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Rethinking Sexuality in the Progressive Era1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Catherine Cocks
Affiliation:
School of American Research

Extract

The contemporary politicization of sexualities has deep roots in the previous fin de siècle. Then as now, conflicts over sex acts and sexual identities were central points of articulation in a wide-ranging struggle over just how to produce, reproduce, and embody a moral and humane society. Like scholars of other western, industrialized nations, historians of the United States have identified the turn of the twentieth century as an important period of change in sexual ideology and practice. For decades, the chief framework for understanding this watershed has been a transition from “Victorian” to “modern” mores. One of the most sophisticated renderings of this transition appears in John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman's Intimate Matters, a comprehensive survey of U.S. sexual history. The authors identify a shift from family- and reproduction-oriented sexual practices to “sexual liberalism,” the idea that sexual preferences and pleasures stand at the center of individual selfhood.

Type
Essays
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2006

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References

2 D'Emilio, John and Freedman, Estelle, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1997)Google Scholar. For analyses relying on the Victorian-to-modern transition, see, for instance, Burnham, John C., “The Progressive-Era Revolution in American Attitudes Toward SexJournal of American History 59 (March 1973): 885908CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Erenberg, Lewis, Steppin' Out:New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890-1930 (Chicago, 1981)Google Scholar; Gay, Peter, Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815-1914 (New York, 2002)Google Scholar, in some ways a synopsis of Gay's, five-volume The Bourgeois ExperienceGoogle Scholar; and Langum, David J., Crossing over the Line: Legislating Morality and the Mann Act (Chicago, 1994)Google Scholar.

3 DuCille, Ann, “‘Othered’ Matters: Reconceptualizing Dominance and Difference in the History of Sexuality in America,” journal of the History of Sexuality 1 (1990): 102–27Google ScholarPubMed, inspired this point.

4 With apologies to Bruno Latour, the tide of whose We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Porter, Catherine (Cambridge, MA, 1993; orig. Paris, 1991)Google Scholar, I borrow and revise here with somewhat similar but far more modest intentions.

5 Foucault, Michel, History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction (New York, 1980), 10-12, 1735Google Scholar.

6 The exception to this statement are many works in the history of medicine, which I reluctantly excluded for this reason when I realized I could not possibly read everything in the time available. But see Brumberg, Joan Jacobs, The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls (New York, 1998)Google Scholar; for critiques of medical and scientific research on sexuality, see Fausto-Sterling, Anne, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New York, 2000)Google Scholar, and Oudshoorn, Nelly, Beyond the Natural Body: An Archaeology of Sex Hormones (New York, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Weeks, Jeffrey, Making Sexual History (Cambridge, UK, 2000), 127–41Google Scholar; Foucault, , History of Sexuality, Volume IGoogle Scholar; Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York, 1993), 123Google Scholar; Katz, Jonathan Ned, in Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality (Oxford, 2001)Google Scholar, rejects the repressive hypothesis and endorses social constructionism yet also celebrates the diminishing repression that gay men face in the U.S. This position is both contradictoryand absolutely necessary; the idea that sexualities are socially constructed does not mean that all are equal or equally satisfying.

8 Buder, , Bodies that Matter, and her earlier Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, 1990)Google Scholar. Along with Weeks and Foucault in note 7, useful entrees into the theoretical literature include Halberstam, Judith, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC, 1998)Google Scholar; Stoler, Ann Laura, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, NC, 1995)Google Scholar; Lancaster, Roger N. and Leonardo, Micaela di, eds., The Gender/Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy (New York, 1997)Google Scholar ; and Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley, 1990)Google Scholar.

9 It's worth repeating that the Foucaultian critique of the “repressive hypothesis” rejects the idea of an officially enforced silence and ignorance in the nineteenth century, not the idea that authorities sought to control sexuality by selectively silencing some or punishing certain acts. The opposite of repression is not freedom. Foucault's point is that the official discourse produces sexuality as a normative category of subjective experience rather than represses a natural instinct. It produces and punishes deviance in the same process in which it sanctions normalcy; see Butler, , Bodies that Matter, 1415Google Scholar. On the importance of listening for silences, see Hine, Darlene Clark, “Rape and the Inner lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance,” Unequal Sisters: A Multi-Cultural Reader in U.S. Women's History, ed. DuBois, Ellen Carol and Ruiz, Vicki L. (New York, 1990), 292–97Google Scholar.

10 The literature of the Progressive Era and the 1920s notably often provides grist for literary scholars and philosophers interested in sexuality; Butler, for example, uses the works of Willa Cather and Nella Larsen to ground her argument in Bodies That Matter, 143-86. To the extent that there is any history behind such uses, it is generally a Foucault-inflected version of the transition from an anti-female Victorianism to a problematic modern sexual liberalism

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18 See the sources in note 16; also Brandt, Allan M., No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States since 1880, rev. ed. (New York, 1987): 52121Google Scholar; Briggs, Laura, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley, 2002), 2173Google Scholar; Moran, , Teaching Sex, 2367Google Scholar; Carter, Julian B., “Birds, Bees, and Venereal Disease: Toward an Intellectual History of Sex Education,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 10 (April 2001): 213–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wheeler, , Against Obscenity, passimGoogle Scholar; Stansell, Christine, American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century (New York, 2000), 236–40Google Scholar; Kevles, Daniel J., In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge, MA, 1985): 4169Google Scholar; Kline, Wendy, Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom (Berkeley, 2001)Google Scholar; Larsen, Edward J., Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South (Baltimore, 1995)Google Scholar.

19 Horowitz, , Rereading SexGoogle Scholar; she details the four tendencies on pp. 5-7.

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21 For examples, see Boag, Peter, Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest (Berkeley, 2003), 186Google Scholar; Wood, , Freedom of the Streets, 132–57Google Scholar; see also Dubinsky, Karen, Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880-1929 (Chicago, 1993)Google Scholar.

22 Peiss, , Cheap Amusements, 8Google Scholar.

23 Gabbert, Ann R., “Prostitution and Moral Reform in the Borderlands: El Paso, 1890-1920,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 12 (October 2003): 575604CrossRefGoogle Scholar, largely assimilates this atypical city to the national “norm”; more persuasively, Ullman, Sharon R., Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America (Berkeley, 1997)Google Scholar; Boag, , Same-Sex AffairsGoogle Scholar; and Wood, , Freedom of the Streets,Google Scholar locate the cities of Sacramento, Portland, and Davenport within mobile circuits of labor, commercial amusements, and newly emerging ideas about sex, sex work, class, and gender. On cross-class relations among women, see Alexander, , The “Girl” ProblemGoogle Scholar, and Kunzel, , Fallen Women, Problem GirlsGoogle Scholar. Hodes, Martha, ed., Sex, hove, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History (New York, 1999)Google Scholar, foregrounds the comparative not only by examining relations across the color line but also by including essays on a wide range of social groups.

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25 Horowitz, , Rereading Sex, 57Google Scholar; Wood, both, Freedom of the StreetsGoogle Scholar, and Dubinsky, , Improper AdvancesGoogle Scholar, show all the assumptions of vernacular sexuality at work in allegations and trials for rape.

26 Chauncey, , Gay New York, 72Google Scholar, points out the lack of research on ethnic minorities; see also Rosen, , The Lost Sisterhood, 139Google Scholar; Ewen, Elizabeth, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars: Life and Culture on the Lower East Side, 1890-1925 (New York, 1985), 4247Google Scholar; Diner, Hasia, Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, 1983), 16-29, 114–19Google Scholar; Sanchez, George J., Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York, 1993), 99-104, 129–50Google Scholar; Yung, Judy, “The Social Awakening of Chinese American Women as Reported in Chung Sai Yat Po,” in Unequal Sisters, 195207Google Scholar; Stansell, , American Moderns, 120–44Google Scholar; Sears, , The Sex RadicalsGoogle Scholar, and Spurlock, John C., Free Love: Marriage and Middle-Class Radicalism in America, 1825-1860 (New York, 1988)Google Scholar, document the American libertarian-anarchist critique of marriage.

27 Chauncey, , Gay New YorkGoogle Scholar; Chudacoff, Howard, The Age of the Bachelor: Creating an American Subculture (Princeton, 1999)Google Scholar; Stansell, , American Moderns, 225308Google Scholar.

28 Marsh, Margaret, “Suburban Men and Masculine Domesticity, 1870-1915,”Google Scholar and Griswold, Robert L., “Divorce and the Legal Redefinition of Victorian Manhood,” in Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, ed. Carnes, Mark C. and Griffen, Clyde (Chicago, 1990), 111-27 and 96-110Google Scholar, respectively; Griswold explicidy argues that not feminism but a reconfigured patriarchy governed changes in husbands' prerogatives. See also Stansell, , American Moderns, 225308Google Scholar; Peiss, , Cheap Amusements, 2129Google Scholar. Except for the equivocal evidence in Mosher's survey that twentieth-century, middle-class, married white women enjoyed sex more than their nineteenth-century sisters, we know little about how an emergent sexual liberalism translated into marital relations; see Stearns, and Stearns, , “Victorian Sexuality,”Google Scholar and Lunbeck, “‘New Generation.’” On the structural imperatives supporting heterosexuality, including marriage, see Berlant, Lauren and Warner, Michael, “Sex in Public,” in Intimacy, ed. Berlant, Lauren (Chicago, 2000), 311–30Google Scholar.

29 Many of the best-known and agenda-setting works cast Manhattan as epitome and bellwether for the nation: Horowitz, , Rereading SexGoogle Scholar, Gilfoyle, Timothy, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialisation of Sex, 1790-1920 (New York, 1992)Google Scholar; Stansell, Christine, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (New York, 1986)Google Scholar and American Moderns; Peiss, , Cheap AmusementsGoogle Scholar; and Chauncey, George, Gay New YorkGoogle Scholar. A few examine other large cities: Meyerowitz, , Women Adrift, on ChicagoGoogle Scholar; on Francisco, San, Shah, Nayan, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown (Berkeley, 2001), 77104Google Scholar; Long, Alecia P., The Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in New Orleans, 1865-1920 (Baton Rouge, LA, 2004)Google Scholar, on New Orleans; Wheeler, , Against Obscenity, on MinneapolisGoogle Scholar. Earlier works, such as Haller, and Haller, , The Physician and Victorian SexualityGoogle Scholar, Degler, , At OddsGoogle Scholar; Gordon, , Woman's BodyGoogle Scholar, Rosen, , Lost SisterhoodGoogle Scholar, claim national scope, and Hobson, , Uneasy VirtueGoogle Scholar, offers an international comparison. A growing number of works now treat smaller cities, including Ullman, Sex Seen, on Sacramento, California; Boag, , Same-Sex AffairsGoogle Scholar, on Pordand, Oregon; and Wood, Freedom of the Streets, on Davenport, Iowa. On the rural South, see Howard, John, Men Like That: A Southern Queer History (Chicago, 1999)Google Scholar, and Ownby, Ted, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1990)Google Scholar; work on other cities and rural areas exists in the periodical literature. See Dubinsky, , Improper Advances, 143–62Google Scholar, on perceptions and reality of sexual safety in rural Ontario, Canada.

30 Erdman, Andrew L., Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals and the Mass Marketing of Amusement, 1895-1915 (Jefferson, NC, 2004), 83126Google Scholar; Ullman, , Sex Seen, 4571Google Scholar; Long, , Great Southern Babylon, 60101Google Scholar; Wheeler, , Against Obscenity, movie tide: 20, and passimGoogle Scholar; see also Mizejewski, Linda, Ziegfeld Girl: Image and Icon in Culture and Cinema (Durham, NC, 1999)Google Scholar, and May, Lary, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (New York, 1980), 96146Google Scholar.

31 Peiss, , Cheap AmusementsGoogle Scholar, is among the few who raise the question explicitly; Lunbeck, , “‘A New Generation,’” 540n2Google Scholar, notes the lack of information about sexual change in the working class; Bailey, Beth, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore, 1988)Google Scholar; see also Erenberg, , Steppin' OutGoogle Scholar, Meyerowitz, , Women AdriftGoogle Scholar, Chudacoff, , Age of the BachelorGoogle Scholar, and, for the 1920s, Fass, Paula, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New York, 1977)Google Scholar.

32 Davidson, Arnold I., The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the Formation of Concepts (Cambridge, MA, 2001)Google Scholar, exemplifies the strengths and weaknesses of focusing exclusively on medical writings; D'Emilio, , “Capitalism and Gay Identity,” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Abelove, Henry, Barale, Michele Aina, and Halperin, David M. (New York, 1993): 467–76Google Scholar; Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, “Female Worlds of Love and Ritual”Google Scholar; Chauncey, , Gay New YorkGoogle Scholar; Katz, , hove Stories and The Invention of Heterosexuality (New York, 1996)Google Scholar; Faderman, , Odd GirlsGoogle Scholar; Vicinus, Martha, “‘They Wonder to Which Sex I Belong’: The Historical Roots of Modern Lesbian Identity,” Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, 432–52Google Scholar, and Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928 (Chicago, 2004)Google Scholar; Gustav-Wrathall, John Donald, Take the Young Stranger by the Hand: Same-Sex Relations and the YMCA (Chicago, 1998)Google Scholar; Boag, , Same-Sex AffairsGoogle Scholar; Duggan, , Sapphic SlashersGoogle Scholar; Abelove, Henry, “Freud, Male Homosexuality, and the Americans,” in Gay and Lesbian Studies Reader, 381-93Google Scholar; Weeks, Jeffrey, “Movements of Affirmation: Sexual Meanings and Homosexual Identities,” in Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, 7086Google Scholar; Hansen, Bert, “‘American Physicians’ ‘Discovery’ of Homosexuals, 1880-1900: A New Diagnosis in a Changing Society,” in Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural History ed. Rosenberg, Charles E. and Golden, Janet (New Brunswick, NJ, 1992), 104–33Google Scholar; Bullough, Vern, Science in the bedroom (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Terry, Jennifer and Urla, Jacqueline, eds., Deviant bodiesGoogle Scholar; Rosario, Vernon A., ed., Science and Homosexualities (New York, 1997)Google Scholar; Bland, Lucy and Doan, Laura, eds., Sexology in Culture: Labelling [sic/ bodies and Desires (Chicago, 1998)Google Scholar; Somerville, , Queering the Color LineGoogle Scholar; Stokes, , The Color of Sex.Google Scholar

33 Gustav-Wrathall, , Take the Young Stranger, 70115Google Scholar; Vicinus, , Intimate Friends, 113–42Google Scholar; Cott, , Grounding, 143–74Google Scholar. Most scholars take the role of youths in pioneering sexual change for granted, assuming the power of natural urges among adolescents. Given social expectations that young people, especially men, would be sexually curious and should properly be seeking marriage partners, it is not surprising to find plentiful records of adult anxieties about youth sexual practices and fond or guilty accounts of pre-marital activities. However, much evidence suggests that married couples determined to limit childbearing contributed far more construction of age as we are of other categories.

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35 Non-white travelers typically had very different understandings of the politics of their presence and the meaning of U.S. rule, but they could not evade the consequences of imperial sexuality. The literature on contemporary sex tourism is extensive, but historians have only recendy begun to address it, with the notable exception of treatments of 1920s Harlem; see Lewis, David Levering, When Harlem Was in Vogue (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Heap, Chad C., “‘Slumming’: Sexuality, Race, and Urban Commercial Leisure, 1900-1940” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2000)Google Scholar; Mumford, Kevin J., Intercoms: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (New York, 1997)Google Scholar; Schwartz, Rosalie, Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba (Lincoln, NE, 1997)Google Scholar; Chauncey, , Gay New York, 3641Google Scholar; Cocks, Catherine, “Climate and Character,” unpublished paper presented at the American Society for Environmental History/National Council on Public History conference, 2004Google Scholar, and “Eternal Summer: Tourism, Nature, and the Sexual Revolution, 1880-1920,” unpublished paper presented at the American Studies Association conference, 2004Google Scholar.

36 Wood, , Freedom of the Streets, offers a particularly effective portrayal of this social outlookGoogle Scholar.

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40 Satter, , Every Mind a Kingdom, is a good exampleGoogle Scholar. The conflation is at once a strength of her study-women don't just seek sexual satisfaction, they seek power-and a weakness; she doesn't address sexuality or the problem of the body for women as directiy as she might.