Sex Radicals in America's Heartland
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SEX RADICALS IN AMERICA’S HEARTLAND: REDEFINING GENDER AND SEXUALITY, 1880-1910 _______________________________________ A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _______________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy _______________________________________ by Andrea M. Weingartner Dr. Catherine Rymph, Dissertation Supervisor JULY 2013 © Copyright by Andrea M. Weingartner 2013 All Rights Reserved The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled SEX RADICALS IN AMERICA’S HEARTLAND: REDEFINING GENDER AND SEXUALITY, 1880-1910 presented by Andrea M. Weingartner, a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor Catherine Rymph Professor LeeAnn Whites Professor Steven Watts Professor Ilyana Karthas Professor Rebecca Dingo ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS What began as a research paper for a seminar during my first semester as a graduate student blossomed into this dissertation project. While I am responsible for its content, my work has directly benefited and would not be what it is today without the continued guidance of my dissertation advisor, Catherine Rymph. I would like to thank Professor Rymph for her patience, encouragement, and support. She always pushed me to think on a higher level and examine my material from a historian’s point of view. Without her support, I would have never finished the dissertation. I would like to thank Professor LeeAnn Whites who “adopted” me as one of her students, including me in her dissertation reading group. She opened my eyes to the study of “gender” and what, exactly, that entailed in a historical work. Professor Whites encouraged me to be critical of the “sex radicals” and not take their ideas and actions at face value. I would also like to thank the other members of my dissertation committee, Professors Steven Watts, Ilyana Karthas, and Rebecca Dingo, who provided guidance in various aspects of the project over the past five years. I would also like to thank the members of Professor Whites’ dissertation reading group: Leroy Rowe, Joe Beilein, Mike Snodgrass, and Megan Boccardi. All provided comments and suggestions for some of the earlier drafts of several chapters. In turn, I was inspired by their work, and each afforded me valuable insight into the dissertation writing process. I am also grateful to Leroy for his collaboration on several conference panels in which we presented papers and discussed research. Our conversations about the ii topics of sexuality, respectability, and gender helped to shape the way I thought about my own project. I would like to recognize the Department of History at the University of Missouri. The department supplied me with eight years of funding as a graduate student, the Walter V. Scholes Research Scholarship and Jonas and Ruth H. Viles Memorial Scholarship for travel during the summer of 2010, and a dissertation fellowship for my final year of writing and revisions in 2012-2013. I am also indebted to the department staff, especially Nancy Taube for her assistance through the administrative process of being a graduate student. I am grateful to the staff of Ellis Library and the Kansas State Historical Society who provided me with access to the necessary microfilm collections I needed to research this project. I would also like to acknowledge John Konzal, a manuscript specialist at the State Historical Society of Missouri Archives, who first pointed me to a folder on Moses Harman. He was right; Harman was “quite interesting.” Lastly, I want to thank my husband, Jeremy, for his support and patience as I worked on a project that seemed like it would never end. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................................ii INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1. THE “KANSAS LIBERALS”: FREETHOUGHT ON THE HIGH PLAINS.....................................................................................................18 2. FREE LOVE AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF MANHOOD..................58 3. DISCIPLINING MANHOOD: THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN..........89 4. WITHOUT LICENSE TO WED: THE “AUTONOMISTIC MARRIAGE” AND SEXUAL RESPECTABILITY......................................................124 5. THE DANGERS OF SEXUAL KNOWLEDGE: OBSCENITY LAWS AND THE SUPPRESSION OF FREE LOVE..................................................160 6. EUGENICS AND “FREEDOM IN MOTHERHOOD”.................................193 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................233 APPENDIX A. AUTONOMISTIC MARRIAGE PRACTICALIZED....................................244 B. THE MARKLAND LETTER........................................................................247 C. THE WHITEHEAD ARTICLE.....................................................................249 D. THE O’NEILL LETTER...............................................................................251 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................253 VITA................................................................................................................................263 INTRODUCTION We claim the right as citizens of a free republic, to make and consummate our own marriage contracts without the help or interference of a priest, a magistrate or other officer of state, and we claim the right to dissolve these contracts by mutual consent—we claim the right to correct our mistakes in this regard without being obliged to commit a technical or real crime and then be obliged to sue or be sued in a divorce court in order to get the contract dissolved. In short, we maintain that the interference of church and state in the sex-relations of men and women is a monstrous usurpation of authority, and that instead of promoting morality, purity, and happiness to the race, this interference is one of the most prolific sources of immorality, vice, crime and unhappiness to the parties immediately concerned. —Moses Harman, 1 January 1886.1 FROM 1880 TO 1910, men and women across America’s heartland engaged in discussions of free love and sex reform through reading and corresponding in radical periodicals. Heralding from the nineteenth-century tradition of freethinking, they formed a critique of marriage which stated that the institution functioned to crush out love and entrap husbands and wives. Sex radicalism rejected state and religious control of marriage and came to encompass a wide range of issues, from chastising brutal husbands for spousal abuse to promoting women’s free choice in reproduction as the means of improving the race through the science of eugenics. Forming a correspondence network across the country, sex radicals were able to promote discussion, evolve their opinions, and defend their ideas and actions in a world that was hostile to their existence. This study examines the rise of sex radicalism in Kansas and the larger network emanating from it that spanned across the country as men and women sought to redefine the ways in which they thought about gender and sexuality. Sex radicals based their ideas of free love on the tradition of American freethought, especially the principle of individual sovereignty, and were rooted in the class struggle that marked the economic inequalities of the gilded age. They saw free love as the key to fulfilling freethought’s 1 Moses Harman, “Our Demands,” Lucifer, 1 January 1886. 1 promise of total autonomy, resolving class differences, and releasing its adherents from oppressive sexual and marital customs. As they worked out the larger questions of marriage, love, and sexuality, they also contemplated the roles that men and women would have in their ideal society. This study will follow the development of Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, a freethought and free love paper edited by Moses Harman, and its correspondents. Harman helped to found the fledgling paper in 1880 and directed its development until the publication ceased at the time of his death in 1910. His commitment to freeing women from “sex slavery” gave greater voice to free love, and his paper became devoted to the emancipation of women from the bonds of matrimony. Harman and his correspondents constructed lively debates on the nature of marriage, love, sex, and contraception, relating personal stories and opinions that can be used as a window into their lives. Readers and contributors discovered that their ideas were shared by many across the country, and they used the paper to form a supportive network to agitate for social change. The battle to bring about free love ideals, however, proved to be difficult. Sex radicals remained a minority, and the larger community came to view them as a danger to sexual morality and social stability. The terms “free love” and “sex radical” have connoted a variety of ideas to different people and times, yet held a specific meaning for the men and women who read and wrote to sex reform papers. To their contemporaries, “free love” represented sexual promiscuity, unrestrained passion, and even prostitution. However, those who subscribed to the philosophy of free love refuted its equation with “free lust,” instead explaining that the term meant that they