Ebook352 pages8 hours
Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this ebook
In the raucous decade following World War I, newly blurred boundaries between male and female created fears among the French that theirs was becoming a civilization without sexes. This new gender confusion became a central metaphor for the War's impact on French culture and led to a marked increase in public debate concerning female identity and woman's proper role. Mary Louise Roberts examines how in these debates French society came to grips with the catastrophic horrors of the Great War.
In sources as diverse as parliamentary records, newspaper articles, novels, medical texts, writings on sexology, and vocational literature, Roberts discovers a central question: how to come to terms with rapid economic, social, and cultural change and articulate a new order of social relationships. She examines the role of French trauma concerning the War in legislative efforts to ban propaganda for abortion and contraception, and explains anxieties about the decline of maternity by a crisis in gender relations that linked soldiery, virility, and paternity.
Through these debates, Roberts locates the seeds of actual change. She shows how the willingness to entertain, or simply the need to condemn, nontraditional gender roles created an indecisiveness over female identity that ultimately subverted even the most conservative efforts to return to traditional gender roles and irrevocably altered the social organization of gender in postwar France.
In sources as diverse as parliamentary records, newspaper articles, novels, medical texts, writings on sexology, and vocational literature, Roberts discovers a central question: how to come to terms with rapid economic, social, and cultural change and articulate a new order of social relationships. She examines the role of French trauma concerning the War in legislative efforts to ban propaganda for abortion and contraception, and explains anxieties about the decline of maternity by a crisis in gender relations that linked soldiery, virility, and paternity.
Through these debates, Roberts locates the seeds of actual change. She shows how the willingness to entertain, or simply the need to condemn, nontraditional gender roles created an indecisiveness over female identity that ultimately subverted even the most conservative efforts to return to traditional gender roles and irrevocably altered the social organization of gender in postwar France.
Read more from Mary Louise Roberts
D-Day Through French Eyes: Normandy 1944 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siecle France Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Civilization without Sexes
Titles in the series (23)
Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform: Mothers' Pensions in Chicago, 1911-1929 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elsie Clews Parsons: Inventing Modern Life Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDowntown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, a Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoyal Representations: Queen Victoria and British Culture, 1837-1876 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Making Gray Gold: Narratives of Nursing Home Care Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOglala Women: Myth, Ritual, and Reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court: Music and the Circulation of Power Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Women of the Renaissance Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s--Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsManliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsProstitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women, Compulsion, Modernity: The Moment of American Naturalism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhat a Woman Ought to Be and to Do: Black Professional Women Workers during the Jim Crow Era Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300-1550 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Reign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related ebooks
The Word of a Woman: Feminist Dispatches Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSex Expression and American Women Writers, 1860-1940 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStraight Sex: Rethinking the Politics of Pleasure Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Mothers, Mothering and Sex Work Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Andrea Dworkin's Pornography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSinister Wisdom 101: Variations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFemale Erasure: What You Need To Know About Gender Politics' War On Women, the Female Sex and Human Rights Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It's All Connected: Feminist Fiction and Poetry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDesire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Sex Panic and the Punitive State Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sinister Wisdom 109: Hot Spots Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn Blondes Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Introductions, Femspec Issue 15 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe futures of feminism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThought House of Philippa, The Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFemale Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Neglected or Misunderstood: The Radical Feminism of Shulamith Firestone Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Screwed: How Women Are Set Up to Fail at Sex Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Liberation in Print: Feminist Periodicals and Social Movement Identity Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Creating the Couple: Love, Marriage, and Hollywood Performance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unsafe Words: Queering Consent in the #MeToo Era Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMothering in the Age of Neoliberalism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of Arlie Hochschild & Anne Machung's The Second Shift Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFeminism's Founding Fathers: The Men Who Fought for Women's Rights Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOut of the Fog: On Politics, Feminism and Coming Alive Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Gender Studies For You
Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letter to a Bigot: Dead But Not Forgotten Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Communion: The Female Search for Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women Don't Owe You Pretty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vagina: A re-education Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cunnilinguist: How To Give And Receive Great Oral Sex Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Women Kill Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Period Power: Harness Your Hormones and Get Your Cycle Working For You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Cute When You're Mad: Simple Steps for Confronting Sexism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Clobber Passages Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Reviews for Civilization without Sexes
Rating: 4.0625 out of 5 stars
4/5
8 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Civilization without Sexes - Mary Louise Roberts
Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1