Identification of Mullerian Chromosomal Elements in Hawaiian Drosophila by in situ DNA Hybridization

We have hybridized Drosophila melanogaster DNA sequences to polytene chromosomes of D. silvestris. The results support Muller's hypothesis that the chromosomal elements have been largely conserved in the evolution of the genus Drosophila. As originally suggested by Carson, D. melanogaster elements X, 2L, 2R, 3L, and 3R appear to correspond to chromosomes X, 3, 2, 5, and 4, respectively, in D. silvestris and the Hawaiian picture-winged species

Between Scylla and Charybdis: women's labour migration and sex trafficking in the early Twentieth Century

This article explores the discursive and practical entanglements of women’s work and sex trafficking, in Britain and internationally, in the early twentieth century. It examines discussions about trafficking and women’s work during a period that was instrumental in codifying modern, international conceptions of ‘trafficking’ and argues that porous and faulty borders were drawn between sex work, women’s licit work, and their sexual exploitation and their exploitation as workers. These borders were at their thinnest in discussions about two very important sectors of female-dominated migrant labour: domestic and care work, and work in the entertainment industry. The anti-trafficking movement, the international labour movement, and the makers of national laws and policies, attempted to pick sexual labour apart from other forms of labour, and in doing so wilfully ignored or suppressed moments when they obviously intersected, and downplayed the role of other exploited and badly-paid licit work that sustained the global economy. But these attempts were rarely successful: despite the careful navigations of international and British officials, work kept finding its way back into discussions of sex trafficking, and sex trafficking remained entangled with the realities of women’s work

Vice Queens & White Slaves: The FBI's Crackdown on Elite Brothel Madams in 1930s New York City

In 1936, as part of the War on Crime, the FBI targeted elite prostitution in New York City, accusing several ‘Vice Queens’ of trafficking young women into their luxurious Upper East Side brothels. This article traces how J. Edgar Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation used cases against vice to gain publicity for the FBI and to re-introduce older tropes of white slavery. The cases against the Vice Queens centered on the trope of venal madams whose duplicitous nature cheated customers and whose facilitation of sexual deviancy undermined notions of morality and good taste. By profiting from vice, and the sexual labor of young women, these women lived in extreme wealth while the rest of the country suffered from the deprivation of the Great Depression

The Petticoat Inspectors: Women Boarding Inspectors and the Gendered Exercise of Federal Authority

In the early twentieth century, anti-white-slavery activists sought to construct a new position for women inspectors in the Immigration Bureau. These activists asserted that immigrant girls traveling without a family patriarch deserved the U.S. government's paternal protection, yet they argued that women would be best suited to provide this protection because of women's purported maternal abilities to perceive feminine distress. By wielding paternal government authority—marked by a badge, the ability to detain, and presumably the power to punish—these women could most effectively protect the nation's moral boundaries from immoral prostitutes while also protecting innocent immigrant girls from the dangers posed by solitary travel. In 1903 the Immigration Bureau launched an experiment of placing women among the boarding teams at the port of New York. The experiment, however, was short-lived, as opponents of the placement of women in such visible positions campaigned against them. This episode reminds us that the ability to represent and exercise federal authority in the early twentieth century was profoundly gendered; and women's increased participation in government positions during the Progressive Era was deeply contested.</jats:p

Policing sexuality ::the Mann Act and the making of the FBI /

America's first anti-sex trafficking law, the 1910 Mann Act, made it illegal to transport women over state lines for prostitution "or any other immoral purpose." It was meant to protect women and girls from being seduced or sold into sexual slavery. But, its enforcement resulted more often in the policing of women's sexual behavior. By citing its mandate to halt illicit sexuality, the fledgling Bureau of Investigation gained entry not only into brothels but also into private bedrooms and justified its own expansion. The author links the crusade against sex trafficking to the rapid growth of the Bureau from a few dozen agents into a formidable law enforcement organization. In pursuit of offenders, the Bureau often intervened in domestic squabbles on behalf of men intent on monitoring their wives and daughters and imprisoned working prostitutes, while their male clients were seldom prosecuted. In upholding the Mann Act, the FBI reinforced sexually conservative views of the chaste woman and the respectable husband and father. It built its national power and prestige by expanding its legal authority to police Americans' sexuality and by marginalizing the very women it was charged to protect