Sisterhood
April 08, 2018, by Ali
Last time I made a blog post, I lamented on the lack of a connecting theme in the readings/viewings of the weekend. That is not true of this week where the theme seems to be sisterhood, albeit of very different kinds.
The reading was “The Lost Sisterhood” chapter of Sante’s Low Life. The chapter tells the harrowing story of the Manhattan prostitutes of the 19th century. There are plenty upsetting details scattered throughout the chapter from a “generation” of whores only being about two years due to the high death and turnover rates, to many girls getting started as young as twelve due to their parent’s inability to care for them (and their sons as well) after a certain age. While boys had a wide array of opportunities and ventures to turn to in order to support themselves, girls only had prostitution.
There’s also talk of abortion and how originally it “was considered so far beyond the pale in polite society that it was, paradoxically, relatively safe and protected”. This, of course, didn’t last long. By the 1870s, everyone knew of one abortionist, Madame Restell, which eventually lead to panic, causing abortion to be driven even further underground, into dangerous territory by the 1890s. In a way we are still dealing with this today. If abortion is made illegal again, even in just a few states, it will cause women to seek out dangerous methods in order to terminate a pregnancy, taking us right back to the 1890s all over again.
You could also connect some of the reading back to my artifact post on heroin. Sante makes mention of how “opium addiction became widespread among whores….the prisons were filled with hundreds of whores suffering withdrawal symptoms”. Obviously opium has been present in New York since the beginning of the opium trade, but it is interesting to read about how it affected a specific group of people, in this case prostitutes. And of course, you could tie it in to today by comparing the number of prostitutes today who are drug addicts too.
That was one of my biggest takeaways from the readings: things have not changed nearly as much as we like to think. This was made explicit to me at the mention of a Josephine Wood’s on Clinton Place (which I believe is now 8th Street) between Broadway and University. I can only assume this place was an ancestor to the current Josie Woods Pub on Waverly and Mercer. And in Born in Flames you see women protesting in Washington Square Park in a way that is reminiscent of #MeToo protests. All of this reminds me of an old quote from my camp days “Things change, but they stay the same”.
Born in Flames is a fictional movie that is presented in documentary format that takes place in an alternate universe where the US is a socialist democracy. Things aren’t much better for women there either than they are here in our capitalist society. Honestly, I found the film to be strange and I don’t have much to say about it other than the ending is obviously very disturbing today in a post 9/11 world, which kind of taints it a bit.
In conclusion, this weekend’s reading and viewing really just hammered it in for me just how much change there still needs to be made when it comes to women’s rights. That’s all.