Women Of The Wild West

In the early 1800s, women were second-class citizens. Women were expected to restrict their area of interest to the home and the family. Women were not encouraged to have a real education or pursue a professional career. Also, women were considered unequal to their husbands and all males legally and socially. The day-to day lives of men and women were quite clearly divided during the late 1800s. Woman in the late 1800s were treated inhumane because of society, class, and their rights.

The American western frontier, still arguably existent today, has presented a standard of living and characteristics which, for a time, where all its own. Several authors of various works regarding these characteristics and the obvious border set up along the western and eastern sections have discussed their opinions of the west. In addition to these literary works by renowned authors, one rather convenient cinematic reference has also been influenced by these well-known, well-discussed practices of this American frontier. “True Grit”, a film recently remade in 2010 by the Cohen Brothers, crosses the boundaries of the west allowing all movie-goers to capture one idea of the western world. The movie, along with a few scholarly sources

Women were considered to be the “weaker vessels ,” not as strong physically or mentally as men and less emotionally stable. Legally they could neither vote, hold public office, nor participate in legal matters on their own behalf, and opportunities for them outside the home were frequently limited .

Other women were lonely and were often reminded of them (Ural). While their husbands, fathers, and brothers were gone, they found a new freedom. They found more power in relationship, but also increased likelihood of heartbreak. Some women did admit to flirting. They had casual relationships and sometimes casual engagements. One woman called them, "slight, silly love affairs" (Abbott). Men and women, both, kept them a secret, and agreed that they were still free to see others. Some women even took un chaperoned trips to confederate camps to go on horseback rides and have picnics. They allowed uniformed soldiers to kiss their hands and to serenade them. This was once restricted to only engaged couples

women had to stay at home to make household goods to use in the 1700s-1800s

Prostitution is the practice or occupation of engaging in sexual activity with someone for some sort of payment. In depth, there are four types in which adultery can fall under. For example, the most recognized one being street prostitution which involves in sexual activity in exchange for money but it being out on the streets. The arrest for this illegal action tend to happen most in isolated areas. For example, the “Tenderloin District” which included East Overland, Oregon, Third and Utah Streets. Escort or “call-out” prostitution is a sex worker who does not necessarily go out in public to display she/his line of work. Brothels are places where men go and pay for “call-out” prostitutes. Lastly, the prostitution of children which was brought into alertness by Operation Stormy Nights,

Many of the women fit into this category. Donna, a young worker, began her work at mustang ranch in order to care for her husband (age forty-one) and her two young children (pg.65). Her husband, due to his age, was unable to obtain a decent job and told Donna that she needed to get a job at the Brothel. Carrie, another worker in her early thirties, was working to care for her mother and Ivy whose mother-in-law- was tired of her freeloading attitude so she packed Ivy’s belongings and dropped her off at the ranch (pg.69). Many of the women would say that prostitution was just a “job” but the one thing that almost all of them had in common was “financial hardship” and turned to legalized sex workers to financially support their family or someone else. Although a number of women solicited sex in order to meet financial goals, countless of them greatly exceeded their goals but still found themselves working as at the ranch.

265). The movement’s attempts were to help control and prevent sexual abuse, in addition to abolish prostitution, while promoting abstinence to sex. Women of this movement focused their efforts on the “fallen” women within the society and the victims. Their efforts were noticed by actually “reaching out to prostitutes directly” (DuBois & Dumenil, p. 265)). It was a reform that not only focused on sexual aspects of life, but it was also important for health because all of the prostitutes were at risk for venereal diseases (DuBois & Dumenil, p. 267). For the women in the reform working against prostitution, they were faced with a major problem because the “glamorous prostitutes of San Francisco” were receiving a considerable amount of paid attention, even more than that of a working woman (DuBois & Dumenil, 2012, p. 267). Most of these prostitutes were working in hotels near the mines and were making one to two dollars per customer (DuBois & Dumenil, 2012, p. 265). The Moral reform was different from the other reform movements in that it was the only reform that was entirely composed and built on

It’s important to recognize these biases because there isn’t much press coverage about this industry and it usually errors on the melodramatic side. On the other hand, Barbara Brents the foremost expert on Nevada’s licensed brothels, has come to very different conclusions about the state’s most controversial industry. Brents is a professor of sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and she, along with her colleagues, has over 15 years of field research studying Nevada’s licensed brothels. Brents, the co-author of The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex, and Sin in the New American Heartland describes those brothels in a very practical and academic style. Brents says, “Sometimes I say I’m shedding light into a dark closet, a place nobody really knows what goes on inside. And then, when you shed the light, you find out that it’s not at all what you thought it was — it’s neither dangerous nor awful, nor is it as titillating.”

The judgement from men did not cease and women were further scrutinized. This discrimination made many free thinking women undesirable. The “women who entered male public and political domains "lost their 'womanliness' and their claim to purity."11 The persistent negativity being aimed towards these women and the primarily male driven society left us with little on the “accounts of frontier life. It is difficult to obtain positive accounts of women's contribution to settling the frontier.”

The history in the 1800s was really rough then now days because they had the Nez Perce war going on and at the same time, we had problems with woman not being able to vote, and the Immigrants were all looking for jobs. As I said earlier about women not being able to vote was a big step back for woman, not so much for men as they didn’t want women to vote. As the author said in the 1840s, emerging from the broader movement for women's rights”(w.i.t.p.n.). Woman were treated imperfect towards men all because they were a different gender, which is unacceptable back in the 1840s and would be now if it happened because we should all be treated the the same and have the same rights. As it says in the text “In order to earn revenue from their land

Western, a genre of short stories that are set in the American west, primarily in the late of the 19th century (“Western” 598), and still being told until today by films, televisions, radio, and other art works. The major of moving to the west was because of the Homestead Act, 1862 (“U.S. Statues at Large” 392) which would give lands to people who stayed there for five years. This lead to a huge wave of immigrants moved to the West, and they had to face to many hardships and conflicts such as Indian attacks, tornadoes, blizzards, and illnesses.

Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in

The American Frontier, or as it was also known, the Wild West was a time between the 1770s and the late 1900s. The Wild West consisted of the and west of the Mississippi river. This time period lasted for about thirty years, and during this time there were a variety of people that roamed around the towns such as outlaws, lawmen, Native Americans, townspeople, and cowboys. Out in the Wild West the towns were small but, for the size of them, they were called 'home' for many people.

In the book Sex for Sale Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry, Table 1.1 shows characteristics of types of prostitution. There are six categories; Business location, prices charged, exploitation by third parties, risk of violent victimization, public visibility, and impact on community. There are also six types of jobs in the sex industry; Call girl, escort, brothel worker, massage parlor worker, bar or casino worker, and street walker. For every job besides the street walker the prices charged are high or moderate, exploitation by third parties were low to moderate, the risk of violent victimization was either very low or low, public visibility is either none or very low, and the impact on the community is either none or little (Weitzer 8). This shows that prostitution, unless one is a streetwalker, is relatively safe, profitable,