Sex, Drugs, and the Right to Vote I BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1920 Part 4 of 4 - YouTube (1)
In 1918, when the men from the frontlines of the World War began returning home
they've brought with them some troubling stowaway passengers: venereal decease and drug addiction.
When they arrived home, they found a new generation of women, vocally proclaiming their expectation
of a gender equality in a way that most women would not have dared to only four years earlier.
And all those three things would, rather bizarrely, come together and change the world.
Welcome to "Between 2 Wars", a chronological summary of the interwar years, covering all facets of life:
the uncertainty, hedonism and euphoria, and ultimately the humanity's descent
into the darkness of the Second World War. I'm Indy Nydell.
This year, 1920, The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution is ratified August 19th.
Giving women their... the vote.
Now, in Great Britain some women were given the vote two years earlier, Germany introduces universal suffrage
immediately after the war, during The German Revolution, and many other nations are about to,
or have already followed suit. There is literally a tsunami of change,
rolling over at least the Western World and some parts of the Middle East.
This isn't a sudden development, though. Women have been fighting for the votes for many decades
at this point, but before 1914 in most parts of the world this was still a movement facing formidable opposition,
not only from men, but also from many women.
In the last 100 years, both women and men have gained access to better education
and a foreseeable and natural desire to have a say in the world has grown.
The 1850 sees a massive awakening of political awareness among women in many parts of the world.
At the turn of the century in Egypt the women's liberation movement has become
an essential part of the nationalist independence movement as we saw in our previous episode.
In England and the US the suffragettes are not only fighting for the votes,
but for more rights in all aspects of society.
In Sweden and Norway the battle for women's rights becomes an integral part of the socialist movement
and so on.
Sure, there are places like New Zealand, Australia and Finland where women could vote
in national elections before the war, and actually the Pitcairn Islands had women suffrage since 1838,
and you have to go look up why after watching this episode, because it's cool.
But, until the WWI, the suffragettes for the most part only make limited progress
and face almost impossible resistance. For instance, the 19th Amendment was introduced to the US Congress
already in 1878 by senator Aaron A. Sargent, but there's so much resistance to women having the vote
that it takes 41 years before they get enough votes to get it apprised.
But with mounting pressure arising during and after the World War, 1919, it's finally passed,
and sent to the individual states for ratification; one year later it's adopted.
The struggle for the vote goes through similar hardships all over the world,
and in many places it will still take time before it happens. But why is this such a big deal?
The simple answer would be to say that women are viewed as less mentally capable than men,
it's certainly one of the arguments often given by the opponents to women suffrage at the time.
However, there are other, more significant reasons, and they have a lot to do with sex.
Not sex as in gender, but sex as in... intimate relations between women and men.
Now, bear with me here, while I deviate briefly into sex-ed from a historical perspective.
Some of this might seem obvious, but it is important to the topic.
As most of you hopefully know, two possible side effects of having sex are pregnancy and venereal
decease. While the latter is universally undesirable, the former is often very welcome, but not always.
The future of humanity depends on having sex, and we have been endowed by nature to enjoy it,
so that we do it - to the point that most of us have a hard time not doing it, right?
Now, think of what that means for women who have no access to contraception,
or perhaps feel that it's wrong to use contraception. It means having babies,
and not getting A baby, but MANY babies, which is great for the survival of the species
when infant mortality is high, but for women as individuals throughout history it hasn't been so great.
Either they were pregnant, or nursing, or both, effectively excluding them,
at least part of the time, from fully participating in society.
Ingeniously, we worked out pretty early on how to use contraceptives, and alleviated the situation somewhat,
but it won't be until the pill is introduced in the 1960s
that there is a truly effective way of preventing conception.
Before that there is a big chance that even if you don't want to, even if you do use contraception
you'll get a baby, a trial that needs to be taken care of, nourished and raised for years.
Our solution to that is pretty much built-in in our general nature of pairing up with the opposite sex
which has been formalized in the family structures.
And there you have the root reason for oppression of women in the XIX and XX centuries.
Some people - many people actually - see women's liberation as a threat to the core family, which by their
argument would lead to a world full of children without fathers - or maybe even mothers - to raise them.
And it's not just the ballot that they think will threaten the delicate human balance in matrimony.
Contraceptives could as well. The argument is that when women and men can just have
as much sex as they want to without worrying about pregnancy, they will,
and this will break up marriages and again lead to a bunch of kids without anyone to raise them.
So no contraceptives it is!
Now, they believe this fixes that second problem as well.
When men and women only have sex within marriage, they won't get the clap,
especially not if they abstain from sex before marriage - ideally.
And remember, that before Pasteur and others discover how contagious deceases work,
there is not even any knowledge for how to prevent catching something - anything!
As a result, venereal decease has long been a scourge of humanity, with,
for instance, syphilis infecting hundreds of millions of people over centuries,
until the cure is finally discovered in 1905.
By the mid XIX century there is no cure, but at least they've worked out how it could be prevented,
and it is now clear that a condom is a good way not only to prevent pregnancy,
but also to stop the spread of venereal decease.
OK, contraception, whether effective or not, has been practiced since antiquity,
and linen or animal product condoms in use for a couple of centuries,
but not widely, being unaffordable or unavailable to the masses.
And not especially effective, since they often had holes, broke or came off,
until the introduction of vulcanized rubber.
But condom use would still be a problem for those opposed to more relaxed sexual behavior and society.
And let's be clear here - it's not just about saving marriages, there's a whole bunch of
ideological, religious and erroneous medical arguments in place, some of which are an issue to this day.
However, before the XVIII century these issues are not only not fully understood, they're also pretty immaterial.
At the beginning of the XVIII century, 60% of all children born in England will die
before they reach reproductive age. So, the survival of the species depends on having many babies.
Now, this starts to change, especially in Europe, by the end of 1700s
when infant mortality is dropping, as healthcare and standards of living increase.
By the end of the XIX century, infant mortality in England will have dropped to 20% -
by comparison, in 2018 it's 1.2%.
Also, urbanization is bringing more and more people together, creating greater opportunities
for more and more people for sexual encounters of the non-marriage kind.
This does not go unnoticed by the thinkers of the time. The controversial English cleric and scholar
Thomas Robert Malthus is tremendously worried about overpopulation.
He foresees a catastrophic population increase that will lead to a global collapse of society
as food runs out and resources become scarce some time in the first half of the XIX century.
Luckily for humanity, his calculations are way off the mark, and fail to take full account
of technological advances in agriculture and manufacturing, but that's another story.
In any case, in his 1798 publication: "An Essay on the Principle of Population"
he proposes that birth control should be one of the solutions to avoid the pending disaster.
Malthus not only proposes contraception as a solution, he even goes so far
as advocating research into safer abortions to allow women the right of choice both before and after sex.
Alas, he also proposes celibacy, monogamy and abstention,
increasing food production, preventing wars and much more.
It's sort of a whole toolshed full of weapons to combat overpopulation.
In any case, many other scholars have similar ideas around the same time,
and this sets off a controversial discussion that is still going on to this day:
the right for women to choose pregnancy and even terminate it.
And there we have it: the movement for women's liberation is closely linked
to the right to choose and to sex education.
During the XIX century this becomes an organized movement in the US, Britain, Scandinavia
and many other parts of Western Europe, especially focused on lower income families,
that suffer from higher birth rates leading to children they can not afford to bring up.
On the way it becomes clear, that to see change in these areas
the very people that are most affected - women - need to have a say in society.
You see, the protective measures to stop people from having sex outside of marriage
have been codified into law, prohibiting abortions, the sale of contraceptives, and even sex education.
In many places breaking these laws won't just give you a fine - you go to prison.
That is exactly what happens to Margaret Sanger, one of the pioneers
of sex-ed and birth control in the United States.
Inspired by a visit to Holland, she opens a family planning and birth control clinic in New York in 1915.
It lasts 9 days before she is arrested. She is sentenced to 30 days in a correctional facility,
but when released, she carries on. Repeated arrests follow, and at her conviction, the judge concludes that
women do not have "the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception".
But Sanger prevails, and on appeal her conviction is overturned, and this opens the way
for the prescription of contraceptives in the US as of 1918.
It's probably no coincidence that this decision comes in 1918:
the war has radically overturned the concept of gender roles and the views on contraception.
As men fight at the front, women step in and take over what were...
previously unthinkable jobs for a woman, like soldering, construction, trucking...
A return to the pre-war gender segregated society is not an option
but the war also brings changes in the area of sex, which brings us back to venereal decease.
There is this idea, that many young man left for the war died on the battlefield as virgins.
Nothing could be further from the truth: if they were virgins when they left,
they most probably were not by the time they arrived at the front.
If you didn't have the luck to meet a local girl the... normal way, there were plenty of other options.
On all of the fronts and on all sides, brothels were not only tolerated, but systematically organized
and in some cases regulated by the armies to keep them as clean and healthy as possible.
