Policing Sex in the Sunflower State

The Story of the Kansas State Industrial Farm for Women

Nicole Perry

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780700631896
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Género y legislación

Policing Sex in the Sunflower State: The Story of the Kansas State Industrial Farm for Women is the history of how, over a span of two decades, the state of Kansas detained over 5, 000 women for no other crime than having a venereal disease. In 1917, the Kansas legislature passed Chapter 205, a law that gave the state Board of Health broad powers to quarantine people for disease. State authorities quickly began enforcing Chapter 205 to control the spread of venereal disease among soldiers preparing to fight in World War I. Though Chapter 205 was officially gender-neutral, it was primarily enforced against women; this gendered enforcement became even more dramatic as Chapter 205 transitioned from a wartime emergency measure to a peacetime public health strategy. Women were quarantined alongside regular female prisoners at the Kansas State Industrial Farm for Women (the Farm). Women detained under Chapter 205 constituted 71 percent of the total inmate population between 1918 and 1942. Their confinement at the Farm was indefinite, with doctors and superintendents deciding when they were physically and morally cured enough to reenter society; in practice, women detained under Chapter 205 spent an average of four months at the Farm. While at the Farm, inmates received treatment for their diseases and were subjected to a plan of moral reform that focused on the value of hard work and the inculcation of middle-class norms for proper feminine behavior.Nicole Perry's research reveals fresh insights into histories of women, sexuality, and programs of public health and social control. Underlying each of these are the prevailing ideas and practices of respectability, in some cases culturally encoded, in others legislated, enforced, and institutionalized. Perry recovers the voices of the different groups of women involved with the Farm: the activist women who lobbied to create the Farm, the professional women who worked there, and the incarcerated women whose bodies came under the control of the state. Policing Sex in the Sunflower State offers an incisive and timely critique of a failed public health policy that was based on perceptions of gender, race, class, and respectability rather than a reasoned response to the social problem at hand.

chapter 1

world war i, sexuality, and venereal disease control in kansas

On April 18, 1918, Private Joseph Coleman wrote a letter to Kansas governor Arthur Capper. Joseph was stationed at Camp Funston, a major military base built in Kansas to train troops preparing to head to the battlefields of World War I. Joseph was desperate. The day before he was set to be married, his fiancée, Zoe Barnes, was arrested. Joseph reported that Zoe “was forested to take the Culture test and symptions showed slightly and now she is under way to PRISON [sic].” The soldier pleaded with the governor: “I appeal to you as one with sympathy and feeling upon Miss [Barnes’s] part and mine and I do beg that lady be given a fair chance.” Governor Capper took Joseph’s plea seriously, writing to the mayor of Manhattan and the warden of the state prison to inquire into Zoe’s case. These inquiries did little to change Zoe’s fate: both men replied to the governor that Zoe had gonorrhea and was lawfully being detained under Chapter 205 in order to protect troops like Joseph from the menace of venereal disease.¹

Zoe and Joseph were caught in the competing social currents of their moment in history: anxiety about changing sexual mores, the demands of a nation gearing up for war, and a public health crisis that precipitated a set of laws that punished young women for their sexual behaviors. This chapter traces the origins of these social currents, the development of laws like Chapter 205 (known as the American Plan) across the country, and the way that Chapter 205 was first implemented in Kansas during the war. The privileging of Joseph’s physical health over Zoe’s freedom was not unique to Kansas; across the country, government officials enforced laws like Chapter 205 to quarantine women suspected of having venereal disease. A system of laws and enforcement practices emerged during the war that gave official government sanction to the sexual double standard, imprisoning women across the country for their sexual behaviors.

Origins of the Social Hygiene Movement

Chapter 205 arose in Kansas amid drastic changes in sexual culture that were brought into public focus by the events of World War I. Though the image of the sexually liberated flapper is often associated with the 1920s, the cultural shifts in sexual behavior that the flapper embodied had their roots in the changing social and moral conditions between 1900 and World War I. Women’s growing participation in the paid work force led to greater economic independence and social autonomy for young working-class women, particularly in urban areas. As they gained greater entry into the public world of paid labor, many young women began to demand independence in their personal lives, resisting familial control of their sexuality. Causing much concern on the part of parents, progressive reformers, and journalists, these young, working-class women frequented the thriving commercial amusements in urban areas in search of adventure and fun, which sometimes involved sexual activity. Together with young women’s increased independence, this shift in courting from neighborhood or family settings to commercial spaces facilitated sexual experimentation among youth. These new norms around sexual activity in working-class communities developed in contrast to and alongside older middle-class Victorian attitudes that emphasized self-control and limited sexual expression.²

The shift toward more open attitudes surrounding premarital sex overall, as well as differences between social groups, can be seen in survey data from the period between 1900 and World War I. Historical demographer Daniel Scott Smith looked at national survey data from the period, finding that 13.5 percent of young white women reported having sex before marriage in the years between 1900 and 1910. This number nearly doubled to 26 percent during the 1910s, and it doubled again to around 50 percent in the 1920s.³ Working-class women were more likely to report premarital sexual experiences than middle- or upper-class women. However, these higher rates of premarital sex do not necessarily indicate an acceptance of promiscuous sexuality. Most of the women reported having sex with their fiancés; this reflects a common practice in many working-class families that engaged couples would have sex before marriage, provided that the couple would marry if a pregnancy occurred. As familial control over youth diminished and large urban areas provided less community control, this pressure to marry became difficult to enforce in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Thus, the trend toward having sex before marriage was part of a longer transformation in sexual behaviors that led to the changed sexual culture of the 1920s.⁴

These changes in sexual culture did not enter mainstream society without controversy. Progressive reformers from a variety of backgrounds viewed these changes in sexual culture and behaviors with grave concern. Whether they focused on anti-prostitution, dance halls, or the prevalence of venereal disease, progressive reformers viewed the combination of old vices like prostitution with new sexual mores that permitted sexual experimentation among youth as a dangerous mix.

One such reform mission was the social hygiene movement, which brought together different groups to combat the public health threat posed by venereal disease. Beginning with the activism of New York physician Prince Morrow in the early 1900s, the movement gained momentum with the formation of the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) in 1913. With generous funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr., ASHA sought to take a modern, scientific approach to the problem of venereal disease through scientific study and planned social actions. Two different groups of advocates united in this organization: the female moral purity reformers who denounced the sexual double standard and prostitution, and the male public health professionals who worried about the spread of venereal disease. For the female reformers, challenging the sexual double standard was a key step in the fight to gain equality between the sexes. For the male medical professionals, controlling prostitution was the most efficient means of reducing rates of venereal disease. Though their motives differed, in the 1910s these two groups agreed on the strategy of aggressively fighting prostitution and advocating for sex education.⁵

ASHA faced steep resistance to public discussions of sexuality and venereal disease. When the Ladies’ Home Journal published a series on venereal disease in 1906, they lost 75,000 outraged subscribers.⁶ Venereal disease was a taboo topic for many in society, including those in the medical profession. Many doctors and hospitals refused to treat people with venereal disease, and some even hid the diagnosis from patients in an effort to protect their reputation. On the eve of World War I, many people viewed venereal disease as a just punishment for sexual indiscretions and questioned the legitimacy and moral implications of even treating the diseases. Contracting venereal disease was a natural consequence of sin, and as such was not something that was a proper matter in which reformers should be trying to intervene. Despite this public resistance, the social hygiene movement had some successes in the 1910s. ASHA was successful in making public discussions of sexuality and venereal disease more common, as evidenced by a 1922 US Bureau of Education study that found that 46.6 percent of secondary schools offered some type of sex education program. However, this increasingly public presence of sex had mixed results in terms of the sexual morality imagined by social hygienists⁷

Though the social hygiene movement pushed for more awareness and treatment of venereal disease, they were in many ways ahead of the science in the area. Particularly because of the stigma associated with researching venereal disease pathology and treatments, medical understanding of venereal disease was still in its rudimentary phases in the first two decades of the twentieth century. To start with, gonorrhea and syphilis were difficult to diagnose given the medical understanding and lab techniques of the period. While German scientists discovered new diagnostic tests for syphilis and gonorrhea between 1905 and 1910, few doctors had access to the types of laboratory facilities that could make good use of these tests. In the absence of reliable, accessible testing, doctors often relied on “social factors,” such as whether the woman engaged in prostitution, in their diagnoses as well. In other words, if a woman’s tests came back positive, she was assumed to have venereal disease, but if they came back negative and her lifestyle was not fitting with middle-class notions of respectability, she also might be diagnosed with venereal disease. The subjective nature of venereal disease diagnosis created a challenge for public health officials and social hygiene reformers who sought to raise alarm about the dangers of syphilis and gonorrhea by citing the prevalence of the diseases. This inconsistency led to wildly varying figures about rates of venereal disease infection, with Prince Morrow claiming that 80 percent of New York City men had at some point had gonorrhea in 1901 and the army reporting that 20 percent of new admissions had a venereal disease in 1909. While some of the claims were purposely exaggerated for the point of publicity, they also reflect the fact that there were no clear-cut ways of diagnosing who did and did not have a venereal disease.⁸

It is within this context of changing sexual behaviors and social hygiene activism that Chapter 205 emerged as official state policy in Kansas. As the circumstances of war brought private sexual behaviors into the public eye, the nation began to come to grips with how dramatically sexual values and behaviors had changed in the United States. Concern about the threat that venereal disease posed to the boys in uniform fueled changes nationwide that brought women’s sexual behaviors under increasing government control.

World War I and the Fight against Venereal Disease

The United States’ entrance into World War I catapulted venereal disease into a national, high-stakes issue. No longer just about sexual morality or the sexual double standard, the topic of venereal disease took on the status of a factor in the victory or failure of the American war machine. Even before the United States officially declared war in April 1917, military officials and civilian activists worried about the impact of venereal disease on the fighting power of the American military. In the first few decades of the twentieth century, fully one-third of lost manpower days in the US military resulted from soldiers being treated for venereal disease. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of all troops came to the military during World War I already infected, reflecting high rates of venereal disease among the civilian population. Other soldiers contracted a disease while serving in the armed forces. Regardless of the source of the disease, military officials faced the challenge of how to treat soldiers and prevent further infection.⁹

To further complicate this already daunting medical situation, the military had to address the venereal disease crisis while navigating hotly contested public debates about sexual morality. Actions that might have mitigated the spread of disease, such as the French system of regularly inspecting prostitutes around military bases for disease, drew ire from American reformers who did not want the government to be explicitly condoning the sexual double standard. The military refused to hand out condoms to soldiers on a large scale to prevent contraction of disease due to fears about promoting sexual immorality. In fact, when the American Expeditionary Force eventually provided chemical treatments to try to prevent venereal disease transmission to soldiers after they had unprotected sex, there was a public outcry that the military was enforcing a system of regulated prostitution. Activist Edith Houghton Hooker railed against this apparent endorsement of the sexual double standard, arguing that “prophylaxis concedes the necessity of a continual sacrifice of fresh girls to the moloch of men’s lust.”¹⁰ For many reformers and government officials, advocating for complete chastity outside of marriage was the only solution that met both the medical and moral needs of the country.¹¹

Concerns about the moral conditions of the troops emerged in Kansas as the state geared up for war. Effie Gellow, a member of the Women’s Council of Defense from Hamilton, Nebraska, wrote to Kansas governor Arthur Capper to report local rumors about immoral conditions, illegitimate births, and rampant venereal disease at Camp Funston, a major military base built in 1917 near Junction City, Kansas. Though she doubted the veracity of these reports, Gellow acknowledged the effect such rumors could have on morale: “Of course this is German propaganda—but the trouble is, it is circulated finally by Americans, who give it the ring of truth as they tell it.”¹² As thousands of young men left their homes for military bases across the country, parents and social reformers voiced similar worries about the military’s effect on the moral development of their “boys.” A 1917 newspaper article out of Hays, Kansas, titled “To Protect Soldier Boys,” noted that “the state is prepared to go to any length in removing and keeping out any women who might attempt to prey upon the soldiers.”¹³ Much of this concern was premised on soldiers’ sexual innocence and susceptibility to negative influences, which largely ignored the high rates of venereal infection among inducted troops that indicated prior sexual experience. This anxiety about soldiers’ morality can be seen in a letter sent by Governor Capper to President Woodrow Wilson in May 1917. Capper reported that civic and religious organizations throughout the state were demanding high moral conditions in military training camps and urged the president to do everything within his power to protect soldiers “from contaminating and debauching influences.” Capper went on to say: “Hundreds of mothers are appealing to me by letter to intercede with you on behalf of their sons. These mothers have a right to be heard; these boys have a right to be protected.” Amid these calls to protect Kansas’s sons, it was less clear who would look out for the rights of Kansas’s daughters.¹⁴

This anxiety about providing an upright moral atmosphere for soldiers informed the military’s strategies to address the venereal disease crisis. The US military’s official campaign against venereal disease kicked off when Secretary of War Newton Baker created the Commission on Training Camp Activities (CTCA) on April 17, 1917. Designed to protect American doughboys from the dual threats of vice and venereal disease, the CTCA sought to create a wholesome experience for troops while training in the United States and prepare them to resist temptations, both at home and overseas. Secretary Baker appointed New York anti-vice reformer Raymond Fosdick to head up the CTCA, setting up the organization to take on a truly progressive tenor. Fosdick drew heavily from the ranks of the ASHA to staff the CTCA, giving reformers official government legitimacy and resources to ramp up their campaign against sexual immorality and venereal disease. Through a program that combined educational campaigns, wholesome distractions, and repressive measures, they hoped to keep rates of venereal disease low and dissuade soldiers from visiting prostitutes.¹⁵

Educational Measures to Control Venereal Disease during the War

The CTCA launched an educational campaign on military bases across the country to try to convince soldiers to abstain from sex. Through pamphlets, lectures, and films, the CTCA largely framed the problem of venereal disease as one of military efficiency and national security, not a question of morality. Part of a soldier’s responsibility to his country was to keep his body clean and ready to engage in battle. The military produced a feature-length film titled Fit to Fight in which many of the characters contracted syphilis and gonorrhea and were forced to sit out the war. What was particularly groundbreaking about these educational campaigns was the degree to which they emphasized male sexual chastity. The syllabus used by lecturers in the navy emphasized that refraining from sex was the only surefire way to protect oneself against venereal disease and that, while sailors should expect to have a “clean girl” to marr...