Sex and the Civil War

Sex and the Civil War PDF Author: Judith Giesberg
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469631288
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
Civil War soldiers enjoyed unprecedented access to obscene materials of all sorts, including mass-produced erotic fiction, cartes de visite, playing cards, and stereographs. A perfect storm of antebellum legal, technological, and commercial developments, coupled with the concentration of men fed into armies, created a demand for, and a deluge of, pornography in the military camps. Illicit materials entered in haversacks, through the mail, or from sutlers; soldiers found pornography discarded on the ground, and civilians discovered it in abandoned camps. Though few examples survived the war, these materials raised sharp concerns among reformers and lawmakers, who launched campaigns to combat it. By the war's end, a victorious, resurgent American nation-state sought to assert its moral authority by redefining human relations of the most intimate sort, including the regulation of sex and reproduction—most evident in the Comstock laws, a federal law and a series of state measures outlawing pornography, contraception, and abortion. With this book, Judith Giesberg has written the first serious study of the erotica and pornography that nineteenth-century American soldiers read and shared and links them to the postwar reaction to pornography and to debates about the future of sex and marriage.

Sex and the Civil War

Sex and the Civil War PDF Author: Judith Giesberg
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469631288
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Get Book Here

Book Description
Civil War soldiers enjoyed unprecedented access to obscene materials of all sorts, including mass-produced erotic fiction, cartes de visite, playing cards, and stereographs. A perfect storm of antebellum legal, technological, and commercial developments, coupled with the concentration of men fed into armies, created a demand for, and a deluge of, pornography in the military camps. Illicit materials entered in haversacks, through the mail, or from sutlers; soldiers found pornography discarded on the ground, and civilians discovered it in abandoned camps. Though few examples survived the war, these materials raised sharp concerns among reformers and lawmakers, who launched campaigns to combat it. By the war's end, a victorious, resurgent American nation-state sought to assert its moral authority by redefining human relations of the most intimate sort, including the regulation of sex and reproduction—most evident in the Comstock laws, a federal law and a series of state measures outlawing pornography, contraception, and abortion. With this book, Judith Giesberg has written the first serious study of the erotica and pornography that nineteenth-century American soldiers read and shared and links them to the postwar reaction to pornography and to debates about the future of sex and marriage.

The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell

The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell PDF Author: Thomas P. Lowry
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811711536
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Explores the secret life of the men in blue and gray.

How Sex Became a Civil Liberty

How Sex Became a Civil Liberty PDF Author: Leigh Ann Wheeler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190206527
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
How Sex Became a Civil Liberty shows how we came to see sexual expression, sexual practice, and sexual privacy as fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, thanks to the work of ACLU leaders and attorneys who forged legal principles that advanced the sexual revolution.

American Sexual Politics

American Sexual Politics PDF Author: John C. Fout
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780226257853
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
Enacted by reformers, radicals, and reactionaries, the drama of American sexual politics since the Civil War is as diverse and unpredictable as the nation's citizenry. In this collection of sixteen essays, the shifting tensions between sexual reform and repression are seen in historical explorations of men's and women's sexuality, of the sexual-social dynamics of lesbians and gay men, of the violent repression of African-American sexuality. The broad range of methodological approaches and perspectives make this multidisciplinary anthology an exciting contribution to the history of sexuality. Included are Anthony S. Parent, Jr., and Susan Brown Wallace on childhood and sexual identity under slavery; Martha Hodes on white women and Black men in the South; Kevin J. Mumford on male sexual impotence and Victorian Culture; Jesse F. Battan on language, authority, and sexual desire; Joan Smith Iversen on the antipolygamy controversy, 1880-1890; Angus McLaren on sex radicalism in the Canadian Pacific Northwest, 1890-1920; Pamela S. Haag on ideologies of love, modern romance, and women's sexual subjectivity; Ann duCille on the novels of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen; Robyn Wiegman on the anatomy of lynching; Sonya Michel on sexuality in postwar films; Carole Joffe on abortion before legalization; Roy Cain on disclosure and secrecy among gay men; Joshua Gamson on condoms; Lillian Faderman on the return of butch and femme; Katherine Cummings on teaching AIDS; and Arthur Flannigan-Saint-Aubin on "black gay male" discourse. This diverse overview of American sexual politics will interest students and scholars of the history of sexuality, gender studies, women's studies, and gay studies. These essayspreviously appeared in the Journal of the History of Sexuality. John C. Fout is professor of history at Bard College and editor of the Journal of the History of Sexuality. He is also general editor of the Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society, published by the University of Chicago Press. Maura Shaw Tantillo is the managing editor of the Journal of the History of Sexuality.

Sex and War

Sex and War PDF Author: Malcolm Potts
Publisher: BenBella Books
ISBN: 1935251708
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
As news of war and terror dominates the headlines, scientist Malcolm Potts and veteran journalist Thomas Hayden take a step back to explain it all. In the spirit of Guns, Germs and Steel, Sex and War asks the basic questions: Why is war so fundamental to our species? And what can we do about it? Malcolm Potts explores these questions from the frontlines, as a witness to war-torn countries around the world. As a scientist and obstetrician, Potts has worked with governments and aid organizations globally, and in the trenches with women who have been raped and brutalized in the course of war. Combining their own experience with scientific findings in primatology, genetics, and anthropology, Potts and Hayden explain war's pivotal position in the human experience and how men in particular evolved under conditions that favored gang behavior, rape, and organized aggression. Drawing on these new insights, they propose a rational plan for making warfare less frequent and less brutal in the future. Anyone interested in understanding human nature, warfare, and terrorism at their most fundamental levels will find Sex and War to be an illuminating work, and one that might change the way they see the world.

Sex Wars

Sex Wars PDF Author: Marge Piercy
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060789832
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
Post–Civil War New York City is the battleground of the American dream. In this era of free love, emerging rights of women, and brutal sexual repression, Freydeh, a spirited young Jewish immigrant, toils at different jobs to earn passage to America for her family. Learning that her younger sister is adrift somewhere in the city, she begins a determined search that carries her from tenement to brothel to prison—as her story interweaves with those of some of the epoch's most notorious figures: Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Susan B. Anthony; sexual freedom activist Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president; and Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose censorship laws are still on the books. In the tradition of her bestselling World War II epic Gone to Soldiers, Marge Piercy once again re-creates a turbulent period in American history and explores changing attitudes in a land of sacrifice, suffering, promise, and reward.

Notorious in the Neighborhood

Notorious in the Neighborhood PDF Author: Joshua D. Rothman
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807827681
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Provides a history of interracial sexual relationships during the era of slavery.

Sex Ed, Segregated

Sex Ed, Segregated PDF Author: Courtney Q. Shah
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1580465358
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Demonstrates that the intersection between race, gender, and class formed the backbone of Progressive-Era debates over sex education, the policing of sexuality, and the prevention of venereal disease.

War and Sex

War and Sex PDF Author: John V. H. Dippel
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1616143134
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
Dippel reviews social circumstances leading up to conflicts from the American Civil War through the Vietnam War and the current clash with Islamic fundamentalists, and explores how tensions over gender roles affect men's willingness to go to war.

Gender and the Sectional Conflict

Gender and the Sectional Conflict PDF Author: Nina Silber
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469625768
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
In an insightful exploration of gender relations during the Civil War, Nina Silber compares broad ideological constructions of masculinity and femininity among Northerners and Southerners. She argues that attitudes about gender shaped the experiences of the Civil War's participants, including how soldiers and their female kin thought about their "causes" and obligations in wartime. Despite important similarities, says Silber, differing gender ideologies shaped the way each side viewed, participated in, and remembered the war. Silber finds that rhetoric on both sides connected soldiers' reasons for fighting to the women left at home. Consequently, although in different ways, women on both sides took up new roles to advance the wartime agenda. At the same time, both Northern and Southern women were accused of waning patriotism as the war dragged on, but their responses to such charges differed. Finally, noting that our postwar memories are often dominated by images of Southern belles, Silber considers why Northern women, despite their heroic contributions to the Union cause, have faded from Civil War memory. Silber's investigation offers a new understanding of how Unionists and Confederates perceived their reasons for fighting, of the new attitudes and experiences that women--black and white--on both sides took up, and of the very different ways that Northern and Southern women were remembered after the war ended.