Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI

Jessica R. Pliley

Published by Harvard University Press 2014

Policing Sexuality

The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI

Jessica R. Pliley

https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674736115

Overview
Contents

About this book

Jessica Pliley links the crusade against sex trafficking to the FBI’s growth into a formidable law agency that cooperated with states and municipalities in pursuit of offenders. The Bureau intervened in squabbles on behalf of men intent on monitoring their wives and daughters and imprisoned prostitutes while seldom prosecuting their male clients.

Author / Editor information

Pliley Jessica R. :

Jessica R. Pliley is Assistant Professor of Women’s History at Texas State University.

Reviews

A fascinating, first-rate study. Using a remarkable trove of documents in the Bureau of Investigation’s white slavery files, Pliley resurrects a lost history of conflicts over gender, sexuality, masculinity, disease, and deviance in the early twentieth-century United States.
-- Beverly Gage, author of The Day Wall Street Exploded

A brilliant, counterintuitive history of the FBI that takes women from the margins—party girls and runaways, adventurers and adulterers, hardened hustlers and delinquent daughters—and shows how they were central to the rise of federal power in America. Written in crystal clear, jargon-free prose, and brimming with important insights, Policing Sexuality is a major contribution to the histories of sexuality and government surveillance, and will be required reading for anyone interested in the sex trade, past, present, or future.
-- Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Most Famous Man in America

The White-Slave Traffic Act, commonly known as the Mann Act, was passed in the United States in 1910 and made it a felony to transport any ‘woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose’ across state lines. It was designed to fight a perceived growth of prostitution, especially the trafficking in of women from Europe to America. Pliley, drawing largely from the records of the Bureau of Immigration, Bureau of Investigation, and then Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), examines the way these agencies used the expansion of their powers less to protect women and more to control sexuality according to their own conservative culture. Using case files, Pliley shows how ideas about women’s sexuality and the vagueness of the phrase ‘any immoral purpose’ were used to police sexual and moral boundaries. She illustrates how the law was more often employed by the FBI before World War II to prosecute unapproved premarital, extramarital, and interracial sexual relationships, than to prosecute human trafficking…A valuable contribution for those curious about the history of women, gender, and sexuality, as well as those interested in the role of policing and the FBI in the cultural and political history of the U.S. in the 20th century.
-- Jessica Moran Library Journal

Policing Sexuality, is an insightful document about the history of government surveillance and control of sex and sexuality in the United States…Pliley’s intriguing and easy to read book is a brilliant resource for historians, researchers in the field of gender and sexuality and anyone who is interested in the legal and historical aspects of sex trafficking and state policies.
-- Nafiseh Sharifi LSE Review of Books

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction The Mann Act and Federal Sexual Surveillance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The American Myth of White Slavery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
2. A National White Slavery Squad Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	32
3. Endangered Daughters Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	60
4. Creating a Moral Quarantine Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	84
5 Defining Immoral Purposes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	106
6. Policing Seduction and Adultery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
7. Coerced Sex and Forced Prostitution Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
8. The FBI’s Assault on Sex Trafficking Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
Conclusion Can the Country’s Moral Borders Be Policed? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Note on Sources Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	281

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: General/trade;College/higher education;Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 276
Illustrations
- Other: 1 halftone

eBook

Published: November 3, 2014
ISBN: 9780674736115