Courtney Q. Shah. Sex Ed, Segregated

During the early twentieth century, Progressive reformers initiated and instigated a sexual revolution. Rejecting what they viewed as a Victorian “conspiracy of silence” around sex, reproduction, and sexually transmitted diseases, reformers called for a new approach to sex education. At the heart of this movement was the belief that children should receive sex education from “parents and trained teachers rather than playmates and unreliable persons.” Advocates for this new approach may have seen themselves as enlightened—yet their movement, rooted in the social purity activism of the previous century, did little to challenge existing perceptions of race, class, gender, and even the boundaries of what constituted “normal” sexual behavior. In Sex Ed, Segregated: The Quest for Sexual Knowledge in Progressive-Era America, Courtney Shah argues that “hierarchies of white supremacy and patriarchy played a central role” in not only the creation of early twentieth-century, American sex education, but also the decision as to which groups should have access to this information. Progressive Era reformers’ earnest desire to use scientific knowledge to eradicate venereal disease, end prostitution, and strengthen American families may, as Shah points out, have been a product of a growing belief in the power of education, but it also reflected and was shaped by the eugenics movement.

Aesthetics · Art · Eugenics · Human sexuality · Patriarchy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Progressive era · Sex education · Sexual revolution · Silence · Sociology · White (mutation) · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History of Science and Medicine · Law