The Sexual Question

A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s-1950s

Bibliographic Data

ID2834283
AuthorsAdam Warren (0000-0002-3514-9783, University of Washington, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume101
Issue4
Pages738-740
Publication date2021-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182168-9366988
OpenAlexW3214534166
LanguageEN
Citations received5

In 1928, authorities sought to contain and further regulate prostitution by establishing a red-light district in La Victoria, a peripheral, working-class district on the southern edge of Lima. Concerns about sexually transmitted infections and confidence in the ability to reduce transmission by medically policing prostitutes drove this decision, as did the belief that prostitution provided a necessary sexual outlet for heterosexual men. In 1956, however, authorities closed the red-light district under pressure from abolitionists, who argued that regulation never achieved its public health goals, failed to relocate prostitution away from other neighborhoods, and furthered immoral conduct by promoting a sexual double standard. How the development of this red-light district came about and how efforts at regulation eventually came to be abandoned constitute the focus of Paulo Drinot's superb book The Sexual Question: A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s–1950s.For Drinot, the “sexual question” refers to how society and the state politicized sexuality through debate over “sexual issues that stood in the way of the flourishing of the population and the solutions that were devised to address those problems” (pp. 7–8). Building on Michel Foucault's notion of the government of sexuality, in which sexual conduct became an issue between the state and the individual and both an object of analysis and a focus of state interventions, he shows that government authorities, medical and legal experts, and members of the broader public discussed sexuality, sexual behavior, and especially prostitution in relation to questions of Peru's racial composition, modernization, and potential for progress. Moreover, by reconstructing how prostitutes resisted, negotiated, and embraced policies aimed at policing their behavior, he argues that regulation was far from a top-down, elite-driven project.Drawing on rich but unconventional sources for a history of prostitution, Drinot provides a deeply researched picture of efforts to govern prostitution and grapple with the sexual question. Chapter 1 draws on medical and legal texts and other sources to reconstruct proposals to regulate prostitution in the second half of the nineteenth century and explain why they did not come to fruition. Chapter 2 examines attempts to regulate prostitution in the first decades of the twentieth century and demonstrates how debates moved beyond medical and legal communities to include Freemasons, anarchists, anticlerical journalists, the Catholic Church, and feminists. Chapter 3 explores the red-light district's opening in 1928 and its consequences for clandestine prostitution elsewhere in the city, while chapters 4 and 5 reconstruct government efforts to treat and control sexually transmitted infections before and after the district's establishment. These two chapters emphasize the shifting focus of the Asistencia Pública, a government agency that carried out medical policing of prostitutes, opened treatment centers, and undertook sex education. Finally, chapter 6 traces the abolitionist movement's growth in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s to explain the red-light district's closure in 1956. While penicillin's introduction in the 1940s reduced public health risks from prostitution, abolitionists pushed forward with campaigns advocating conservative sexual mores.Throughout The Sexual Question, Drinot provides fascinating depictions of urban life and sexual culture in Lima and asks what the history of prostitution can tell us about Peru's state and society. Among his interventions, he traces the growth of the country's medical community and sanitary state, highlighting the influential role that doctors and their interlocutors played in politics. Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, doctors' writings reflected both engagement with international debates about prostitution and attention to pressing local concerns. They pathologized Peruvian society in racial and gendered terms, especially following the War of the Pacific, and asserted the possibility of improved health and societal regeneration through prostitution's state-led regulation. The Sexual Question does not clarify whether Peruvian doctors influenced debates and policies on prostitution beyond Peru, but within Peru they shaped the gendered character of Peruvian state formation and public health.Drinot also explicates how debates about prostitution, Lima's sexual economy, and the racialized and class-stratified social world of brothels contributed to discussions of appropriate men's and women's behavior. Building on anxieties about the gender-transgressing modern girl and white slavery, which many blamed for trafficking European women to work in Lima's brothels, prostitution's critics feared that exposure to prostitutes would awaken latent, deviant forms of sexuality in middle- and upper-class women. The red-light district protected such women by moving brothels out of districts where they resided. At the same time, regulationists claimed that prostitution was a necessary evil that satisfied men's sexual urges and helped them resist the temptations of masturbation and homosexuality. It reinforced heteronormative masculinities and must therefore be tolerated and made safe. A key argument of the book is that regulationists saw in prostitution a tool for preventing homosexuality.The Sexual Question concludes with discussions of its implications for ongoing debates about moral panics, prostitution, women's rights, and LGBTQ+ rights in Peru. Drinot hopes that the book will be a resource for Peruvian feminists and queer activists. As much remains to be written about Peru's LGBTQ+ past, his findings about sexuality will prove especially valuable for such undertakings. Research on the history of sexuality beyond Lima will also benefit from this outstanding study

Criminology · Flourishing · Government (linguistics) · Human sexuality · Political science · Population · Sociology · State (computer science) · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Demography · Gender Studies · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Social Psychology

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