Bawdy City

Hemphill, Katie M.

doi:10.1017/9781108773669

Cited by 12 publications

References 101 publications

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“Pastor was Trapped”: Queer Scandal and Contestations Over Christian Anti-Vice Reform

Hemphill

2022

J. gilded age prog. era

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In November 1915, popular Baltimore minister and anti-vice reformer Kenneth G. Murray became enmeshed in scandal after he allegedly attempted to engage in sex with another man at the Y.M.C.A. The revelation of Murray’s alleged queerness became a flashpoint in ongoing contestations over anti-vice reform and the legitimacy of using state power to enforce Christian morality. In the hands of his political opponents, most notably H.L. Mencken, Murray’s apparent homosexuality became a tool for vindicating long-standing assertions that men who campaigned for state-enforced morality were hypocritical and motivated in their activism by sexual and gendered pathologies. In tracing print reactions to Murray’s public exposure, this essay argues that homosexuality proved to be a powerful political weapon against progressive anti-vice campaigning like Murray’s because it was capable of reconciling competing stereotypes of religiously motivated anti-vice reformers as simultaneously overly sexual and impotent, feminized and pathologically masculine. The Murray scandal also opened the door for critiques of muscular Christianity, which made it an early example of how the sexual diagnosis of religious figures and reformers could be used to discredit social and religious activism.

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“Pastor was Trapped”: Queer Scandal and Contestations Over Christian Anti-Vice Reform

Hemphill

2022

J. gilded age prog. era

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Editors’ Introduction

Schreiber,

Walkowitz

2024

Radical History Review

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“Troubling Terms and the Sex Trades” assembles writings from scholars, sex workers, and activists, each of whom interrogates a troubled term and its place in the history of prostitution. This introduction discusses the “keyword” tradition of historical genealogies advanced by Raymond Williams and its utility for assessing critical categories that inform historical studies and current political debates on prostitution. The essay reviews the historiography of prostitution as it has focused on troubling terms, mostly centered specifically on the categories of sex work and trafficking. The essay goes on to introduce the components of this special issue: the first section, Reflections, presents short first-person accounts by sex worker activists, advocates, and scholars regarding a critical keyword they have worked with or resisted. The second section, Features, presents longer essays that interrogate the terms sex work, demand, white slavery, red-light district, restricted area, and decriminalization. Finally, Curated Spaces explores the history of the red umbrella as a visual term that has developed as a global symbol for sex worker rights.

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Naming the Zones of Sexual Commerce

Hemphill

2024

Radical History Review

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This article examines the historical origins of the term red-light district. It argues that red lights became associated with prostitution in the United States not only because of red’s popularity in the decor of nighttime businesses but also because of color symbolism popularized by the transportation revolution. As red signal lights on railroads came to indicate “stop—danger,” people accustomed to viewing prostitution as a moral and physical threat read that symbolism onto nighttime businesses’ existing practices of display. Meanwhile, places of prostitution that were located near railroad tracks in the American West embraced the red light as a form of advertising. The red light’s simultaneous status as a lure and warning captured ambivalent responses to prostitution. As a result, it became a potent symbol of late nineteenth-century efforts to keep the sex trade at arm’s length while also treating it as ineradicable. When city officials tried to control the harms of prostitution by segregating it, the products of their efforts came to be known as “red-light districts.” Although the term has in some ways transcended its roots, scholars should be conscientious about their use of it given its implicit moralization of both the sex trade and urban space.

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Bawdy City

Cited by 12 publications

References 101 publications

“Pastor was Trapped”: Queer Scandal and Contestations Over Christian Anti-Vice Reform

“Pastor was Trapped”: Queer Scandal and Contestations Over Christian Anti-Vice Reform

Editors’ Introduction

Naming the Zones of Sexual Commerce

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