Woman and Socialism

by August Bebel

State regulation and control of vice not only create the belief among men that the state favors prostitution, it also leads them to believe that this regulation protects them from disease, and this belief makes men more reckless and increases the employment of prostitution. Public brothels do not diminish sexual diseases, they promote them, because men become more reckless and careless. To what conceptions the official protection of brothels leads may be seen from the term applied to the licensed prostitutes in England, who were called “Queen’s women” because they had obtained official recognition through a law enacted by the queen. Experience has taught, that neither the introduction of public brothels under police supervision nor regular medical examination insure safety from contagion.

To an inquiry from the woman’s committee of Vienna for combatting the state regulation of vice Dr. Albert Eulenburg wrote as follows: “In regard to the question of police supervision of prostitutes I fully share, as a matter of principle, the point of view set forth in your petition, though, of course I recognize the practical difficulty of its immediate application. I regard this practice which has been introduced in most countries as unjust, unworthy, and moreover as entirely unsuited to attain the object stated with any certain degree of safety.” On July 20, 1892, the Berlin Medical Society declared that the reinstatement of public brothels would be undesirable, both from a hygienic and moral point of view.

The nature of these diseases is such that in many cases it cannot be recognized easily, or at once, and to attain a certain degree of safety several daily examinations would be necessary. But this is impossible, owing to the great number of women in question and the large expense it would entail. Where 30 to 40 prostitutes have to be examined in one hour, the examination is nothing more than a farce, and in the same way one or two weekly examinations are entirely insufficient. Dr. Blaschko[92] says: “The belief, that control of prostitutes furnishes protection against contagion, unfortunately is a widespread and detrimental error. Rather can it be asserted that everyone who associates with a prostitute or a frivolous girl faces a grave danger each time.”

The success of these measures fails also because the men who carry the germs of disease from one woman to another remain entirely free from control. A prostitute who has just been examined and found healthy may become infected by a diseased man in the very same hour, and before the next examination takes place, or before she herself has become aware of the disease, she may have infected a number of other visitors. The control is an imaginary one. Besides the obligatory examinations by male instead of female physicians deeply injure the sense of modesty and help to destroy it completely. This statement is confirmed by a great many physicians who perform such examinations.[93] The same is admitted even in the official report of the Berlin police department, where it says it must be admitted that official enrollment still increases the moral degradation of those affected by it.[94] The prostitutes do whatever they can to escape this control.

Another evil result of these measures is, that it is made very difficult, indeed almost impossible to prostitutes, to return to a decent means of livelihood. A woman who has fallen into police control is lost to society; as a rule she miserably perishes after a few years. The fifth congress for combatting immorality, held in Geneva, thus expressed itself forcibly and correctly against the state regulation of vice: “The obligatory medical examination of prostitutes is a cruel punishment to the woman, for in those who are subjected to it the last remnant of modesty that may still exist in the most depraved, is forcibly destroyed. The state that seeks to regulate prostitution by police control forgets that it owes equal protection to both sexes, it degrades and demoralizes the woman. Every system of official regulation of vice permits of arbitrary police rule and leads to the infringement of personal safety against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, against which even the lowest criminal is guarded. As these encroachments occur only at the expense of the woman, they lead to an unnatural inequality between her and the man. The woman is degraded to a mere object and is no longer treated as a person. She is excluded from the law.”

How little police and medical control avail has been strikingly shown in England. Before the beginning of official regulation, in the year 1867, the number of venereal diseases in the army were, according to a military report, 91 per 1,000. In 1886, after the regulation had been in effect for nineteen years they were 110 per 1,000. In 1892, six years after the regulation laws had been repealed they were only 79 per 1,000. Among civilians the cases of syphilis were 10 per 1,000 during the years 1879 to 1882, that was during the years of public regulation. After the abolition of public regulation, from 1885 to 1889 they were only 8.1 per 1,000.

The prostitutes themselves were far more affected by the regulation laws than the soldiers. In 1866 there were among 1,000 prostitutes, 121 cases of disease. In 1868 after the law had been in force for two years there were 202 cases among 1,000. After that the number gradually decreased, but in 1874 there still were 16 cases more per thousand than in 1866. The death rate among prostitutes also increased appallingly during the reign of that law. When at the close of the sixties of the last century the English government attempted to extend the regulation laws to include all English cities, a storm of indignation arose among English women. They regarded the law as an insult to their entire sex. The habeas corpus, they claimed, that fundamental law which guaranteed protection to every English citizen, was to be abolished for women; every brutal police officer impelled by revenge or other base motives, would be permitted to attack the most respectable woman if he suspected her of being a prostitute, while the licentiousness of men would not be interfered with, but would on the contrary be protected and fostered by law.

The fact that English women under the leadership of Josephine Butler championed the most degraded of their sex, caused ignorant men to misconstrue their intentions and to make insulting remarks about them. But regardless of these attacks they opposed the extension of the obnoxious law with utmost energy. In newspaper articles and pamphlets arguments in favor of it and against it were fully discussed, until its extension was prevented, and in 1886 is was repealed.[95]