We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

Lots and lots of interesting case studies, not the best prose style.

From a letter to the editor of the Portland News, 1912: "This old story about more wages because she wears men's clothes is not the main part of the drama at all. There is many a good man who would marry such a woman as Nell Pickerell [aka Harry Allen], but she will not have it that way." (p 30) Would there actually be that many men happy to marry a woman who had served multiple prison sentences and given birth to an illegitimate child? I mean, maybe, there was a heavy gender imbalance in the American west.

"A quick search through this newspaper [the Idaho Statesman] reveals no fewer than forty stories related to cross-dressing appearing between 1890 and [1908]." (p 205 n33)

"Often western women sex-workers wore men's clothing as by custom it provided an indication to others of the wearer's occupation. Among such women were the nine prostitutes of the Williams Creek district of western Canada's Cariboo gold rush who, according to an 1862 news item, put on "great airs" when they would "dress in male attire and swagger through the saloons and mining camps with cigars or huge quids of tobacco in their mouths, cursing and swearing, and look like anything but the angels in petticoats heaven intended them to be."" (p 35) [emphasis mine] Note how class and gender are conflated here--the suggestion is not just that they should dress like women but that all women are naturally the innocent middle-class angel in the house.

M, an MTF case study in "Transvestism: A Contribution to the Study of the Psychology of Sex" by Bernard S. Talmey: "When "so dressed [as a woman], I can always think more logically, feel less encumbered, solve difficult problems in a manner next to impossible under any other conditions."" (p 61)

"By the turn of the twentieth century Americans had gained an international reputation for, as the German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld put it, blaming "one or the other ethnic group for homosexuality."" (p 147) This is in the course of a discussion of how the Chinese Exclusion Act and various laws prohibiting interracial marriage prevented Chinese-American men from forming heterosexual families. (Canada was doing the exact same thing, incidentally.)

Chapter 5 spends a lot of time talking about "the apparent spread of prostitution, public indecency, and other transgressive sexual activities as the nineteenth century advanced" (p 168). Which, I assume, had a lot to do with the spread of literacy, urbanization, and the popular press, and makes an interesting comparison to how mass media, social media, and population growth now is making it look like the world is getting worse and worse, whatever your definition of "worse" is.

Also, wow, you don't realize how quickly Lamarckism was wrapped up into evolutionary theory to help out eugenics.
... In other words, we have reached the "fucking assholes" part of any history of sexuality. I may not have much to say about the rest of this book except swearing.

That said, "Viraginity and Effemination" should be the name of a queer bookstore. Or a zine.

The educational reformer Horace Mann tried to explain the feminization of the teaching profession in terms of women's natural proclivities. A woman was suited to working with young children, Mann claimed, because "she holds her commission from nature. In the well-developed female character there is always a preponderance of affection over intellect." But few women teachers saw the work that way. They often complained about their pupils' stupidity, loudness, and disinterest. Most women did not become teachers from a great desire to spend their days with children—they could achieve that goal by following the typical path of marriage and motherhood. ... Serving as a teacher offered middling-class young women a window of time in which to earn wages, live apart from their families, pursue intellectual interests, and still preserve their good names.

--Rachel Hope Cleves, Charity & Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America

In other words, 19th century women chose to teach because it was the option that meant they didn't have to deal with children 24 hours a day. Later on Cleves describes how outside of class times "the schoolhouse devoid of children" was a space where Charity Bryant could write and correspond with her friends without interruptions (unlike her father's house). (The circle of poetry-writing women Charity participated in in early 19thC Massachusetts actually sounds a lot like fandom, with Charity as something of a BNF, writing for her friends' effusive praise and having poems dedicated to her, but the book's gone back to the library now so I can't quote it.) ETA: breathedout has one of the relevant passages here.

But censure is perhaps inevitable: for some are so ignorant, that they grow sullen and silent, and are chilled with horror at the sight of anything that nears the semblance of learning, in whatever shape it may appear; and should the spectre appear in the shape of woman, the pangs which they suffer are truly dismal.

-- Elizabeth Fulhame, An essay on combustion, with a view to a new art of dying and painting: wherein the phlogistic and antiphlogistic hypotheses are proved erroneous.

(Part One)

America was the only country in WWI which did not supply its soldiers with condoms. Instead they got education on moral hygiene and post-exposure chemical prophylaxis, which didn’t work (and was also extremely painful).

That said, about 5.6% of drafted men entering the Army had VD. Before the war this would have disqualified them; once they started drafting people and realized the disease rates that rule was quietly discarded. The propaganda, of course, still blamed licentious European prostitutes.

Soldiers were required to seek prophylaxis after exposure, so contracting VD was punishable by court martial. As a result, most of them just used condoms anyway. (They could get them from the rest of the Allies … who were buying from American manufacturers.)

The Bureau of Medicine and Surgery claimed until the 30s that chemical prophylaxis had a nearly 100% success rate - this and the inaccurate gynecological knowledge from earlier make you wonder what modern doctors are getting horribly terribly wrong.

What I’m getting from this book is that abstinence-only sex ed is a specifically American idea, and a very old one. I guess because everyone else exported their Puritans there. (Not saying that other countries don’t discourage nonmarital sex; just that they are willing to acknowledge it happens.)

Tone argues that the fact that WWI made people actually talk about VD led to greater acceptance of (male) sexuality, and in 1918 physician-prescribed birth control was legalized for the prevention of disease (and life-threatening pregnancies) only. This was in the trial of Margaret Sanger’s first clinic; she tried to argue that women had a right to have nonprocreative sex but this was ignored (there was also an earlyish example of eugenic thought).

Anyway, the immediate result was a whole bunch of condoms for sale (to men) everywhere, labelled “for the prevention of disease only,” which V. F. Calverton called “an intelligent adaptation to an unintelligent morality.” (108)

And eventually in the 1930s the army started distributing condoms to soldiers, having changed its sex ed philosophy from “Real Men are chaste and continent” to “Obviously Real Men cannot be expected to control their sex drives.” As of 1937, the FDA started quality testing them.

I found out why Dutch caps were called Dutch caps! Dutch physician Aletta Jacobs’s work promoting the made-in-Holland Mensinga diaphragm. I still don’t know why condoms were “French”, except of course that everything to do with sex was French.

Wow, you can just watch Margaret Sanger and other medical professionals (in this area mostly female) building up the authority of the mainstream medical profession. I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing, but it’s certainly a thing.

“Feminine hygiene” was a term coined by advertisers who still couldn’t legally say “birth control.” And it made up 85% of American contraception sales in 1938. Tone seems to assume that “feminine hygiene” always mean birth control in this period, and does show that the idea that it was needed comes from Victorian and later reframing of sperm as germs to get past the censors, but lots of people today use douches for “hygiene” and I don’t think that’s entirely an invented desire.

In the 1930s 70% of Americans supported medical birth control.

But birth control clinics were understaffed, concentrated in urban areas, and completely incapable of keeping up with the demand. And also lots of women were uncomfortable discussing it with doctors, but mail order was discreet and Lysol had lots of non-contraceptive uses. (Also, doctors were frequently untrained in contraception and unlikely to help unmarried women.)

That said, advertisers were totally happy to use spurious medical authority. Door-to-door saleswomen claimed to be nurses, and Lysol published a series of “Frank Talks with [Nonexistent] Eminent Female Physicians.” Again, respectable periodicals refused to publish advertisements for actual birth control, but “feminine hygiene” was okay, even if the ad copy was not at all subtle about its purpose.

And, this being the mid-20thc, the hypothetical tormented wives in the ads weren’t worried about economics, or careers, or their physical health. No, it was how will you appeal to your husband, once the “natural strains of marriage” take their toll on your appearance? And if you’re worried and irritable all the time, well, no wonder if he leaves you.

And since the manufacturers never actually said they were selling birth control, once it failed or caused horrible chemical burns you couldn’t sue them. At least, you couldn’t sue the huge companies, but regulators were happy to shut down small businesses.

Both the AMA and the FDA refused to condemn Lysol etc., even after the FDA started testing condoms. Pregnancy wasn’t a disease, so prevention of it wasn’t the FDA’s business. The AMA told women who asked them about birth control to talk to their family physicians, because they couldn’t discuss it through the mail.

“It is a common saying in the drug trade that the sale of condoms pays the store rent.” (Norman Himes, 1936, qtd. on pg. 190)

In 1882 Julius Schmidt was a homeless disabled German Jewish immigrant. In 1890 he was prosecuted by Anthony Comstock for selling condoms. In 1940 he was one of the largest condom manufacturers in the country and his products were endorsed by the US Army.

Youngs Rubber (Trojan) emphasized their reputability by saying they sold only to drugstores (as opposed to other condoms, which were offered by shoeshiners and bellhops and street peddlers) and tested all of their products. However, they had all this merchandise hanging around that had failed the tests … so they sold those to whoever wanted them as manufacturer’s seconds.

And a lot of customers didn’t bother paying extra for first quality manufacturer-tested condoms, and just tested them themselves at home.

All of these companies employed large numbers of women. The factory workers, and especially the saleswomen pretending to be nurses - and thus middle class - who were they? How did their jobs fit with the expectations that “nice” girls didn’t know anything about sex?

Due to the Hardwicke Marriage Law of 1753 and the New Poor Law of 1834′s Bastardy Clause, the legal status of women in England became significantly worse than it had been in the early 18th century. The Marriage Law meant that men could not be required to support their spouse if the marriage was not legal, and made engagements less legally binding, and the Poor Law removed the requirement that men support their illegitimate children as well.

(Previously, parish authorities had been all for men taking responsibility for their children, because that meant they didn’t have to.)

Consanguineous marriages were voidable, but not actually void unless challenged in court during the spouses’ lives. That is, although the marriage was illegal, the children were legitimate if their parents died without a court case declaring that they weren’t.

“Men and women had to write [wills] carefully; courts assumed that the word ‘children’ referred to legitimate ones only, with rare exceptions. In addition, the common law assumed that a contract given to support future illegitimate children was against public policy (encouraging the birth of illegitimates) and was therefore void. Only settlements written after the birth of children, and specifically mentioning those children, stood.” (23) That is, you could write a will leaving your property to “all of my children” and the courts would not actually give it to all of your children.

Also, one of the things men in not-technically-legal marriages objected to the most was that they had to use their wife’s maiden name on official paperwork. This really bothered them.

In Scotland it was easier to get a divorce than in England, but English courts did not recognize Scottish divorces; so a child of a subsequent marriage could be legitimate in Scotland but illegitimate in England (and therefore unable to inherit English property).

People assumed that a bigamy trial counted as a divorce. Prisoner: So I can get married again once I get out of prison, right? Judge: *facepalm*

Some couples (including working class couples) actually tried to draw up their own divorce contracts, where they agreed they were free to remarry; the courts did not accept these.

People, especially women, insisted on marriage ceremonies even knowing they were illegal; I wonder if (as well as the obvious desire for propriety) the women hoped that having gone through the ceremony meant their husbands would be more likely to support them, or more likely to be forced to support them if they were deserted. (Legally, it didn’t.)

Because a married woman’s property was actually the property of her husband (until 1882), if she left him she or her lover could be charged with the theft of whatever she took with her.

So you know Mary Elizabeth Braddon? Author of Lady Audley’s Secret, the novel about how bigamy is horrible and awful and probably leads to murder, even if your husband literally walked out on you and your child and moved to Australia? That Mary Elizabeth Braddon? Yeah, it turns out she lived for over a decade with her publisher John Maxwell while his wife was in an insane asylum. You’d think they’d have mentioned that in 19th Century Literature.

Weird case of Richard Carlile, who wrote a book on birth control (in 1826, btw) and then had five children with his wife and four children with his partner Eliza Sharples, even though he couldn’t afford to support them and he resented Sharples’s focusing on her children instead of radical philosophy.

It’s surprising the number of people who were very clear about the fact that their problem with, for example, Marian Evans (George Eliot) and George Henry Lewes wasn’t the cohabiting or the adultery, but specifically that they were open about it. (In many cases because it would ~*hurt the (free-thinking/feminist/etc) movement*~ if there was any scandal.)

“The Randolphs were ostracised for being too radical on the one side, and not progressive enough on the other.” (202) Now where have I seen that before?

Man, Françoise Lafitte sounds awesome. (Wikipedia only mentions her as Havelock Ellis’s “companion.” You can download an article by Frost about her here.)

Basically, the definition of marriage is about as fixed as for any other social construct. But the vast majority of the people in this book would not have said they were cohabiting. They called themselves married (many had in fact had weddings), and the fact that the government disagreed didn’t change that.

Mary Wortley Montagu

At length, by so much importunity press’d,
Take, C——, at once, the inside of my breast;
This stupid indiff’rence so often you blame,
Is not owing to nature, to fear, or to shame:
I am not as cold as a virgin in lead,
Nor is Sunday’s sermon so strong in my head:
I know but too well how time flies along,
That we live but few years, and yet fewer are young.

But I hate to be cheated, and never will buy
Long years of repentance for moments of joy,
Oh! was there a man (but where shall I find
Good sense and good nature so equally join’d?)
Would value his pleasure, contribute to mine;
Not meanly would boast, nor would lewdly design;
Not over severe, yet not stupidly vain,
For I would have the power, tho’ not give the pain.

No pedant, yet learned; no rake-helly gay,
Or laughing, because he has nothing to say;
To all my whole sex obliging and free,
Yet never be fond of any but me;
In public preserve the decorum that’s just,
And shew in his eyes he is true to his trust;
Then rarely approach, and respectfully bow,
But not fulsomely pert, nor yet foppishly low.

But when the long hours of public are past,
And we meet with champagne and a chicken at last,
May ev’ry fond pleasure that moment endear;
Be banish’d afar both discretion and fear!
Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd,
He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud.
Till lost in the joy, we confess that we live,
And he may be rude, and yet I may forgive.

And that my delight may be solidly fix’d,
Let the friend and the lover be handsomely mix’d;
In whose tender bosom my soul may confide,
Whose kindness can soothe me, whose counsel can guide.
From such a dear lover as here I describe,
No danger should fright me, no millions should bribe;
But till this astonishing creature I know,
As I long have liv’d chaste, I will keep myself so.

I never will share with the wanton coquette,
Or be caught by a vain affectation of wit.
The toasters and songsters may try all their art,
But never shall enter the pass of my heart.
I loath the lewd rake, the dress’d fopling despise:
Before such pursuers the nice virgin flies:
And as Ovid has sweetly in parable told,
We harden like trees, and like rivers grow cold.

H. D.

All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the luster as of olives
where she stands,
And the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

Greece sees unmoved,
God’s daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.

don marquis

well boss
mehitabel the cat
has reappeared in her old
haunts with a
flock of kittens
three of them this time

archy she says to me
yesterday
the life of a female
artist is continually
hampered what in hell
have i done to deserve
all these kittens

i look back on my life
and it seems to me to be
just one damned kitten
after another
i am a dancer archy
and my only prayer
is to be allowed
to give my best to my art
but just as i feel
that i am succeeding
in my life work
along comes another batch
of these damned kittens
it is not archy
that i am shy on mother love
god knows i care for
the sweet little things
curse them
but am i never to be allowed
to live my own life
i have purposely avoided
matrimony in the interests
of the higher life
but i might just
as well have been a domestic
slave for all the freedom
i have gained
i hope none of them
gets run over by
an automobile
my heart would bleed
if anything happened
to them and i found it out
but it isn t fair archy
it isn t fair
these damned tom cats have all
the fun and freedom
if i was like some of these
green eyed feline vamps i know
i would simply walk out on the
bunch of them and
let them shift for themselves
but i am not that kind
archy i am full of mother love
my kindness has always
been my curse
a tender heart is the cross i bear
self sacrifice always and forever
is my motto damn them
i will make a home
for the sweet innocent
little things
unless of course providence
in his wisdom should remove
them they are living
just now in an abandoned
garbage can just behind
a made over stable in greenwich
village and if it rained
into the can before i could
get back and rescue them
i am afraid the little
dears might drown
it makes me shudder just
to think of it
of course if i were a family cat
they would probably
be drowned anyhow
sometimes i think
the kinder thing would be
for me to carry the
sweet little things
over to the river
and drop them in myself
but a mother s love archy
is so unreasonable
something always prevents me
these terrible
conflicts are always
presenting themselves
to the artist
the eternal struggle
between art and life archy
is something fierce
yes something fierce
my what a dramatic life i have lived
one moment up the next
moment down again
but always gay archy always gay
and always the lady too
in spite of hell
well boss it will
be interesting to note
just how mehitabel
works out her present problem
a dark mystery still broods
over the manner
in which the former
family of three kittens
disappeared
one day she was taking to me
of the kittens
and the next day when i asked
her about them
she said innocently
what kittens
interrogation point
and that was all
i could ever get out
of her on the subject
we had a heavy rain
right after she spoke to me
but probably that garbage can
leaks so the kittens
have not yet
been drowned

archy

Empanel, or, John Watson may have made a mistake

I don't usually write about Irene Adler because as far as I can tell her story is done as far as it relates to Holmes. She's off having adventures with her barrister husband who thinks she's the best thing since sliced bread, rather than showing up in London to annoy Holmes.

But there are reasons why she might want to, when you think about it.