unquote likely had experience
(52:13):
because they had been forced into the system by Japanese
soldiers during World War Two. Well, and there have been
scholars who have noted that with this relatively brief revival,
Like most of the women um came of their own will,
but again we have the economic coercion factor. It was
like they had no other choice that they wanted to survive.
(52:34):
They couldn't feed themselves. They're like, well, I need a job.
Well yeah, And again some of them did come of
their own free will, but a lot of the time
there was still that deception factor. You still had ads
in newspapers saying we need a secretary and a woman
showing up and they're like, yeah, you can type some stuff,
but we also need you to do this other thing,
and here's money for it. So the only reason though
(52:57):
that General MacArthur shut all this down and I TE
six was due to concern from military chaplains who were like, hey,
I don't think this is ko sure, and the pr
risk of anyone finding out about those brothels, and just
like what happened with the comfort women who had been
(53:18):
having to you know, forcibly following Japanese troops wherever they went. Immediately,
those tens of thousands of sex workers were out of
a job, many with STDs, and thus forced to continue
selling sex in order to survive and what did the
Americans do? They went home to a hero's welcome, a
quarter of them with STDs, you know. And it's and
(53:40):
it's one thing too that jumped out to me in
reading about all of this, Caroline, is how, of course
General MacArthur would want to cover this up. You know,
this would be a pr disaster for all of these
white boys to be having sex with women of color.
But there are accounts of Americans and other Allied troops
frequenting French brothels. But the portrayals of that are very like,
(54:05):
you know, kind of cheeky and romantic. It's like, of
course a man couldn't resist a French prostitute. So because
it's like white people having sex with white people and
that's totally okay. And all of this kind of just
makes me um want to take a nap because it's exhausting.
It is exhausting, And so I think it does shed
uh some interesting light and context for discussions about red
(54:30):
light districts around bases, American bases that exist now, because
you do have the argument from a lot of people
of like, well, there, you know, these women are choosing
this line of work and uh, they're earning a lot
of money doing this. They want to do it, and
you know, I don't want to paint with a broad
(54:51):
brush and say no or yes either way, but I
it's hard to argue that that line of work, whether
it was in the Civil War, World War one, World
War two, or today around any basis that it's entirely
an issue of freely choosing that occupation because it's the
(55:12):
thing you want to do. There is still a big
issue of socioeconomics of what options are available to people, um.
And those are the underlying issues that we could then
talk for hours and hours about well. And also the
deception too. I mean, some of these women are promised
things and end up you know, especially in South Korea
(55:36):
around these military bases, um, and it turns out that oh,
there they are kind of in a chattel system where
they're beholden to whoever is running this brothel. So the situation,
by no means is fixed, and by no means went
away after World War Two. In fact, it only got worse,
(55:56):
um with the Korean War and Vietnam. But with that
we now have to close things out. And the big
takeaway from me, Caroline is just like how much it
totally explains our sexual slut shaming and sexist culture that
we still live in. Yeah, so, listeners, what do you
(56:19):
think about all this? Was this as surprising for you
as it was for us, um and especially interested to
hear from our listeners who are in the military, because
I think this also too speaks to the issues that
the military has had with sexual assault as well. So
we want to hear your first hand perspectives. As always,
(56:41):
mom Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is where
you can send them. You can also tweet us at
mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got
a couple of messages to share with you right now. Okay,
I have a letter here from Ali. She says, I
started listening to podcasts a little over a year ago,
(57:02):
and one of the first that I stumbled upon that
I loved was Sminty. I have to tell you how
inspiring your podcast has been for me. I went through
grade school never having a teacher that inspired me or
made me want to be a better person like the
both of you do. I've struggled with dropping in and
out of college because of not knowing what I'm passionate about,
which has been extremely frustrating as an almost twenty seven
(57:23):
year old woman. It has lowered my self esteem, especially
when my fiance and close friends have either bachelor's or
master's degrees. I still have no idea what I'm passionate
about and have an internal struggle with that every day.
But what I want you to know is that you've
stirred something in me. I'm realizing now that just because
I haven't found what I'm passionate about, it doesn't mean
(57:44):
that the passion inside me isn't there. I can feel
it bubbling to the surface and have to just keep
searching for the right outlet. I know one day I'll
find it. This new perspective that I have is because
of you and your strength and bravery to keep fighting
the good fight. Thank you for being who you are, Hallie.
Thank you for being who you are. And let me
(58:07):
tell age, it's not unusual to not know what your
passion is or how you want to direct that passion.
But I'm really glad to hear that we could maybe
play a part in figuring it out. Yeah, that means
so much. Thank you for taking the time to tell
us that too. So I've got to let her here.
From Emily on school dress codes, and body shaming. As
(58:29):
she writes, I've just recently started listening to podcasts, and
yours is the first one I chose. All right, so
forgive me if what I'm requesting is something you've covered
in past podcast and Emily, you never have to apologize
for that. We have over seven episodes, and I forget
what we've talked about sometimes. Um, she continues, while listening
to your history of sexual harassment, something really struck a
(58:50):
chord with me, and that was when you mentioned the
relation to current student dress code policies. I've been reading
a lot about these in the news lately, and I
agree it's a problem. I have a four year old daughter,
so it really worries me how I will handle this
when she gets older. It's funny. It definitely hits on
how I was raised. I was a rather endowed teen,
which was not all it was cracked up to be,
(59:11):
and I had to be careful what I wore because
I didn't want to dress inappropriately, which I'm now understand
is a really body shaming and sexist perception. Women can't
be to blame for men not being able to look
at them as more than sexual objects. And of course
this also goes into the body shaming women due to
each other when someone is curvy or heavy, or dressing
(59:31):
in a way that shows off their curves or heaven
forbid that. So I'm just curious to hear more about this.
How do I balance appropriateness and fairness while not raising
a daughter that feels like she has to make things
easier for those crazed men? Or is there appropriate I
already balanced this fine line when she asked me things like, mom,
why can boys go out without shirts? On? How do
(59:54):
I balance in this emerging world of women's empowerment that
I'm glad about, by the way, but I I'm still
trying to undo years of being raised in the old ways. Emily,
those are fabulous questions, And since Caroline and I do
not have children, I think this is a great one. Um.
Parents listening, if you have any suggestions of how you
(01:00:15):
have talked to your daughters in particular, but just your
kids in general about dressing and what is and isn't
appropriate and um. One thing that came to mind Emily
reading your letter was the Fresh Air interview recently with
Peggy Orenstein, who just came up with a book on
girls and sex and she talks about dress codes and
at her daughter's school, basically, the girl's dress code is two.
(01:00:39):
You have to wear clothes that you can move freely in.
And I think that's a fantastic standard where it's like,
if you if you can't raise your arms comfortably or
touch your toes, you know, and worry about having like
adjust your clothes and pull it down whatever it might be,
then then maybe find something more more comfortable that liberal
(01:01:00):
rates you. So maybe that will help um. But thanks
so much for your letter, Emily, and so happy to
hear that you're a new listener, and to all of
our listeners, we love hearing from you as well. Again
our email addresses mom stuff at how stuff works dot
com and for links to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts
with our sources. So you can learn more about patriot tudes,
(01:01:24):
head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
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Is it how stuff works dot com
Hi, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, a host of the new house
Stuff Works Now podcast. Every week, I'll be bringing you
three stories from our team about the weird and wondrous
developments we've seen in science, technology, and culture. Fresh episodes
will be out every Monday on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music,
and everywhere else that find podcasts are found. Welcome to
(00:25):
stuff Mom Never told You from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline.
And the last podcast episode we did, we talked about
the comfort women's system in Japan during World War Two,
(00:47):
and I feel like when it comes to World War
Two in particular and uh sex, slavery, rape, and prostitution,
that Japan and comfort women get most of our attention
and there is a misconception that it was really isolated
to that part of the world. But once we started
(01:10):
doing some research on war and prostitution and looking at
huh did did anything like this happen with the Allies
during World War Two? We ended up in in quite
a rabbit hole, friends um of learning about how when
(01:31):
it comes to the military, the US military and prostitution,
it's really as American as apple pie. Uh yeah, And
while I knew this on a surface level, I had
never taken this much time to really fully understand how
(01:54):
war and rape and sex work, whether it is coerced
or not, how inextricably linked they are, how in so
many ways, like women who survived wars are nonetheless the
casualties of war, Yeah, without a doubt. And I mean
we could do, you know, fifteen or thirty episodes about this,
(02:19):
about wartime prostitutions, stretching back through the dawn of freaking time,
but we we opted to limit ourselves. Yeah, So we're
gonna this this episode is going to focus on the
United States from the Civil War up to World War Two,
because we're gonna come full circle and up back in Japan.
(02:42):
And one thing that jumped out to me really quickly, Caroline,
when we first started reading about this issue, and even
with contemporary stories focusing on the U. S Military and
especially military contractors who are still stationed in South Korea
and the sex trade, so stayed with that, even those
(03:02):
we just have these blanket statements as a given about
how you know, the U. S. Military and sex and
prostitution have always been you know, inextricably linked in order
to keep morale up and in order to keep soldiers happy.
And it makes sense. But at the same time, I
was like, this wasn't none of my history books. Why
(03:23):
am I just now learning about this in detail? Oh
so many reasons why it's not in your history book,
of course, But I mean it goes back to it
echoes for sure. What we talked about in our episode
on comfort women about this like underlying assumption that boys
will be boys, and we need to both support and
(03:45):
control They're like sexual appetite in a in an environment
where uh, you know they're gonna do it. They're gonna
either rape or have sex, so we better at least
set up a system where we can keep an eye
on them. Well. And it's the whole thing of women
being the spoils of war um. And we do need
(04:09):
to make an important distinction at this point between you
know what we're going to talk about, which has more
to do with sex workers and voluntary prostitution in these cases,
compared to sex slavery that was happening with the comfort
stations in the Japan where women were literally lied to, kidnapped, etcetera.
(04:33):
And and forcibly coerced into those comfort stations. But at
the same time too, you can't get away from the
fact that a lot of the reasons why these women,
you know, who were servicing Allied soldiers, the reason why
they were doing is because they were economically coerced. Yeah,
(04:54):
I mean, I mean they had no other choice. You
see this in the American Civil War too, where uh,
with their husband's away or dead, or just not making
any money. During the Civil War, Uh, women could make
a lot more money being prostitutes, especially once and not
to spoil too much, but especially once systems were regulated
(05:16):
and fees were standardized and increased in in certain areas. Uh,
you could make a time more money selling sex then
you could, you know, stitching uniforms. Yeah. And and sex
work was nothing new during the Civil War. I mean
it was pretty common actually, I mean probably to a
(05:37):
surprising degree when we think about nineteenth century prudery. Um.
But there was a piece you're reading from case Western
Reserve University about this massive problem that STDs caused during
the Civil War. UM Court martial records list over one
hundred thousand instances of sexual misconduct. First of all, UM,
(06:02):
and the way the Army responded to this was Okay,
we don't need all of these assaults happening, But I mean,
what else is going to happen. You have these guys
who are young, they've grown up, you know, on farms
and in small towns, and this is the first time
they're really out in the war. They're you know, hanging out,
(06:26):
putting their lives on the line. They're drinking, like rates
of drinking were really high, and they were encountering, you know,
prostitutes for the first time. So, I mean things are
going to happen. I mean, this is when you first
start to see this. Listen, boys will be boys kind
of attitude. So so what are we gonna do to
placate those natural proclivities as they were treated? Yeah, and
(06:51):
so as you can imagine with this sort of permissive attitude,
that's that's like I feel like it echoes like I'm
at college for the first time and condoms don't really
exist yet in a way that to use plus prostitutes,
um college plus prostitutes. And one of the consequences during
(07:12):
the Civil War is that the Surgeon General of the U. S.
Army documented more than a hundred and eighty three thousand
cases of venereal disease. And so I mean, just imagine
how much higher that would be if you also counted
the Confederate Army. You had more than seventy three thousand
cases of syphilis, more than a hundred nine thousand cases
(07:34):
of gonorrhea. And I'm not laughing. I'm laughing, but I'm not.
I just like stupefied uh that were treated by surgeons
for the Union army. And this adds up to a
documented eight point two percent of Union troops who contracted
wartime STDs and f y. I there was this assumption
(07:58):
by the white leader ship that black soldiers, UM surely
had much higher rates of STDs, so they were considered
kind of more more of a liability. But in fact,
both alcoholism and STD rates amongst black soldiers was way, way,
way lower than the white Union soldiers. Just just a
(08:22):
side note there, UM. This case Western Reserve University piece
we're reading also cites soldiers letter home to his wife,
UM complaining that you would think that there was not
a married man in the regiment and there was heaven. Yeah.
And then there was another soldier who wrote home complaining
of the pox and the clap I mean, this is
(08:43):
just this is just a part of you know, a
soldier's life. You get the clap and then you die. Well,
the army wanted to prevent that as much as they could.
Between eighteen sixty three and eighteen sixty five, v D
so out of control in the Union Army that the
(09:04):
government started sanctioning prostitution outposts in the lovely hamlet of Nashville, Tennessee,
which had fallen to the Union in eighteen sixty two,
and in Memphis. And these outposts included regular STD checkups
for the women. Oh thank goodness, it's not like again.
(09:24):
They were treating you know, colds and coughs, though they
were mainly concerned about what was going on with STDs.
But here's a thing. So this is where we get
into the issue of these sex workers being there voluntarily,
and um they were actually like alright, cool, I'm I'm
(09:44):
down for some medical care, healthcare, thanks Obama. Um. So,
the way this whole thing went down was that General
George Spalding, who was essentially just like one, you know,
notch below h Ulysses S. Grant, came down to Nashville
(10:04):
where all these Union soldiers were, and there had already
been like it wasn't necessarily legalized. But there was Smoky
Row in Nashville, which was the their known kind of
red light district, and the union soldiers were up to
no good hanging out on Smoky roll Row all the
time contracting STDs, which I mean the STD problem wasn't
(10:27):
so much moral prudery but an issue of just downtime.
I mean, you would you would you were out, like
you couldn't fight if you ended up contracting an STD
and had to get it treated. Um. So he's like, Okay,
what am I gonna do? This is a bad situation. Oh,
I know, I'm going to try to like ship all
(10:49):
of these prostitutes out of Nashville. I'm just gonna like
round them up and get him out. And there was
even like a newspaper announcement on the day that like
all of the sex workers were put on the train. Oh,
I mean the press followed, the press followed that boat.
It's oh no, no, they put those women on a riverboat.
(11:10):
It was a brand this this guy's brand new riverboat
which he bought, you know, to be a riverboat. But
what's his name? Spalding was like, yeah, cool, here are
a bunch of prostitutes. I believe there were a hundred
and eleven plus some children. And the press followed this
with such glee. They reported, and I'm I'm I hope
(11:33):
when you're imagining this with me, please have some Binny
Hill music playing in your head as well, because the
boat at each stop was turned away. So just picture
this as the boat is going up the river up north,
and they're like, we'll just get rid of them in Cincinnati. Nope,
Cincinnati turns them away. They like every stop up the river.
(11:57):
These cities, even though they themselves undoubtedly had prostitutes working
within their city walls, they were like, we don't want
your prostitutes. We don't want to be known as the
city that accepted the river boat of prostitutes. And so
you know, the women aren't happy, right the liquor ran
(12:17):
out on day two. Uh, they're stuck on this boat.
They don't get Bravos so they can't watch real housewives.
I mean, come on, people, and the crew there was
a crew three men for all of these women, plus
some kids. And finally, I think it's like they left
in August August in the South. They left on this
(12:39):
boat in August. By October, they literally stayed on the
river through the fall. In October, they have to come
back to Nashville because the dudes like, guys, my boat
is destroyed. Like love the ladies. Everything's great. However, the
boat never recovered. This guy didn't get capen sated for
(13:00):
his destroyed boat until after the war. He spent the
entire war like writing letters like m dear sirs, please,
my boat is destroyed. Uh. And when he finally did
get compensated, he was like, I can't. I can't use
this boat for anything else. It was and will remain
a floating whorehouse. Well, I'm not so much concerned about
(13:21):
the boats well being, but the inhumane and unsanitary conditions
these women had to live in. Because clearly Spalding did
not think this thing through. He had no real destination.
He was like, just get him out. Women are just
you know, it's just property. Just move him around. Um.
So obviously that blows up in his face and he's
like fine. So Spalding then goes to Plan B. And
(13:45):
Plan B is government sanctioned prostitution in Nashville. That's right, friends,
Nashville legalized prostitution during the Civil War. So with this
was like, okay, prostitutes, you can stay, but you have
to get licensed for five dollars. For five dollars, and
(14:07):
with that licensing, you have to get a medical check up,
um to screen you for any st d S and
treat him if you got them. And we're going to
regulate this whole thing. And the money was actually pretty good.
You have sex workers from the North actually coming down
to Nashville being like, hey, I want some healthcare. Yeah,
I'll go to Nashville. Um, And at least from the
(14:30):
reports that we read, these women were like, this is
pretty good. We're actually being treated like employees and not
just property. So um, we don't we don't really mind
this too much. And a surgeon general who helped hatch
this plan really patted himself on the back as well,
because he was like, you know what I mean, Yeah,
it's still prostitution, but at least our STD rates are
(14:54):
under control, So I mean, this is this is just
one instance of how this happens. So off course, after
the Civil War prostitution is shut down, they're like okay, nope, okay,
now we've gotta pull the plug. Smoky row, you gotta
you gotta clean up your act now. Yeah. And I
feel like it was the surge in general. It might
be somebody else who took note of how this shift
(15:15):
from pre to post regulation the women were suddenly like
a vision of propriety. They went from being these depraved
hoores in the back alleys who were dirty and unkempt,
to being you know, happy and healthy, making more money well,
and to that point of dirtiness versus cleanliness. This is
(15:41):
also where we start to get that stigmatizing rhetoric that
is still very much alive and well, um when it
comes to STDs today, the idea that contracting and STD
makes you dirty, right, you know, I mean it's just
the moralizing of the whole thing and de incentivizing it. Um.
Because I mean the government had a very vested interest
(16:03):
in keeping STD rates low so they could keep their
military mobility high. Um. And even though you know, not
all soldiers frequented brothels um, it was still possible for
them to mail order French safes as old school condoms
were called, um, along with erotic magazines and literature and pictures.
(16:28):
I mean, they had like guys kind of who were
their runners to make sure that they whether they were
going to someone in person or someone in print that
they could have their you know, their their sexual needs relieved.
So that gets us through the Civil War, and when
we get to World War One, this is when we
(16:49):
really see the rise of slut shaming STD propaganda. Really
reinforcing women is just dangerous, but also STDs as this dirt, dirty,
shameful thing and patriotic condoms. Um yeah, I mean std
s were still a massive problem, as you might imagine.
(17:12):
As Mother Jones reported during World War One, the army
lost seven million person days and discharged more than ten
thousand men because they were sick from STDs, things like
gna rhea, having to be laid up in bed, getting
treatment um frequently in different branches of the hospital that
(17:36):
were considered to have less great conditions, in less great
care um and so you lost your pay essentially if
you had an STD and had to be in the
hospital to be treated for it. And trench foot, for instance,
is uh a kind of nasty disease that was really
associated with life in World War One of literally like
(17:58):
life in the trenches, how unsanitary that could get UM.
But Allied soldiers were five times likelier to be admitted
to a hospital for an STD than trench foot um.
And to that point about how the hospitals were segregated, um,
they were it was it was considered like a thing
of dishonor if you were there for STD. So they
(18:20):
were like often their own dishonorable ward. But on the upside,
because this was such a problem, and again government vested
interest in this. This laid the foundation for sex education,
which in the United States again it could still use
some work, but that was when they finally the medical
(18:41):
community finally started paying closer attention, being like, Okay, we
might need to really investigate how this works and maybe
educate people about how these things are contracted and spread
and what they due to your bodies and how to
treat in all of that. You imagine that. So there's
I mean glass half foul Carroll line sex education. Yeah,
(19:02):
and so thanks to the war, thanks to the war,
because of the war. During the war, uh, suddenly you've
got all of these men experiencing and using condoms for
the first time, except really for American men because morality
and the ever present opinion among so many Americans that
(19:26):
if you present men, women, girls, boys, whoever with birth
control or contraception options. Uh, it will only promote vice
and sexual deviance in some way. Yeah, So the government
would not give American soldiers condoms on moral grounds were like,
(19:50):
that is a bridge too far, save sex. Uh, Instead,
we're going to give them dough boy prophylactic kits. And
it's it's it just it was basically a kit to
treat an STD. Once you had it, it was like,
come on, that's not propyle access at all. I know, Um,
(20:10):
that's post file axis. Thankfully, by World War two, things
would be a little bit better in terms of uh
the STD rates and better is very much um in quotes.
But France at the time offered a quote unquote safe
brothel for U. S. Soldiers to use because the STD
(20:33):
rate was so high. And France was like listen, we
you know, kind of harkening back to that system in
Nashville's like we we gotta set up here, like everyone's
checked out, it's STD free. But of course government officials
just blanched at the very idea. UM. Germany, meanwhile, was
far more liberal slash smarter UM. They started giving soldiers
(20:56):
condoms in nineteen fourteen, and finally in nineteen seventeen, British
soldiers began receiving them, but mostly from volunteers and government
sanctioned brothels. So so interesting, Uh, give guys a helmet,
but don't give him a condom. Interesting. So we're not
(21:17):
giving them condoms and they're having sex with people, and
somehow though, this is the women's fault. And you know,
we see this a lot in that propaganda, in the
posters promoting health and safe sex and don't get syphilis
you guys. But so many of those posters, which are
(21:39):
funny to post on pinterest, uh and Tumblr, so many
of them are just slut shamy. Oh yeah, I mean.
And the thing is this is all about patriotism and morale,
so there's no possible way that they could pin any
responsibility on the soldiers themselves. So of course the women
are the obvious targets. Um. And I mean this, this
(22:01):
idea of women being sexual temptresses is by no means
new anyway. Um. And the thing about that propaganda, which
is you know, very pinnable, is that so many of
the you know, Internet posts that I see is so
like oh winky face nostalgia about it. But it's I mean,
(22:21):
when you really start to look at it. It's horrifying
and explains so much about rape culture today. Um. So
you have this one group, the American Social Hygiene Association,
which produced a lot of these and boy, boy howdy,
Uh they were doozies. Um. One of their posters taglines
(22:44):
was a girl who would yield to one man, has
probably had relations with another, very likely she is diseased.
I mean that sounds just like like a Reddit post,
you know, I was just gonna say that, it sounds
exactly like what, you know, like a nice guy of
Okay Cupid would say. Um. You also have one where
(23:06):
I think they were trying to be a kind of funny. Um,
they referred to like a drawing of an attractive woman
on a poster as a booby trap. Watch out, fellas,
she's gonna get you. And you also have STDs being
anthropomorphized as women. So you have renderings again of like,
(23:28):
you know, conventionally attractive white woman who is wearing a
label venereal carrier, who's like waiting around a corner as
a soldiers, like walking up as if she's gonna pounce
on him. You know, watch out, guys, you gotta you
gotta stay away, because what women love to do more
than anything else is give people STDs. I don't know
(23:49):
if you know this about it, but it's true. Um.
So the whole message is like women are poisonous temptresses,
you cannot be trusted, or women who I've had sex
before our temptresses. And also STDs equal dirty shame, dirty shame. Yeah.
And there was this woman, Eddie Route in New Zealand
(24:12):
while she was a New Zealand nurse in Egypt, and
she was like, sick of all of this. It's not
exactly productive to have this like handwringing moralizing over STDs
and sex when you could just be treating and preventing
STDs from happening in the first place. Uh. She was
convinced that rather than treat STDs as like a moral failing,
(24:35):
treat them as a medical issue, which they are and
which they were. And so her solution was to create
these prophylactic kits that were actually prophylactic kits and not
like postphylactic um and they included condoms. And her solution
was to create these put together these prophylactic kits that
(24:56):
included condoms. And she also advocated for clean brothels. And
you would have thought this woman was like advocating for
just the entire world to be a nudist colony, like
let's all have orgies together. People freaked out, And in
New Zealand, if you printed her name you faced a fine.
(25:16):
I was so surprised to read this too, because in
terms of women's rights, at least, New Zealand has been
historically very progressive. Shout out Kiwi's listening. Um, So I was, yeah,
I was surprised to see how how Eddie was treated
like her Yeah, her name was not allowed to be
printed in newspapers. But the French, again, we're like you guys, listen,
(25:42):
we can do this. Um. They were super chill about it.
They of course supported Routes ideas about the quote unquote
clean brothels. Right, we shouldn't say clean. That clean. Dirty
language is super stigmatizing, so the licensed and regulated brothels
to be more accurate. Um. So in nineteen eighteen, Route
(26:06):
establishes a hygienic brothel in Paris for troops from New Zealand.
Um and you also have the French reviving that sanctioned
prostitution system. Um that we saw similar to Nashville during
the Civil War. That helped keep the sex trade going
on there std free because here's the thing, they knew
(26:30):
that during wartime women are usually destitute and have to
turn to prostitution. You have that economic coersion factor, so
better to keep them healthy in the process. And then
we start to see some maneuvers that essentially legally and
officially placed blame on sex workers and prostitutes. Uh. In
(26:52):
a move that the US would replicate during World War Two.
Britain in nineteen sixteen made it a crime for a
prostitute you solicit a man in uniform, and in nineteen
eighteen it became illegal for women with venereal disease to
have sex with any soldiers, and police could medically examine
(27:13):
suspected not actual literal licensed, but suspected prostitutes. Yeah, I mean.
And and when it comes to British soldiers and studs
during World War One, their most effective defense was actually
cutting their wages because then they just couldn't afford to
(27:36):
go to a brothel. That was the only thing. It
was just like if if the soldiers had enough money,
they were gonna go, right. So you see, during this time,
Canadian and Australian soldiers who earned significantly more money than
their British counterparts, uh, contracting super high rates of STDs,
(27:56):
and the bore Brits, the literally poor Brits, were kind
of protected because once you bought your food and you know,
whatever other essentials you needed, it really didn't leave you
much money to go get your kicks and a brothel
licensed or not. But with all of this you can
see how again the sex trade goes part and parcel
(28:19):
with warfare. And we're going to talk about World War
two when we come right back from a quick break.
There's really no one quite like Nancy Conger my mom,
your mom, And to show her how loved and special
(28:41):
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something that's unique and special just like she is, Like
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World War two at least penicillin exists. This is very
good News for the treatment of STDs because prior to
(30:31):
its arrival, syphilis was the fourth leading cause of death
in the US. That's crazy, yeah, like beat out like
only by cancer. Well, and also two other things, because
it was the fourth, but I mean it was that widespread,
partially just because we didn't have treatments. Um so, Rather though,
than focusing so much on World War prostitution happening overseas,
(30:55):
which it absolutely did, what we really want to talk
about is the survey aliens of women's sex lives on
the American home front and the rise of what some
people in the government called patriot tuts. Yeah, this was history. Again,
like no idea, I had no idea. Mind blowing. My
mind was blown. And this is coming from a fabulously
(31:17):
titled book by Maryland Haggardy called Victory Girls, Khaki Wackys
and Patriot Tuts. The regulation of female sexuality during World
War Two and geez regulated it was. I mean, you
women could barely walk down the street because authorities were
so convinced that any woman out on her own was
(31:40):
clearly some suspicious prostitute. And if she wasn't a prostitute yet,
she probably would be. She was a walking STD. So
here's a fact that blew my mind, Caroline. The US
government effectively established a wartime sexual support system, as Hagardy
described it in the United States, um in around military
(32:01):
bases to ensure soldiers could get plenty of play, but
without the STDs. So you have like the closer that
you get to barracks, you know, the more and more
like regulated things become. Um. But also with women increasingly
stepping into traditional men's jobs and roles outside of the
home a k a. Rosie the riveters, this gender panic
(32:25):
helps fuel the sexual surveillance on women on the home front.
It's like, oh, man, women are leaving the home, what
are they going to do next? Are they going to
be like us and feel like they deserve sex all
the time. And when it comes so to that surveillance,
working class women and women of color were the most scrutinized,
and black men were also assumed to be vectors of
(32:45):
venarial disease because racism. So we just see the layers
of classism and racism intertwined with this. And again we
still have this interpretation of STDs as a moral failing
rather than a biological process. Yeah, and I mean, you know,
not to go off on too much of a tangent,
but that's echoes and lingering sentiments from the progressive era
(33:10):
when you viewed, for instance, poverty as a character failing.
You viewed illness, sickness, any of that as something that
reflected on the morality of the person who experienced it
rather than an institutional or systematic problem. And so the
same attitude applied to racist ideas about black people being
(33:34):
more prone to carrying venereal diseases, or you know, poor
people being dirty and wanted and not being able to
control their sexuality. Well, and if you put this in
the backdrop to in an era of extreme patriotism, you know,
std s were just downright an American, you know, I
mean there there's so many, so many ways that the
(33:57):
government was trying to, you know, regulate our lives, to
to just ensure that, you know, the soldiers stayed as
healthy as possible. And in the process of this, a
U S Public Health Service physician named Otis Anderson coined
the term patriot tute to both stigmatize the women in
the military who were installed at us O dance halls
(34:19):
and servicemen's clubs to maintain morale, you know, have some
pretty gals around, and also to tour soldiers from going
to prostitutes. So I mean this is this is a
similar kind of like sexual servicing where women were I
mean it was voluntary, yes, but women were nonetheless recruited.
Attractive women were recruited to come to these dance halls,
(34:41):
like come dance with an old soldier before he goes
off to war. Gals give a man a smile in
the hopes that with these quote unquote good and clean
girls around, they wouldn't need to go to a prostitute.
But who's to say that these soldiers also were not
(35:02):
having their way with these women too. Yeah, but you
get these weird attitudes reflected about what constitutes a good girl,
appear and clean girl, which is again holdovers from that
progressive era attitude about true womanhood and that a true
woman was a pure, chased white woman in the home,
(35:26):
you know, versus like sex workers who were just they
were necessary in these military men's minds, and they were
often sanctioned by the military and licensed to you know,
especially in Europe as we saw. But yet we we
hate them and fear them and and call them sluts
and prostitutes. Yeah, I mean there was this whole dichotomy
(35:47):
at work of thinking of women as sexually dangerous, particularly
if they're sex workers, but also they're sexually alluring morale builders,
potentially these quote unquote patriot tuts that we can only
assume have you know, never participated in any kind of
sexual exploration whatsoever. And those two things were still conflated
(36:11):
at the same time. And Haggardy describes this mindset as
sensual patriotism. It's like this, the sensual sensual patriotism that
those quote good girls possessed versus s t d s.
And the USO did directly advertise for proper white girls
to come, but there was this fine line because that
(36:34):
surveillance was still happening. So if you were one of
those gals of the dance halls, just given a fellow
smile before he ships off, if you seem to be
getting a little too cozy with that soldier boy not
to be confused with the rapper um, the government might
label you a prostitute. I had to really like think
(36:56):
for that reference. For us, I know that's already becoming
a deep cut. I'm aging so quickly, and we see
this handwringing over women's role in the spread of v D.
We see it just continue. In n there's an author
pens this piece called v D Menace and Challenge, where she, yes,
(37:20):
she the author writes about the quote problem of the
non commercial girl who is supplanting the prostitute as the
main source of venereal infection in the arms services. It
is she who is in large part responsible for the
increase of venereal disease in this country. As if women
like they just sneeze and v D is just spread
(37:43):
to these innocent, helpless men. So much vintage slut shaming um.
And we also speaking of which like we had in
World War Two, we have all of that anti STD
propaganda come up yet again, I mean, and and a
lot that she was I mean funded obviously by the government.
You have some of them that are I mean, the
(38:05):
graphic design is really cool, you know, the stuff that
came out of the works Progress administration. Um. But it's
just reinforced that idea of female sexuality is dangerous. So
in addition to posters, you had films, including the two
US Navy film The Ship of Shame, which urged semen
(38:30):
to quote put it on before you put it in, Fellas,
I like my eyeballs fell out of my head when
I read that, Like, I couldn't believe put it on
before you put it in was on an official poster. Well,
it was in the it was in the video kind
of like one of those awkward sex said videos, except
it all took place on a boat, well, the ship
of shame, the Ship of Shame. And then you have
(38:51):
posters with taglines like she may look clean, but dot
dot dot again we have all of that clean, dirty
language going on, and then uh, this one that just
got really to the point, loose women may also be
loaded all caps with disease. Yeah, and they were big
(39:11):
into showing and telling because that poster had a woman
winking and it also had a picture of a gun. Well, Caroline,
I also have to describe this one last poster to you. Uh,
it depicts an attractive woman sitting in an armchair and
she's wearing a dress, which of course is labeled vinereal disease,
And you have are we sure that's just not her name,
(39:34):
it's just sewed onto a dress scenario? I mean, venereal
does sound like, you know, like a nineties name. Um,
and she on the wall. Behind her, there's a portrait
of an Army guy, an Air Force guy, and a navyman,
a man in the Navy, and the tagline above it
is don't be her pin up boy. You have gender
(39:57):
role reversal, slight shaming, injurious sexuality everything in this one poster. Well,
there were some other tactics too. There was one poster
uh that featured a really sad lady Liberty behind these
two military members uh, and the tagline was like, y'all, sister, sweetheart,
(40:20):
old wife might not know that you have VD, but
I do and I will suffer for it. God Lady
Liberties like, God, yeah, she she is. And there was
another poster to that sort of tried to play on
men's shame. It didn't. It actually didn't shame women, which
is mind boggling. It was trying to shame the soldiers themselves.
(40:42):
And it showed a wife in an armchair with two
children playing on the floor in front of her, and
it basically said, like, you know, I I can't believe
how syphilis almost hurt my family. But in a way,
doesn't that still bring shame to the wife Because it's
like if you bring home syphilis to that woman. You're
(41:02):
going to make her dirty too. And I feel like
it's still it's you're still only seeing the women being
affected by all of this. This is true. I am
not letting those propaganda posters off the hook, nor nor
should you. Um. Prior to Pearl Harbor, though, the Army, Navy,
Federal Security Agency, state health departments, and the American Social
(41:24):
Hygiene Association collectively outlined the eight point agreement on v
D control, including the repression of prostitution and contact reporting.
And contact reporting it just means letting the informing the
military who you've had sex with. And in her book,
Hegardy observes these eight points marked the official start of
(41:46):
wartime socio political efforts to control female sexuality. And from
there we start to get legislation around this. Yeah, in
Congress passes the May Act, which makes prostitution around on
domestic military basis a federal crime. We also see the
establishment of the Social Protection Division, overseen by FBI legend
(42:10):
elliott Ness to basically monitor fretfully women's and angrily women's morality. Yeah,
I mean, we had talked about the surveillance that started
going on before the US entered the war, and it
was really focused around the military basis. But with this,
(42:30):
I mean they were blanketing the entire country really to
kind of uproot all of those those bad girls, those
women who are going to ensnare their soldiers. And records
from the Social Protection Division contain a veritable the sourus
of slutty descriptors that they came up with for women,
(42:51):
including disorderly girls, vagrance, pre delinquents, suspected prostitute, potentially promiscuous woman,
possibly foolish and immoral women, non adaptable, grass grabbers, hordes
of horrors, good time Charlotte's, and patriot tuts. There's old
(43:12):
patriot tutes coming up again. Patriot tutes Caroline was like
used in official government documentation. Yeah, that's what blows my
mind that this wasn't just like dismissive language that someone
found in some memo that someone shot off, Like this
was official language about women. And I mean these efforts
contributed to this hyper sexualization of women to the point
(43:36):
of labeling many under surveillance as prostitutes and promiscuous with
the objective of socially rehabilitating them. Both prostitutes and other
perceived sexually delinquent women, and local officials detained and forcibly
tested women identified by soldiers who had contracted STDs and
(43:59):
report to them as sexual contacts and whether single are married.
If you were a woman alone in public, you could
arouse suspicion and for instance, in June nineteen, six months
after Pearl Harbor in Oklahoma City, nine hundred girls and
women were arrested on morals charges. That same year, during
(44:22):
one six month period, authorities arrested women in fifteen states
on morals charges. My eyes are about to pop out
of my head, Caroline, Well, because what's going on is
the penalization of gender essentially, like if you were a woman,
you were just like guilty, you were presumed to be
(44:44):
guilty by association almost. But the scary thing is too,
the power that the government gave law enforcement at the
time to stop women and girls on the street, take
them forcibly to a health clinic for STD test and
ki who knows what happened in between all of that time,
(45:05):
you know, Yeah, there was one case of a woman
who was eating at a diner alone. Her husband was
what he was, in the military, so he was away,
and they were like, oh my god, a woman alone,
they dragged her off. She tests negative for any STDs,
and it's like, thank goodness, because, as the writer points out,
if she had tested positive for whatever reason and for
(45:28):
whatever STD, she probably would have gone to jail and
been forcibly treated. So also in this cultural climate to
this wasn't just surveillance happening among female civilians. You also
have suspicion of members of the Women's Army Corps thinking
(45:49):
that they might have been prostitutes and lesbians in disguise.
I'm just like I'm picturing I'm picturing again the Benny
Hill music, and like all of these paranoid, insane men
in the government and in law enforcement and in the
military who were just in an absolute panic over women.
(46:13):
They were just like seeing things. But if there were
a Leslie Nope style binder of like war plans that
the US used and they opened it up, I mean,
this is what protocol from the past wars, you know.
I mean, it's it's always the responsibility for this stuff
(46:33):
is always fallen on the women, and soldiers absolutely internalized
the message of female sex and sexuality as patriotic benefits
to their disposal. So while women are being demonized and
singled out for possibly being dangerous. Soldiers are also receiving
the message that they should nonetheless have access to quote
(46:56):
unquote clean women. Um, there's sense of military training in
World War Two around safer sex under the presumption that again,
boys will be boys. So it's like, listen, you're gonna
do what you're gonna do. We would prefer that you
not rape anyone, and when you have sex, make sure
that you don't contracting STD because that will, you know,
(47:19):
take you out of off the battlefield. Yeah, and and
we see this this I don't want to say emergence
because it's more of a perpetuation and almost an amplification
of both sexual bravado and hyper masculinity as almost necessary
attributes to display as a military man. And hegrid He
(47:39):
writes about this. She says the constant attention paid to sex,
including safe sex through lectures, films, pamphlets, and posters, along
with the military practice of providing instruction and profile access,
finally uh created dissonance between any notion of male continence
or sexual reserve in the stereotype of the virile aggress
(48:00):
of military mail. They're getting mixed messages essentially about what
it means to be a true man or a true
military man and being responsible and practicing safe sex. And
you have anecdotal reports too of soldiers who are about
to ship out aggressively and sometimes non consensually demanding sex
(48:20):
with the whole thought process of well, if I'm about
to go put my life on the line for the
US of A, then I deserve unfettered access to women's bodies.
And Caroline, this brings to mine Greece too, and that
scene where the guy tricks the girl uh into having
sex with him and they sing that whole song let's
(48:41):
do it for our country. You know what it reminds
me of, like rape culture? Well yeah, in in the world. Yeah. Um.
But the government, though, Caroline, they had a solution for
all of this, especially you know, for making sure that
the soldiers stayed as healthy as possible, kept them all
you know in commission policymakers, both military and civilians, generally
(49:06):
agreed that male soldiers shouldn't it really couldn't be sexually restrained.
Come on, and any attempts to do so would only
result in quote rape and seduction. Again. It's like, I mean,
you know what's gonna happen. Uh. So, as a result,
the military considered sanctioned brothels to provide as some people
(49:28):
called it, a buffer of horrors that is direct language.
Is that like a murder of crows? Yeah, a buffer
of horrors to protect the good women in the surrounding
areas from would be rapists being the soldiers. Yeah, I
(49:49):
mean this was we're we're not sitting here as feminists
like coming up with this narrative. People like, this is
what military and government officials we're putting together in their reports.
These were the conclusions that they were reaching. And what
brings this episode focusing on the American military, uh full
(50:13):
circle and meets with our previous episodes topic of comfort
women and sexual slavery in well in Asian countries propagated
by Japanese soldiers, is the fact that the comfort women's
system was essentially reintroduced slash never left because of the
(50:39):
American soldiers who then came in. Yeah, once you know,
Japan surrendered, Japanese officials knew that American troops would then
be coming in to occupy and that they would want
sex and kind of like that whole buffer of horace mindset.
They were like listen, we don't want these white guys
coming in and rapeing all of our women, so we
(51:01):
need to revive the comfort stations. And in two thousand eleven,
the Associated Press reported that American authorities were complicit in
the Japanese re establishing those brothels that did include forest
prostitution and the number of American gis who frequented them.
And we should note that Americans one hundred percent knew
(51:25):
about the horrors of the comfort women's system by this point,
like the government knew that that was that that had happened,
but they were still like, you know what, okay. And
the official history of the Ibakari Prefectural Police Department, whose
jurisdiction is just northeast of Tokyo, says, quote sadly, we
(51:49):
police had the set up sexual comfort stations for the
occupation troops. The strategy was through the special work of
experienced women to create a breakwater to protect regular women
and girls. Those women were regular women and girls, and
the ones who had experience quote unquote likely had experience
(52:13):
because they had been forced into the system by Japanese
soldiers during World War Two. Well, and there have been
scholars who have noted that with this relatively brief revival,
Like most of the women um came of their own will,
but again we have the economic coercion factor. It was
like they had no other choice that they wanted to survive.
(52:34):
They couldn't feed themselves. They're like, well, I need a job.
Well yeah, And again some of them did come of
their own free will, but a lot of the time
there was still that deception factor. You still had ads
in newspapers saying we need a secretary and a woman
showing up and they're like, yeah, you can type some stuff,
but we also need you to do this other thing,
and here's money for it. So the only reason though
(52:57):
that General MacArthur shut all this down and I TE
six was due to concern from military chaplains who were like, hey,
I don't think this is ko sure, and the pr
risk of anyone finding out about those brothels, and just
like what happened with the comfort women who had been
(53:18):
having to you know, forcibly following Japanese troops wherever they went. Immediately,
those tens of thousands of sex workers were out of
a job, many with STDs, and thus forced to continue
selling sex in order to survive and what did the
Americans do? They went home to a hero's welcome, a
quarter of them with STDs, you know. And it's and
(53:40):
it's one thing too that jumped out to me in
reading about all of this, Caroline, is how, of course
General MacArthur would want to cover this up. You know,
this would be a pr disaster for all of these
white boys to be having sex with women of color.
But there are accounts of Americans and other Allied troops
frequenting French brothels. But the portrayals of that are very like,
(54:05):
you know, kind of cheeky and romantic. It's like, of
course a man couldn't resist a French prostitute. So because
it's like white people having sex with white people and
that's totally okay. And all of this kind of just
makes me um want to take a nap because it's exhausting.
It is exhausting, And so I think it does shed
uh some interesting light and context for discussions about red
(54:30):
light districts around bases, American bases that exist now, because
you do have the argument from a lot of people
of like, well, there, you know, these women are choosing
this line of work and uh, they're earning a lot
of money doing this. They want to do it, and
you know, I don't want to paint with a broad
(54:51):
brush and say no or yes either way, but I
it's hard to argue that that line of work, whether
it was in the Civil War, World War one, World
War two, or today around any basis that it's entirely
an issue of freely choosing that occupation because it's the
(55:12):
thing you want to do. There is still a big
issue of socioeconomics of what options are available to people, um.
And those are the underlying issues that we could then
talk for hours and hours about well. And also the
deception too. I mean, some of these women are promised
things and end up you know, especially in South Korea
(55:36):
around these military bases, um, and it turns out that oh,
there they are kind of in a chattel system where
they're beholden to whoever is running this brothel. So the situation,
by no means is fixed, and by no means went
away after World War Two. In fact, it only got worse,
(55:56):
um with the Korean War and Vietnam. But with that
we now have to close things out. And the big
takeaway from me, Caroline is just like how much it
totally explains our sexual slut shaming and sexist culture that
we still live in. Yeah, so, listeners, what do you
(56:19):
think about all this? Was this as surprising for you
as it was for us, um and especially interested to
hear from our listeners who are in the military, because
I think this also too speaks to the issues that
the military has had with sexual assault as well. So
we want to hear your first hand perspectives. As always,
(56:41):
mom Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is where
you can send them. You can also tweet us at
mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got
a couple of messages to share with you right now. Okay,
I have a letter here from Ali. She says, I
started listening to podcasts a little over a year ago,
(57:02):
and one of the first that I stumbled upon that
I loved was Sminty. I have to tell you how
inspiring your podcast has been for me. I went through
grade school never having a teacher that inspired me or
made me want to be a better person like the
both of you do. I've struggled with dropping in and
out of college because of not knowing what I'm passionate about,
which has been extremely frustrating as an almost twenty seven
(57:23):
year old woman. It has lowered my self esteem, especially
when my fiance and close friends have either bachelor's or
master's degrees. I still have no idea what I'm passionate
about and have an internal struggle with that every day.
But what I want you to know is that you've
stirred something in me. I'm realizing now that just because
I haven't found what I'm passionate about, it doesn't mean
(57:44):
that the passion inside me isn't there. I can feel
it bubbling to the surface and have to just keep
searching for the right outlet. I know one day I'll
find it. This new perspective that I have is because
of you and your strength and bravery to keep fighting
the good fight. Thank you for being who you are, Hallie.
Thank you for being who you are. And let me
(58:07):
tell age, it's not unusual to not know what your
passion is or how you want to direct that passion.
But I'm really glad to hear that we could maybe
play a part in figuring it out. Yeah, that means
so much. Thank you for taking the time to tell
us that too. So I've got to let her here.
From Emily on school dress codes, and body shaming. As
(58:29):
she writes, I've just recently started listening to podcasts, and
yours is the first one I chose. All right, so
forgive me if what I'm requesting is something you've covered
in past podcast and Emily, you never have to apologize
for that. We have over seven episodes, and I forget
what we've talked about sometimes. Um, she continues, while listening
to your history of sexual harassment, something really struck a
(58:50):
chord with me, and that was when you mentioned the
relation to current student dress code policies. I've been reading
a lot about these in the news lately, and I
agree it's a problem. I have a four year old daughter,
so it really worries me how I will handle this
when she gets older. It's funny. It definitely hits on
how I was raised. I was a rather endowed teen,
which was not all it was cracked up to be,
(59:11):
and I had to be careful what I wore because
I didn't want to dress inappropriately, which I'm now understand
is a really body shaming and sexist perception. Women can't
be to blame for men not being able to look
at them as more than sexual objects. And of course
this also goes into the body shaming women due to
each other when someone is curvy or heavy, or dressing
(59:31):
in a way that shows off their curves or heaven
forbid that. So I'm just curious to hear more about this.
How do I balance appropriateness and fairness while not raising
a daughter that feels like she has to make things
easier for those crazed men? Or is there appropriate I
already balanced this fine line when she asked me things like, mom,
why can boys go out without shirts? On? How do
(59:54):
I balance in this emerging world of women's empowerment that
I'm glad about, by the way, but I I'm still
trying to undo years of being raised in the old ways. Emily,
those are fabulous questions, And since Caroline and I do
not have children, I think this is a great one. Um.
Parents listening, if you have any suggestions of how you
(01:00:15):
have talked to your daughters in particular, but just your
kids in general about dressing and what is and isn't
appropriate and um. One thing that came to mind Emily
reading your letter was the Fresh Air interview recently with
Peggy Orenstein, who just came up with a book on
girls and sex and she talks about dress codes and
at her daughter's school, basically, the girl's dress code is two.
(01:00:39):
You have to wear clothes that you can move freely in.
And I think that's a fantastic standard where it's like,
if you if you can't raise your arms comfortably or
touch your toes, you know, and worry about having like
adjust your clothes and pull it down whatever it might be,
then then maybe find something more more comfortable that liberal
(01:01:00):
rates you. So maybe that will help um. But thanks
so much for your letter, Emily, and so happy to
hear that you're a new listener, and to all of
our listeners, we love hearing from you as well. Again
our email addresses mom stuff at how stuff works dot
com and for links to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts
with our sources. So you can learn more about patriot tudes,
(01:01:24):
head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
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