Against Obscenity: Reform and the Politics of Womanhood in America, 1873-1935 (review)

Historian Leigh Ann Wheeler meticulously traces an understudied but important area of women's activism in during the early-twentieth-century. Men may have dominated the anti-obscenity reform movement from the late nineteenth century to about 1910 and then again after the mid 1930s, but women owned the time in between. During this era of tremendous cultural, political, and economic change, women such as Catheryne Cooke Gilman, one of the founders of the Minneapolis Women's Cooperative Alliance and a member of the National Parents and Teachers Association, and Alice Ames Winter, head of the powerful General Federation of Women's Clubs and founder of the Minneapolis Woman's Club, articulated the contours of anti-obscenity reform.

It was a difficult battle and one that exposed the growing fractures in what Wheeler calls the "politics of womanhood," an assumption of female activists that women "shared a superior moral sensibility that would unite them to protect children by condemning obscenity and commending sex education." (2) By 1935, it was clear to women reformers that the myth of female unity for a common cause had fallen flat. Women may have wanted to clean up the cultural temptations of the modern age—especially the movies that were becoming increasingly popular in the 1920s—yet differed on how to define what was obscene and what was not. More problematic was the question of method: what was the best way to ensure that nothing inappropriate, particularly for children, slipped through? Outright censorship? Reviewing films locally and then giving a seal of approval, or not? Federal regulation? Working with the film industry (and William Hays) to create "better films?" These splits eventually opened the way for the male led Catholic Legion of Decency to assume control of the movement by 1935.

One of Wheeler's most interesting chapters examines women reformers and an approach they used to battle obscenity in the wider culture: sex education. As she notes, sex education was nothing new, but turn of the century advice geared toward males focused on the negative aspects of sex, especially venereal disease, and usually advocated celibacy. Female reformers took a different approach. In the wake of World War I, alliance women in Minneapolis worked closely with the U.S. Public Health Service to distribute social hygiene information to families, but they soon considered the focus on sexually transmitted diseases too narrow. Sex education, in the alliance's eyes, needed to reach mothers and children. Women reformers committed themselves to a tireless campaign of providing written information, conducting workshops about sex education, and discussing concerns with families. By 1922, they had reached "a remarkable 75 percent of all Minneapolis mothers." (120) Reformers believed that children were going to be exposed to sex in the modern culture no matter what happened. It was up to the parents, then, to determine where the child would receive that information (or misinformation). If parents, armed with knowledge from the alliance, could provide accurate advice to their children, then those children would not be so easily influenced by those with, as the alliance warned, "distorted minds or sordid interests." (121)

Wheeler's impressively researched study is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of anti-obscenity reform and women's activism in general.