Loose Women and the Crisis of Masculinity: Gender at the turn of the

century

Themes and key terms• Theme: changing roles for men and women at the turn of

the century.1. How does industrialization create a moral panic?

Key terms: Eugenics, strenuous life.

Looking back• Before industrialization: large families (economic base). Men

produced, and women reproduced.

• Marriage: not really based on love, more like a business partnership. Men and women took emotional fulfillment from friendships with the same-sex. Not very sentimental about parenthood either.

• Male characteristics: independence, individualism, dominance.

• Female characteristics: submissiveness, purity, morality.

• Men perform certain occupations, women perform others.

Discuss!

What’s happening in the Industrial and Progressive Eras that has the potential to change what we consider appropriate

behavior for men and women?

Crisis time!• Men no longer produce. Machines do. Some women no

longer want to reproduce . Large families are economic liabilities, and pregnancy is dangerous.

• Where is our sense of purpose? Maybe we should have gone to the frontier.

• Urbanization creates a space for sexual encounters, new ways of conducting personal relationships.

• Reconstruction helps African Americans build a path to voting rights, education, political status, etc. What about women?

Remember the Progressives?• Progressives believe that science and expert opinion will fix

society, along with a heavy-handed government that is more involved than ever in the lives of Americans.

• Also remember, the driving-force of Progressive reform comes from the white-middle class. Concerns that immigrants and the lower classes will corrupt America with “immoral” practices. What’s immoral? Anything that can potentially challenge white male privilege, including, but not limited to: open sexuality, birth control, immigration, expanded education, voting rights, women’s work, amusement parks, alcohol, etc.

Race Suicide

“On American Motherhood”• In 1905, Teddy Roosevelt (our #1 Progressive) gives a speech

suggesting that men and women (but mostly women) are causing the extinction of white America by shirking their “traditional” obligations. Race suicide.

• Immigrants and other “undesirables” are having more children than upper-and-middle class white, native families.

• “There are certain old truths which will be true as long as this world endures, and which no amount of progress can alter. One of these is the truth that the primary duty of the husband is to be the home-maker, the breadwinner for his wife and children, and that the primary duty of the woman is to be the helpmate, the housewife, and mother. ”

Public enemies• Immigrants contribute to race suicide (according to TR and

other experts) by: surpassing the birth rate of natives, spreading venereal disease (causing infertility), forcing native women to become prostitutes, intermixing races (also applies to the racial tensions in the South).

• Several restrictions on immigration from 1870-1917. Bars immigrants suspected of carrying disease, having a bad moral character, susceptible to prostitution, being “feebleminded,” engaging in homosexuality, etc.

Prostitution• Belief that immigration fuels prostitution. Harms innocents

by spreading venereal disease (wives get diseases from husbands, etc).

• Americans also fear that immigrants seize vulnerable, young white women and force them into a life of prostitution.

• A call to governments to regulate and control sexual behavior. Vice Squads become extremely powerful, as do groups aiming to reform lower-class men and women.

• What really happens: we get red light districts, which just keeps sex out of sight.

Contradictions• Threats of (sexual) contamination justify the exclusion of

“outsiders:” immigrants, lower-classes, persons of color, homosexuals. Keeps white, upper/middle class at top of social order.

• Problem: as always, harsh laws and measures find a way to disadvantage those they are designed to protect (remember literacy tests?) Ideas about morality affect ALL women, not just poor women.

Example: birth control• Birth control is socially unacceptable because (some)

women have a moral duty to bear children. Sex is about procreation, not pleasure.

• By 1870, using, possessing, or sharing knowledge about birth control is a federal crime.

• Problem: the desire to control family size cuts across race and class and very few people truly believe sex is only about procreation.

Eugenics• Eugenics applies scientific principles to public hysteria over

race suicide.

• Basic principle: the most valuable people should have many children, the least valuable should have none.

• HOLD UP PROFESSOR! WOULDN’T CONDOMS BE GREAT THEN? Yes, that would make sense if reformers were actually concerned with sex. “Everything in the world is about sex except sex, which is about power.” – Oscar Wilde.

• We will talk about eugenics again when we return to race and the South.

And what do we expect of men?

• Men feel their authority slipping away. What to do?

• Make everything extra manly: the era of contact sports, outdoor recreation, Boy Scouts, the National Park Service, etc.

• Remember: Progressive faith in science and experts makes us believe when can engineer better men.

• Roosevelt encouraged men to lead a “strenuous life.” “Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.”

Example: Muscular Christianity.

• Yes, this is real.

• Core idea: physical health and strength are Christian virtues. Leads to organizations like the YMCA. Also inserts Christian themes into adventure novels for boys.

• Gotta make sure Christian leaders aren’t feminine though (fyi, if you want to insult someone in this period – an ours too! – accuse them of acting like the wrong gender).

The Beefy Saint

Meanwhile, in Women’s suffrage

• FYI, women won’t get the right to vote until the 19th Amendment passes in 1920. Time out for WWI.

• Brief recap: In 1848, many women led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton came together in Seneca Falls, NY to write a “Declaration of Sentiments” demanding the right to vote. In 1871, 15th Amendment. Massive disappointment no universal suffrage.

• In 1890, National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) created, lead by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

• New strategies: Try to get suffrage on a state-by-state basis. Get own constitutional amendment (need 36 states)

Why women shouldn’t vote?• WOmEN Are IRRAtioNAL.

• Not educated enough.

• Women need to be at home, not corrupted by politics.

• Voting would make women like men: masculine. Ick.

• Women would get tired and pass out walking to the polling station (my favorite).

Anti-suffrage propaganda

Which way is best?• State-by-state approach somewhat successful. Women can

vote in local election in several Western states.

• Not fast enough for some suffragists. A separate party, the National Women’s Party, emerges and uses tactics like arrests, protests, and hunger strikes.

• Enduring question in all matters of civil rights: whether to accept victory piece by piece or push for more radical change.

An eye on national politics• Three Progressive presidents: Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson.

Taft is a one-termer, most of his work concerns business and tax reform. Wilson is a two-termer who is President when World War I starts (we will discuss him more after the first test).

• Utter failure of the progressives: despite wanting social reform, do absolutely nothing to ease racial tensions in the South. In fact, their concerns about immigration/moral panic inflame race relations. Belief in eugenics gives a scientific justification for discrimination (more about this later).

Recap• Industrialization causes widespread social transformations,

many affecting the way we think about how men and women should act.

• Idea that there are valuable/not valuable people in society. Not really new, but now has scientific justification and more legal force. Not surprisingly, those with the authority to make laws/create knowledge consider themselves most valuable.

• Fight for women’s suffrage is slow, but steady. Many states start to pass laws allow suffrage before WWI.