1 / 21

Gender & Sexuality in 20 th Century America

Gender & Sexuality in 20 th Century America. Dr. Joanne Passet Indiana University East 11/11/2011. Women’s History: Stages. Compensatory —delighted to discover the women Contribution —how have women contributed to events already studied from a male perspective?

erasto
Download Presentation

Gender & Sexuality in 20 th Century America

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Gender & Sexuality in 20th Century America Dr. Joanne Passet Indiana University East 11/11/2011

  2. Women’s History: Stages • Compensatory—delighted to discover the women • Contribution—how have women contributed to events already studied from a male perspective? • Rewrite the Narrative—reconstruct historical generalizations • Understand gender as a social construction Gerda Lerner

  3. Linda Gordon

  4. Gender Masculine women, Feminine men Which is the rooster, which is the hen? It's hard to tell 'em apart today! And, say! Sister is busy learning to shave, Brother just loves his permanent wave, It's hard to tell 'em apart today! Hey, hey! Girls were girls and boys were boys when I was a tot, Now we don't know who is who, or even what's what! Knickers and trousers, baggy and wide, Nobody knows who's walking inside, Those masculine women and feminine men! Source: http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-an6301650 1922

  5. What does it mean to be a man?

  6. “Gibson Girl”Turn-of-the-20th Century

  7. When did the shift occur? Gibson Girl Flapper

  8. Gender in the Progressive era • Prostitution & White Slavery • Age of Consent legislation • Margaret Sanger & the birth control movement • Urban dangers—women adrift • Sexually active girls seen as delinquents Rockford College dance, crossdressing in the 1910s

  9. 1920s: Flappers, Freedoms, & Marriage Thoroughly Modern Millie

  10. 1930s: Pre-code films “Safe in Hell,” 1931 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlMBoIG3LOA&feature=related Jean Harlow, Platinum Bonde Marlene Dietrich Barbara Stanwyck, Baby Face, 1933 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVNm6XBBIE0

  11. 1940s: Gender & World War II Pat Bond: “I never entered the military with the idea of meeting other lesbians…But, by God, when I got into basic, I thought I had transferred to hog heaven!”

  12. 1940s: Alfred Kinsey & Sex Research "'Kinsey...has done for sex what Columbus did for geography.” Time, August 24, 1953 “Kinsey” (2004) film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppZwSABxeYE

  13. Gender & Sexuality in the Post-war World 3 deadly rays of radiation Sexuality safely contained

  14. 1950s: McCarthy, marriage& motherhood The Best of Everything

  15. 1960s: Women’s liberation & sexual freedom

  16. 1970s: Roe v. Wade

  17. Title IX (1972) "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance..."

  18. 1980s and beyond… Victor/Victoria

  19. Selected Bibliography • Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (Vintage, 1994) • Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease (Harvard University Press, 1988). • Rebecca Davis, “’Not Marriage at All, but Simple Harlotry’: The Companionate Marriage Controversy,” Journal of American History 94, no. 4 (March 2008): 1137-1163 • Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th Century America (Penguin, 1992) • Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, Kinsey: The Measure of all Things (Indiana University, 2004). • Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880-1960 (University of Illinois Press, rev. ed., 2002) • James Jones, Alfred C. Kinsey: A Life (W. W. Norton, 2004).

  20. Bibliography, cont’d. • GerdaLerner, “Placing Women in History: Definitions and Challenges,” Feminist Studies 3 (Autumn 1975). • Beverly Lowry, Her Dream of Dreams: The Rise and Triumph of Madame C.J. Walker (Vintage, 2003) • Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex During World War II (University of Illinois Press, 1987). • Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) • Leslie Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1860s-1973 (University of California, 1996). • Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” Feminism and History. Ed. Joan Wallach Scott (Oxford University Press, 1996, 152-180. • Andrea Tone, Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America (Hill and Wang, 2002).

  21. Additional Resources • H-Women listserv. http://www.h-net.org/~women/ • H-Histsex listserv. http://www.h-net.org/~histsex/ IU Libraries Databases: • Contemporary Women’s Issues • Gender Studies • Genderwatch • LGBT Life with Full Text • Women and Social Movements

More Related