Sex Work* in Shanghai in the period 1911-1940
Keywords:
The Subaltern, Sex Work, Shanghai, Twentieth Century Chinese History, Postwar History, Gender, Gender Studies, History of Sexuality, History of Sex WorkAbstract
When studying sex work*, the chief problem the historian is faced with is the difficulty of accessing the voice of the sex workers* themselves. Gail Hershatter draws on Gayatri Spivak’s idea of the subaltern, when she notes that the subaltern cannot represent itself in discourse, and so must be inferred by the records around them. Sex Work in Shanghai was understood through a variety of different, unfixed categories; as a marker of national decay, the profession of schemers, a source of urbanised pleasure, a disease both moral and physical, as an economic choice women had to make. This essay will examine different categories in sex work, how these were viewed, and if the hierarchy of sex work was a fluid one. It will then examine attitudes towards ancillary forms of sex work, such as the professions of masseuses and taxi dancers and then discuss the position of the authorities in relation to this work. Finally, it will examine how the sale of sexual services was perceived politically.
*The author originally uses the term prostitution however the current Editorial Board of Volume V would substitute the term for sex work.
References
Primary Sources
· “The Demi-Monde of Shanghai”, The North - China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette (Shanghai, 1923), May 12, 1923.
· “Vice in Shanghai”, The Shanghai Times (Shanghai, 1920), Mar 19, 1920. “Prostitution On Streets Of City Hit Again”, The China Press (Shanghai, 1934), Sept 15, 1925.
· Dazhou, Li, “The Postwar Women Question”, New Youth 6:2, Feb 15 1919, in Hua R. Lan and Vanessa L. Fong (eds.), Women in Republican China: A Sourcebook (New York, 1999), part 36.
· Figure 5 in Gail Hershatter, “Modernizing Sex, Sexing Modernity: Prostitu- tion in Early Twentieth-Century Shanghai” in Susan Brownell and Jeffery N. Watterstrom (eds.) Chinese Femininities, Chinese Masculinities: a reader (California, 2002), p 209.
· P. O. Q, “Correspondence”, The China Press (Shanghai, 1925), Sept 15, 1925.
Secondary Sources
· Bailey, Paul J, Women and Gender in Twentieth Century China (Basingstoke, 2012).
· Dong, Madeline Y, “Who is Afraid of the Chinese Modern Girl?” in Alys Eve Weinbaum et al. (eds.) The Modern Girl Around the World: consumption, modernity,andglobalization(London,2008),pp194-219.
· Gilmartin, Christina, ‘Gender, Political Culture, and Women’s Mobilization in the Chinese Nationalist Revolution, 1924-1927’, in Christina Gilmartin et al (eds.), Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the State (Cambridge, 1994), pp 195-225.
· Henriot, Christian, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History, 1849-1949 (Cambridge, 2001).
· – “From a Throne of Glory to a Seat of Ignominy’: Shang- hai Prostitution Revisited (1849 – 1949)”, Modern China, 22:2 (1996), pp 132- 163.
· Hershatter, Gail, “Courtesans and Streetwalkers: The Changing Discourses on Shanghai Prostitution, 1890-1949”, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 3:2 (1992), pp 245 – 269.
· Hershatter, Gail, Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai (California, 1999).
· Hershatter, Gail, “Modernizing Sex, Sexing Modernity: Prostitution in Early Twentieth-Century Shanghai” in Susan Brownell and Jeffery N. Wat- terstrom (eds.) Chinese Femininities, Chinese Masculinities: a reader (Cali- fornia, 2002), pp 199 – 225.
· Hershatter, Gail, “’From a Throne of Glory to a Seat of Ignominy’: Shang- hai Prostitution Revisited (1849 – 1949): A Response”, Modern China, 22:2 (1996), pp 164-169.
· Liang, Samuel Y, “Ephemeral Households, Marvelous Things: Business, Gender and Material Culture in “Flowers of Shanghai”, Modern China, 33:3 (2007), pp 377 – 418.
· Scully, Eileen P, “Prostitution as Privilege: The ‘American Girl’ of Treaty- Port Shanghai, 1860-1937”, The International History Review, 20.4 (1998), pp 855-883.
