The Body Politic The Removal Of Agency And The Struggle...

The Body Politic: The Removal of Agency and the Struggle for Power The demand for sexual services is a universal constant in human society—from the sexual slavery of the Indo-Asian colonial period, to contemporary Canada, the relation between sex and power is an undisputed fact. Prostitutes and concubines are and were people who struggled with power historically due to their positions in society and their occupations; they have struggled for political access, for their own safety, and for their freedom. By contrasting modern prostitution with concubinage in colonial Asia, I will show how systems of justice operate in sexist and racist policies in order to regulate and restrict the agency of sex workers and concubines. From the destruction†¦show more content†¦By not creating laws—and by outlawing practices which made prostitution safer for sex workers, such as bawdy houses—the Canadian government presented the identity of the sex worker as being of low w orth and ultimately increased their vulnerability. In her examination of colonial concubines in Asia, Stoler explored what the role of concubine entailed for colonized women: such as being â€Å"guides to the language and mysteries of the foreign society† (116) for the European men. They were to treat their illnesses, and essentially meant to â€Å"[keep] them alive† (116). By constructing concubines as tools instead of people—to be used for medicine, socialization, sexual services, and whatever else the man needed—the colonizers depersonalized the indigenous women they so clearly required. They were in high demand—places with uneven sex ratios, such as North Sumatra, had â€Å"intense competition† for women, sometimes resulting in assaults (220)—and yet completely disregarded by the state as people with inner lives, friendships, families, and interests. In the context of the colonial period, which was based on hierarchies of race and superiority, it isn t surprising that the colonizers would proliferate this view of the indigenous women. Colonial power was based on the