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

by Katherine Elaine Bliss

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Sex Work

264 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2002

Reviews

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In what would often be considered a too taboo subject, we get a unique point in time look at sexuality, prostitution, gender, and values throughout Mexico City in the early 20th century. For "the worlds oldest profession," we often don't see much directly discussing or looking at prostitution and it's effects rather pretending it doesn't exist. Here we get to see that in a unique setting of long standing legal prostitution in the country and city and it's development through the decades of modernization Mexican culture, politics, and society was going through during and after their revolution to a democracy.

Alongside the outstanding research and clear depth of knowledge of the author from a variety of sources (from periodicals and government reports to speeches, letters, and interviews of individuals) allows the author to give unique incites into a bunch of these cultural inputs to this change and to the business of sexual commerce overall. It's truly a unique look at the subjects of prostitution and Mexico City while having value in looking at some overarching trends that could be used by someone interested in the vice of other cities of the time, especially to some of the health and moral worries of leaders in many other cities in the post-Victorian world, to fill the void in scholarship on these subjects.

A last point to make, it is at once both a very much not a pop-history style book but is extremely approachable and readable thanks to the quality of the authors writing. It is also not a particularly long book so anyone who stumbles upon it like me I highly recommend giving it a shout, you'll find yourself surprisingly engrossed in the subject matter.

[Josue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poverty!

[Larissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written with lots of fun anecdotes. Like City of Suspects, it does a good job of demonstrating how Porfirian policies and ideologies lingered long into the post-Revolutionary era, even as the leaders of that time consciously sought to reject the past.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of the regulation of Prostitution in Mexico in the early 20th century. Interesting discussion of the political importance to regulating health and gender (through prostitution).