How a survey of over 2,000 women in the 1920s changed the way Americans thought about female sexuality

Pelican Press · August 28, 2024

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How a survey of over 2,000 women in the 1920s changed the way Americans thought about female sexuality

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In the 1920s, many women became more comfortable in their skin. But the facts of life remained in short supply. Credit: George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress

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, according to new research that suggests that decades after the ******* revolution, the “******* gap” is still very much in effect.

One of the study’s lead authors at the

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that the gap persists because many Americans continue to “prioritize men’s pleasure and undervalue women’s ******* pleasure.”

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, these attitudes toward ******* pleasure have a long history.

But so do efforts to push back against them.

Almost a century ago, a pioneering ********* **** researcher named Katharine Bement Davis challenged

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that respectable women did not—and should not—experience ******* ******* or have ****, except to please men or to have children.

Davis’s 1929 book, “

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,” completely upended this thinking.

By surveying everyday ********* women, she was able to show that it was completely normal for ********* women to have **** for the sake of pleasure.

An unlikely advocate for ******* 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

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. While there,

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the women in her care. Most female convicts, she concluded, were “immoral women.”

Davis’ efforts to enforce ******* morality drew the attention of philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. In 1917, he invited her to lead his private agency, the

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, founded to study and combat prostitution and venereal ********.

During World War I, Davis promoted

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among soldiers and civilians. Through this work, she became convinced that ******* ignorance—not ******* immorality—posed the greatest danger to women’s ********.

Davis had long

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, which condoned men’s ******* experimentation but condemned women’s ******* experience.

Now, she also recognized that this double standard promoted women’s chastity at the expense of knowledge.

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that discussions of women’s sexuality were “******,”

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“distorted views, baffled speculation, and unfortunate experiences.”

Tackling a ****** topic

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that Americans needed accurate information to achieve “a sane

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on all matters pertaining to ****,” Davis made it her mission to teach women about ****.

But first, she needed to learn about women’s actual ******* experiences. Davis decided to undertake a large-scale study of what

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“the **** 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,”

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, “**** is scientifically an unexplored country.”

By contrast,

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, she wanted to understand “the woman who was not pathological mentally or physically.”

To that end, Davis distributed a detailed questionnaire to

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“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 ******* revolution

Davis launched her study of women’s sexuality during what historians now refer to as

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. The second—and more well-known one—

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.

In the 1920s, as

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, a “revolution in manners and morals” was underway. **** suffused popular culture. Contestants in beauty pageants displayed their charms in skimpy bathing costumes and short skirts. Actresses flaunted their **** appeal on stage and screen.

New attitudes about **** affected the daily lives of average Americans, too. Young women throughout the nation adopted the ***** look of “

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,” 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

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“a house of prostitution on wheels”—rendered ****** chaperonage obsolete and granted young people unprecedented ******* freedom.

Meanwhile, birth control activists like

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distributed contraceptive devices and disseminated ******* information in defiance of

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, which had defined birth control and **** education as “obscene” and made circulating such materials a federal ******.

****, secrecy and shame

Even amid the nation’s first ******* revolution, the facts of life remained in short supply.

According to surveys Davis distributed to married women, only

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believed that they had been “adequately prepared … for the **** side of marriage.”

After expanding her study to include unmarried women, Davis found that

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received **** education from their parents.

Many women didn’t know how pregnancy occurred. Some had been unprepared even for menstruation.

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that when she experienced her first *******, “I naturally thought I was bleeding to ******.”

In place of information, many women imbibed shame. “Having acquired the feeling as a small child that any **** pleasure was shameful and a great sin,”

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, some could never overcome their discomfort with ****.

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all ******* thoughts as “something to be shunned like the ******.”

One response

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: “Our present secrecy, *****, and repression are responsible for most of our **** ills.”

Challenging the *********** of silence

Many women were eager to challenge

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a “*********** 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

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, a 400-plus page book brimming with both statistical data and personal stories.

“

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” covered a wide range of topics, ranging from **** education to **** play. Running throughout the entire work, however, was one central idea: Women liked ****.

Davis included data on birth control, same-**** 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.

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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

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in every state.

More than half of unmarried women and nearly one-third of married women stated that they had experienced “

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” with other women. In each group, approximately half described those relationships as *******. This was a remarkably high figure, given

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and

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.

Nearly 65% of unmarried women and more than 40% of married women

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. Since

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, Davis assumed the actual numbers were even higher.

Davis’ data demonstrated that “normal” women experienced what

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“natural **** feeling.” In short, her study showed that many women enjoyed **** for its own sake.

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that reliable data would lead to “more satisfactory adjustments of the **** relationship.” In other words, better information would lead to better ****.

Davis paved the way for future studies that validate women’s ******* pleasure. While researching female sexuality, she

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the

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. The Rockefeller-funded committee later subsidized

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studies of human sexuality.

Davis’ legacy lives on. The findings from the Kinsey Institute’s latest study show that discussing ******* pleasure still matters, particularly for women. It also suggests that Americans’ understandings of **** have improved over the past century.

When Davis conducted her study in the 1920s,

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for participants who were unclear on the concept. Now, a generation of better-informed Americans ponder how to address a persistent “******* gap.”

Provided by
The Conversation

This article is republished from

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under a Creative Commons license. Read the

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How a survey of over 2,000 women in the 1920s changed the way Americans thought about female sexuality

An unlikely advocate for ******* liberation

Tackling a ****** topic

America’s first ******* revolution

****, secrecy and shame

Challenging the *********** of silence

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