Misogynistic Middle-Class Designations of Sexual Morality
... the beginning of the twentieth century, the influx of immigrants into the lower levels of the socioeconomic class structure and the increasing numbers of women in the workforce were motivating forces behind various moral reform movements. Publications, such as Young Working Girls: A Summary Of Evidence From Two Thousand Social Workers, served as a vehicle for the promotion of the middle-class ideology. The authors, Robert A. Woods and Albert J. Kennedy, where both white males affiliated with the Social Purity Movement, a moral reform movement (Woods and Kennedy, 1). As such, Woods and Kennedy were influenced by the ideology of their own middle-class upbringing and endeavored to promote and integrate middle-class sexual ideologies into the social structure. The development of middle-class ideologies regarding sexuality based on gender evolved due to both cultural changes and changing religious paradigms. Views of female sexuality evolved from that of the “centuries-old European tradition that viewed women as daughters of Eve, mankind’s ill fortune, prey to vanity, folly and concupiscence”, to the claim that women were virtuous and “naturally chaste and morally superior” to men (Peiss 120, 108). Male sexuality developed from the opinion that men were sexually seduced by evil women, to the opinion that excessive male sexuality was a result of natural, and uncontrollable, impulses. The sexual double standard led to a social acceptability of male sexual aggression, as well as the vilification of female sexuality. For example, Cornelia Dayton states that “in the 1740’s, amid shifting standards of sexual behavior and growing concern over the evidentiary impossibility of establishing paternity, prosecutions of young men for premarital sex ceased. Thus fornication was decriminalized for men, but not for women … [women] continued to be prosecuted and fined for bearing illegitimate children.” (Dayton 92-93) This clearly misogynistic approach to sexuality resulted in both the social acceptability of male pre-marital and extra-marital sexuality, but also the legal protection afforded males when “weak and untrustworthy” women objected to socially condoned male sexual aggression (Peiss 108). Robert A. Woods and Albert J. Kennedy exploit gender-based ideologies to demonstrate the deteriorating moral character of the nation by presenting evidence pertaining to the sexual activity of working class girls. Woods and Kennedy state, the “gradual though appreciable tendency toward deterioration in moral tone among a great proportion of adolescent girls in tenement districts” was indicative of the sexual deviancy prevalent among non-middle-class individuals (Woods and Kennedy, 2). According to the authors, this type of behavior and moral character is found only in non-middle-class females, especially those that are of immigrant backgrounds. Therefore, this statement can be seen as not only misogynistic, but ethnocentric in that Woods and Kennedy believe that the tenement districts house only lower-class immigrant families with “forms of faith alien to those of the neighborhood constituency” (Woods and Kennedy, 4). Here again we see the middle-class Christian ideology utilized as a means of classification for “others”. Woods and Kennedy utilize the concept of prostitution to demonstrate the moral laxity of young working girls. According to Woods and Kennedy, “the common opin...