The Masculine Woman in America, 1890-1935
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: January 24, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 224
ISBN-13: 9780252026270
Subjects: Feminism; Gay & Lesbian studies; Sociology Of Women; U.S. - Political And Civil Rights Of Women; Social Science; Sociology; USA; Feminism & Feminist Theory; Women's Studies - History; Social Science / Gender Studies; Political Freedom & Security - Civil Rights; Women's Studies - General; History; Public opinion; Suffrage; United States; Women; Women's rights
First sentence: In the December 26, 1925, New Yorker, Robert Benchley, a member of the famed roundtable at the Algonquin Hotel, declared in a short piece called "Sex Is Out" that "there is no such things as absolute sex."
Description: "The Masculine Woman in America, 1890-1935 examines how the suffrage movement's efforts to secure social and political independence for women were translated by a fearful society into a movement of unnatural "masculinized" women and dangerous "female sexual inverts."" "Scrutinizing depictions of the masculine woman in literature and the popular press, Laura L. Behling explicates the literary, artistic, and rhetorical strategies used to eliminate the "sexually inverted" woman: punishing her by imprisonment or death; "rescuing" her into heterosexuality; subverting her through parody; or removing her from society to some remote or mystical place. Behling also shows how fictional same-sex relationships in the writings of Henry James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gertrude Stein, and others conformed to and ultimately reaffirmed heterosexual models." "The Masculine Woman in America, 1890-1935 demonstrates that the woman suffrage movement did not so much suggest alternatives to women's gender and sexual behavior as it offered men and women afraid of perceived changes a tangible movement on which to blame their fears. A biting commentary on the insubstantial but powerful ghosts stirred up by the media, this study shows how, though legally enfranchised, the "new woman" was systematically disenfranchised socially through scientific theory, popular press illustrations, and fictional predictions of impending sociobiological disaster."--BOOK JACKET.