The Bridge
How a survey of over 2,000 women in the 1920s changed the way Americans thought about female sexuality
Anya Jabour, University of Montana
American women still have fewer orgasms than men, according to new research that suggests that decades after the sexual revolution, the “orgasm gap” is still very much in effect.
One of the study’s lead authors at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction told The New York Times that the gap persists because many Americans continue to “prioritize men’s pleasure and undervalue women’s sexual pleasure.”
As my research shows, these attitudes toward sexual pleasure have a long history.
But so do efforts to push back against them.
Almost a century ago, a pioneering American sex researcher named Katharine Bement Davis challenged the prevailing view that respectable women did not – and should not – experience sexual desire or have sex, except to please men or to have children.
Davis’s 1929 book, “Factors in the Sex Life of Twenty-Two Hundred Women,” completely upended this thinking.
By surveying everyday American women, she was able to show that it was completely normal for American women to have sex for the sake of pleasure.
An unlikely advocate for sexual liberation
Davis spent the first half of her career policing women’s sexuality, not promoting it.
In 1901, after earning her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, Davis became superintendent of the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills. While there, she studied the women in her care. Most female convicts, she concluded, were “immoral women.”
Davis’ efforts to enforce sexual morality drew the attention of philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. In 1917, he invited her to lead his private agency, the Bureau of Social Hygiene, founded to study and combat prostitution and venereal disease.
During World War I, Davis promoted sex education to curb sexually transmitted infections among soldiers and civilians. Through this work, she became convinced that sexual ignorance – not sexual immorality – posed the greatest danger to women’s welfare.
Davis had long criticized the sexual double standard, which condoned men’s sexual experimentation but condemned women’s sexual experience.
Now, she also recognized that this double standard promoted women’s chastity at the expense of knowledge. She complained that discussions of women’s sexuality were “taboo,” which resulted in “distorted views, baffled speculation, and unfortunate experiences.”
Tackling a taboo topic
Insisting that Americans needed accurate information to achieve “a sane outlook on all matters pertaining to sex,” Davis made it her mission to teach women about sex.
But first, she needed to learn about women’s actual sexual experiences. Davis decided to undertake a large-scale study of what she called “the sex life of normal women.”
Davis’ approach was a dramatic departure from existing studies of “abnormal” sexuality focused on institutionalized populations. “Except on the pathological side,” she remarked, “sex is scientifically an unexplored country.”
By contrast, Davis explained, she wanted to understand “the woman who was not pathological mentally or physically.”
To that end, Davis distributed a detailed questionnaire to what she called “women of good standing in the community” from 1921 to 1923. The resulting study sample of 1,000 married women and 1,200 unmarried women was not representative – it skewed white, well-educated and well-to-do. But their responses allowed Davis to redefine female sexuality.
America’s first sexual revolution
Davis launched her study of women’s sexuality during what historians now refer to as America’s first sexual revolution. The second – and more well-known one – would take place in the 1960s.
In the 1920s, as one commentator noted, a “revolution in manners and morals” was underway. Sex suffused popular culture. Contestants in beauty pageants displayed their charms in skimpy bathing costumes and short skirts. Actresses flaunted their sex appeal on stage and screen.
New attitudes about sex affected the daily lives of average Americans, too. Young women throughout the nation adopted the sexy look of “flappers,” the term used for women who sported short skirts, rolled stockings and bobbed hair.
Prior to the 1920s, courtship often took place in the home, allowing parents to closely supervise couples. But the ubiquitous automobile – which one juvenile court judge had dubbed “a house of prostitution on wheels” – rendered adult chaperonage obsolete and granted young people unprecedented sexual freedom.
Meanwhile, birth control activists like Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett distributed contraceptive devices and disseminated sexual information in defiance of the Comstock Act of 1873, which had defined birth control and sex education as “obscene” and made circulating such materials a federal crime.
Sex, secrecy and shame
Even amid the nation’s first sexual revolution, the facts of life remained in short supply.
According to surveys Davis distributed to married women, only about half of the respondents believed that they had been “adequately prepared … for the sex side of marriage.”
After expanding her study to include unmarried women, Davis found that fewer than one-third of all participants received sex education from their parents.
Many women didn’t know how pregnancy occurred. Some had been unprepared even for menstruation. One recalled that when she experienced her first period, “I naturally thought I was bleeding to death.”
In place of information, many women imbibed shame. “Having acquired the feeling as a small child that any sex pleasure was shameful and a great sin,” as one respondent put it, some could never overcome their discomfort with sex. Another woman regarded all sexual thoughts as “something to be shunned like the devil.”
One response succinctly summarized the problem: “Our present secrecy, fear, and repression are responsible for most of our sex ills.”
Challenging the conspiracy of silence
Many women were eager to challenge what one called a “conspiracy of silence” surrounding female sexuality.
Study participants ended up providing Davis with over 10,000 pages of handwritten responses. She used this information to produce the nation’s first major study of women’s sexuality, a 400-plus page book brimming with both statistical data and personal stories.
“Factors in the Sex Life of Twenty-Two Hundred Women” covered a wide range of topics, ranging from sex education to sex play. Running throughout the entire work, however, was one central idea: Women liked sex.
Davis included data on birth control, same-sex relationships and masturbation. At the time, these practices were universally stigmatized and often criminalized. Yet significant proportions of study participants engaged in all these activities.
Nearly three-quarters of married respondents reported using contraceptives. Many probably took advantage of state laws allowing physicians to prescribe diaphragms to protect patients’ health. Surprisingly, nearly 1 in 10 women admitted having abortions, even though the procedure was illegal in every state.
More than half of unmarried women and nearly one-third of married women stated that they had experienced “intense emotional relationships” with other women. In each group, approximately half described those relationships as sexual. This was a remarkably high figure, given prevailing views of homosexuality as sexual deviance and state laws criminalizing homosexual acts.
Nearly 65% of unmarried women and more than 40% of married women reported masturbating. Since nearly all physicians and pastors condemned the practice, Davis assumed the actual numbers were even higher.
Davis’ data demonstrated that “normal” women experienced what one called “natural sex feeling.” In short, her study showed that many women enjoyed sex for its own sake.
Davis believed that reliable data would lead to “more satisfactory adjustments of the sex relationship.” In other words, better information would lead to better sex.
Davis paved the way for future studies that validate women’s sexual pleasure. While researching female sexuality, she established the National Research Council’s Committee for Research on the Problems of Sex. The Rockefeller-funded committee later subsidized Alfred Kinsey’s studies of human sexuality.
Davis’ legacy lives on. The findings from the Kinsey Institute’s latest study show that discussing sexual pleasure still matters, particularly for women. It also suggests that Americans’ understandings of sex have improved over the past century.
When Davis conducted her study in the 1920s, she found it “advisable” to define “orgasm” for participants who were unclear on the concept. Now, a generation of better-informed Americans ponder how to address a persistent “orgasm gap.”
Anya Jabour, Regents Professor of History, University of Montana
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Community
Local governments provide proof that polarization is not inevitable
Local politics help mitigate national polarization by focusing on concrete issues like infrastructure and community needs rather than divisive symbolic debates. A survey indicates that local officials experience less partisanship, as interpersonal connections foster recognition of shared interests. This suggests that reducing polarization is possible through collaboration and changes in election laws.
Lauren Hall, Rochester Institute of Technology
When it comes to national politics, Americans are fiercely divided across a range of issues, including gun control, election security and vaccines. It’s not new for Republicans and Democrats to be at odds over issues, but things have reached a point where even the idea of compromising appears to be anathema, making it more difficult to solve thorny problems.
But things are much less heated at the local level. A survey of more than 1,400 local officials by the Carnegie Corporation and CivicPulse found that local governments are “largely insulated from the harshest effects of polarization.” Communities with fewer than 50,000 residents proved especially resilient to partisan dysfunction.
Why this difference? As a political scientist, I believe that lessons from the local level not only open a window onto how polarization works but also the dynamics and tools that can help reduce it.
Problems are more concrete
Local governments deal with concrete issues – sometimes literally, when it comes to paving roads and fixing potholes. In general, cities and counties handle day-to-day functions, such as garbage pickup, running schools and enforcing zoning rules. Addressing tangible needs keeps local leaders’ attention fixed on specific problems that call out for specific solutions, not lengthy ideological debates.
By contrast, a lot of national political conflict in the U.S. involves symbolic issues, such as debates about identity and values on topics such as race, abortion and transgender rights. These battles are often divisive, even more so than purely ideological disagreements, because they can activate tribal differences and prove more resistant to compromise.
Such arguments at the national level, or on social media, can lead to wildly inaccurate stereotypes about people with opposing views. Today’s partisans often perceive their opponents as far more extreme than they actually are, or they may stereotype them – imagining that all Republicans are wealthy, evangelical culture warriors, for instance, or conversely being convinced that all Democrats are radical urban activists. In terms of ideology, the median members of both parties, in fact, look similar.
These kinds of misperceptions can fuel hostility.
Local officials, however, live among the human beings they represent, whose complexity defies caricature. Living and interacting in the same communities leads to greater recognition of shared interests and values, according to the Carnegie/CivicPulse survey.
Meaningful interaction with others, including partisans of the opposing party, reduces prejudice about them. Local government provides a natural space where identities overlap.
People are complicated
In national U.S. politics today, large groups of individuals are divided not only by party but a variety of other factors, including race, religion, geography and social networks. When these differences align with ideology, political disagreement can feel like an existential threat.
Such differences are not always as pronounced at the local level. A neighbor who disagrees about property taxes could be the coach of your child’s soccer team. Your fellow school board member might share your concerns about curriculum but vote differently in presidential elections.
These cross-cutting connections remind us that political opponents are not a monolithic enemy but complex individuals. When people discover they have commonalities outside of politics with others holding opposing views, polarization can decrease significantly.
Finally, most local elections are technically nonpartisan. Keeping party labels off ballots allows voters to judge candidates as individuals and not merely as Republicans or Democrats.
National implications
None of this means local politics are utopian.
Like water, polarization tends to run downhill, from the national level to local contests, particularly in major cities where candidates for mayor and other office are more likely to run as partisans. Local governments also see culture war debates, notably in the area of public school instruction.
Nevertheless, the relative partisan calm of local governance suggests that polarization is not inevitable. It emerges from specific conditions that can be altered.
Polarization might be reduced by creating more opportunities for cross-partisan collaboration around concrete problems. Philanthropists and even states might invest in local journalism that covers pragmatic governance rather than partisan conflict. More cities and counties could adopt changes in election law that would de-emphasize party labels where they add little information for voters.
Aside from structural changes, individual Americans can strive to recognize that their neighbors are not the cardboard cutouts they might imagine when thinking about “the other side.” Instead, Americans can recognize that even political opponents are navigating similar landscapes of community, personal challenges and time constraints, with often similar desires to see their roads paved and their children well educated.
The conditions shaping our interactions matter enormously. If conditions change, perhaps less partisan rancor will be the result.
Lauren Hall, Associate professor of Political Science, Rochester Institute of Technology
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The Bridge is a section of the STM Daily News Blog meant for diversity, offering real news stories about bona fide community efforts to perpetuate a greater good. The purpose of The Bridge is to connect the divides that separate us, fostering understanding and empathy among different groups. By highlighting positive initiatives and inspirational actions, The Bridge aims to create a sense of unity and shared purpose. This section brings to light stories of individuals and organizations working tirelessly to promote inclusivity, equality, and mutual respect. Through these narratives, readers are encouraged to appreciate the richness of diverse perspectives and to participate actively in building stronger, more cohesive communities.
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