Sex Ed, Segregated: The Quest for Sexual Knowledge in Progressive-Era America by Courtney Q. Shah (review)

During the early twentieth century, Progressive reformers initiated and instigated a sexual revolution. Rejecting what they viewed as a Victorian “conspiracy of silence” around sex, reproduction, and sexually transmitted diseases, reformers called for a new approach to sex education. At the heart of this movement was the belief that children should receive sex education from “parents and trained teachers rather than playmates and unreliable persons.” Advocates for this new approach may have seen themselves as enlightened—yet their movement, rooted in the social purity activism of the previous century, did little to challenge existing perceptions of race, class, gender, and even the boundaries of what constituted “normal” sexual behavior.

In Sex Ed, Segregated: The Quest for Sexual Knowledge in Progressive-Era America, Courtney Shah argues that “hierarchies of white supremacy and patriarchy played a central role” in not only the creation of early twentieth-century, American sex education, but also the decision as to which groups should have access to this information. Progressive Era reformers’ earnest desire to use scientific knowledge to eradicate venereal disease, end prostitution, and strengthen American families may, as Shah points out, have been a product of a growing belief in the power of education, but it also reflected and was shaped by the eugenics movement.

Drawing on sources ranging from sex advice books, newspaper articles, and medical articles, Shah argues that the American sex education movement varied widely according to its intended audience. As a result, rather than empowering specific groups in America, such as African Americans or white working-class women, sex education reinforced existing power structures. Given the diversity of groups involved in promoting sex education in early twentieth-century America and the scale of their intended audiences, Shah’s book benefits from a loose chronological structure, one which enables the reader to easily follow the efforts of these diverse groups over time.

Early chapters explore the causes and implications of reformers’ failure to build a truly national sex education movement. Pointing out, for example, that membership in the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) was predominantly white, middle-class, native born, and from the Northeast, Shah argues that ASHA failed to obtain strong support in rural areas and the South. This is a provocative argument as it provides a contrast to scholarly arguments about other public health organizations; the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), an organization which took up ASHA’s challenge in the 1920s, for example, had a disproportionately large representation of physicians from the South. ASHA’s failure to create a truly national movement shaped its timid approach to sex education and ensured that the movement remained conservative in its views. Further hampering the movement was the failure to promote a truly inclusive sex education program for American schools. Here, however, Shah points out that even without the spectacular failure of a widely publicized attempt at sex education in Chicago’s schools, school-based sex education was riddled with problems, given the nation’s segregated school system.

Moving sex education out of schools and into character-building organizations—such as the YMCA, the Boy Scouts, and the Girl Scouts—held the promise of a greater and more diverse audience. The YMCA, after all, had African American chapters, although as Shah indicates, they were few in number and their outreach to boys was limited. While the efforts of community organizations had only a minimal impact in the very early twentieth century, Shah’s book might benefit from a discussion of the fact that character-building organizations did play a central role in later, federally funded, sex education programs. Beginning in World War I, the YMCA became the dominant player in a partnership with the USPHS. Together the YMCA, the USPHS created a truly national sex education campaign, one which targeted and ultimately reached millions of both...