The Traffic in Women

"The Traffic in Women" is an essay written by anarchist writer Emma Goldman in 1910. It has been published in various ways, including within Emma Goldman’s Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), published by Mother Earth,[notes 1] and as the named, leading essay of a collection of Emma Goldman essays: The Traffic in Women, and Other Essays on Feminism (1970, Times Change Press, 1971 paperback). Mother Earth was a monthly anarchist magazine founded by Goldman, Max Baginski, and others in 1906.[1] The essay is one of more than 20 articles that Goldman wrote during 1906 to 1940.[2]

Content

The essay was written in response to the actions of contemporary social reformers campaigning against white slavery, whose legislative campaign Goldman claimed would only serve to create "fat political jobs" for "parasites."

In the essay she argues that the major cause of white slavery, that has been ignored by these reformers, is capitalist exploitation. Goldman criticizes the role which Christian churches have played in historically encouraging and maintaining prostitution.

Goldman presents marriage as on the same continuum as prostitution, arguing that in both cases women are sold and circulated, and is critical of "moralists" who condemn prostitution, but not marriage for monetary considerations.[3] Goldman claims that double standards surrounding male and female sexuality pressure women who engage in sexual activity outside marriage into a life of prostitution, thereby "society creates the victims that it afterwards vainly attempts to get rid of."

Reception and legacy

American radical feminist writer Alix Kates Shulman strongly endorsed the essay, reading the entirety of it into the record of a legislative hearing on prostitution in New York.[4] She argues that Goldman's sympathy for prostitutes was due to identifying with them, "because of their class and because they defied the sexual hypocrisy of Puritanism."[5]

The essay served as an inspiration for anthropologist Gayle Rubin's 1975 essay "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex." While Rubin follows Goldman in arguing that prostitution is part of the same spectrum as marriage, she also builds off of the ideas of Claude Levi-Strauss and Sigmund Freud, to describe a "sex/gender system" through which such transactions can occur.[3]

Miriam Schneir also included this text in her anthology Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings, labelling it as one of the essential works of feminism.[6]

Notes
  1. Published within Emma Goldman’s Anarchism and Other Essays. Second Revised Edition. New York & London: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1911. pp. 183-200, as noted here

References
  1. Drinnan, Richard (1969), A Biographical Sketch, Dover Publications, p. 32, ISBN 9780486122380 (introduction to a republishing of 1911 Anarchism and Other Essays)
  2. "Emma Goldman Reference Archive: 1869-1940". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved April 15, 2016.
  3. Parvulescu, Anca (January 2011). "European Kinship: Eastern European Women Go to Market". Critical Inquiry. 37 (2): 187–213. doi:10.1086/657290. S2CID 159728123.
  4. Frankel, Oz (December 1996). "Whatever Happened to "Red Emma"? Emma Goldman, from Alien Rebel to American Icon". The Journal of American History. 83 (3): 920. doi:10.2307/2945644. JSTOR 2945644.
  5. Goldman, Emma (1998). Shulman, Alix Kates (ed.). Red Emma speaks: an Emma Goldman reader (3rd ed.). Amherst, New York: Humanity Books. p. 16. ISBN 1573924644.
  6. Schneir, Miriam (1972). Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings. Vintage Books.
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