Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City

Bliss, Katherine Elaine

ISBN 10: 0271021268 / ISBN 13: 9780271021263

Published by University Park, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr, 2001

About this Item

Trade paperback in very good + condition.

Seller Inventory # 153181

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City
• Publisher: University Park, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0271021268
• ISBN 13: 9780271021263
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • history

About this title

Synopsis

To illuminate the complex cultural foundations of state formation in modern Mexico, Compromised Positions explains how and why female prostitution became politicized in the context of revolutionary social reform between 1910 and 1940. Focusing on the public debates over legalized sexual commerce and the spread of sexually transmitted disease in the first half of the twentieth century, Katherine Bliss argues that political change was compromised time and again by reformers' own antiquated ideas about gender and class, by prostitutes' outrage over official attempts to undermine their livelihood, and by clients' unwillingness to forgo visiting brothels despite revolutionary campaigns to promote monogamy, sexual education, and awareness of the health risks associated with sexual promiscuity.

In the Mexican public's imagination, the prostitute symbolized the corruption of the old regime even as her redemption represented the new order's potential to dramatically alter gender relations through social policy. Using medical records, criminal case files, and letters from prostitutes and their patrons to public officials, Compromised Positions reveals how the contradictory revolutionary imperatives of individual freedom and public health clashed in the effort to eradicate prostitution and craft a model of morality suitable for leading Mexico into the modern era.

About the Author

Katherine Elaine Bliss is Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts. She was a David E. Bell Fellow in 2000–2001 at the Center for Population and Development Studies at Harvard University where she currently holds membership.