*Okay, I think it can plausibly be argued that the whole thing was strongly connected to women's increasing presence in public spaces for leisure activities and without chaperonage and the fears that aroused.
Not to mention the obvious racial overtones -- it was all about the threat of innocent white maidens being kidnapped and sold, and IIRC the legends often involved them disappearing into the Middle East. All of which makes it a rather strange and unfortunate choice of metaphor.
(Tangentially, have you read Marek Kohn's Dope Girls? The moral panic about drugs in the 1910s and 1920s seems to have involved some rather similar imagery about innocent white middle- or upper-class girls being drugged and debauched by people of colour.)
no subject
Not to mention the obvious racial overtones -- it was all about the threat of innocent white maidens being kidnapped and sold, and IIRC the legends often involved them disappearing into the Middle East. All of which makes it a rather strange and unfortunate choice of metaphor.
(Tangentially, have you read Marek Kohn's Dope Girls? The moral panic about drugs in the 1910s and 1920s seems to have involved some rather similar imagery about innocent white middle- or upper-class girls being drugged and debauched by people of colour.)