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The Social Purity movement was a late nineteenth-century reform movement that was a force in enacting laws on a variety of issues related to sexual morality, including prostitution, contraception, abortion, sexual assault, indecent assault, pornography, and age of consent. The movement also successfully brought sex education into schools, on the belief that the more educated children were on sex, the better their morals would be. Outside of politics, it was also involved in the advocacy for chastity and continence, and opposition to the liberalization of divorce law.[1] Broader than that, however, it was also concerned with inculcating good habits such as exercise, hygiene, healthy-eating, moderation, prayer, manners, truth-telling, and performing acts of kindness to others. In all, "social purity" was meant to imply good character and morals among people in society, especially in respect to their duties in social life.[2][3][4]

Composed primarily of women, the movement was active in English-speaking nations from the late 1860s to about 1910, exerting an important influence on the contemporaneous feminist, eugenics, and birth control movements, although in some forms it clashed with these. The roots of the social purity movement lay in early nineteenth century moral reform movements, such as radical utopianism, abolitionism, and in the temperance movement.

Ideals

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While the word "social" in "social purity" has been read as a euphemism for "sexual"[5] because of the public issues the movement galvanized around, the concept entailed more than sexual relations, and included matters like good parenting and moral education, upright business dealings, good treatment of one's neighbors, and resistance to corruption in government and religion and other forms of social organizations. People were encouraged towards dutiful and directed social relationships; to become good husbands and wives, to become good parents to children, to become good citizens, and to become good members of the community.[6][2]

In this sense of the term, many spoke about social purity as simply being a necessary aspect of any society based on freedom and equality, reflecting the idea of people acting with "pure" hearts towards mutual betterment. However, in the rhetoric of the movement, the nucleus of these myriad of social relationships was the family, and the marital relationship in particular; this context sometimes specifically referenced as "domestic purity." As that was the case, whatever was a threat to the marital relationship was considered a threat to the family, and, in turn, to a healthy, moral society at large.[7][8][9] In response to the idea, the movement was concerned with moral vices that they saw as undermining healthy marital relationships and undermining the formation of those relationships. However, in turn, many in favor of the ideal were also critical of the Catholic Church for favoring celibacy, which they also saw as an injury to social purity, on the belief it devalued matrimony.[10][11][12] One author in this vein favorably spoke of Plato's proposal to put a fine on bachelors and deny them political privileges, citing this as an encouragement to marriage.[13] In response, Catholics defended the role of what they saw as clerical purity in aiding to serve as a model for marital purity. There was also some debate about whether Mormon polygamy offered an alternative model to social purity found in monogamous relationships. Writers in the movement emphasized equally the role of men and women to act in a pure fashion, and fought against what they perceived as a double standard which unequally punished women for moral discretion.

Early rhetoric about social purity, including the idealization of motherhood and fatherhood, lined up with the values espoused in the cult of domesticity, and some advocates spoke against women's suffrage, arguing it to be an engine that would bring discord into family relationships. As formal movements became organized — largely by women — the concept grew to valorize women's participation in the political system, while still holding in ideal their role as mothers.

As an organizing force, "social purity" became part of a larger vocabulary of terms common to reform movements of the time and this affected the shape of the movement. Reformers began to speak of "social purity" in contrast to "civic purity" in the same way that they would speak of "social justice" in contrast to "civic justice", or "social virtue" in contrast to "civic virtue" — simply meaning to refer to the social sphere rather than the civic one.[14] "Civic purity", in that vocabulary, would refer to upright conduct in civic affairs — fair conduct of election campaigns, refusal of money, resistance to corruption, obedience to the law, etc.[15][16] — and "purity" as a general word was often used to encompass both civic purity and social purity, or one or the other.[17][18] "Social purity", as such, referred to all matters of moral conduct in the aspects of the social sphere apart from civic life.[3]

In addition to the concern for the family, the focus on sexual vice also derived from belief that personal purity depended on self-control and a stoic ethic, which was argued to be key to character and personal integrity.[3][4] As that was the case, social purity reformers were almost always also advocates for temperance — and would frame them as one and the same[19][20][21] — but the public debate of the time split these issues, and differentiated social purity activism from temperance activism, and so the term "social purity" became more closely associated with sex.[20] Even so, social purity groups fought for issues related to temperance, but which fell out of its scope, such as preventing the sale of tobacco to minors, and discouraging minors from tobacco use in schools. Activists, notably J.C. Kellogg, also promoted the idea that eating should be about nutrition before it was about pleasing the palate. The movement created bodies of work on moral education, instructing parents and schools how to inculcate boys and girls into proper moral habits; this not only included issues of concupiscence, but also cupidity, extravagance, dishonesty, and faithfulness. The need for such education, and the conviction that these issue had to be talked about openly and honestly eventually led the movement to be a galvanizing force behind sex education. The public vocabulary about purity commonly be broken down into more specific terms, for example as "female purity", to speak of issues such as abortion, birth control, and prostitution in particular, in contrast to more broader issues of moral conduct[22][23] and "male purity" in counterpart to speak of men's sexual morals. Other times, it was simply assumed that the broader term "social purity" was referring specifically to sexual matters, because of the strong, and sometimes exclusive, focus of the movement on those issues.

Social and civic purity, as well as social and civic justice, were seen to go hand-in-hand. The cause of women's suffrage was discussed in the context of these issues, with the suggestion that politics as it existed was an "old boy's club" that held back social progress and broader social participation because it was founded on corruption and vice. Corrupt behavior in the social sphere was said to create corrupt behavior in the civic sphere, and vice versa; and both could not be distinguished from a society's ability to produce just laws and social conditions.[19]

History

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The notion of "social purity" existed prior to any formal movement or campaign;


The "White Slavery" Panic

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// The first stirrings of the formal movement began in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War, when, following the success of abolitionism, feminists and anti-slavery advocates began calls for a "new abolitionism" to deal with the issue of prostitution. Because of a rise in urbanization, most major cities had grown informal red light districts and prostitution had become a large, contentious issue in the political debate; many wanting prostitution legal, licensed, and regulated, and others wanting the definition of prostitution expanded to include any sexual misconduct or exploitation.[24] Supporters of licensing and regulation often cited the conventional belief that prostitution provided men an outlet for their sexual drive, and that efforts to eradicate prostitution would be met with failure and constitute a waste of resources. Feminists felt this constituted a double standard, since society still expected chastity for women, and lamented the fact that this created an underclass of women in cities, who would find their station in life as social pariahs. In the fight against regulationism, feminists found alliances with clergy and moral educationalists.[25] Instances of coercion and child prostitution were cast a representative of the industry as a whole, and the trade in general terms became referred to as "white slavery".[4]

The discussion soon expanded into the role of husbands and wives in the domestic situation, and of mothers and fathers in setting a good example for their children. In line with homeopathic theory, vice was portrayed as a type of miasma, in which terms children could only become upright citizens if the society around them set good standards and provided them proper moral education, and they themselves set standards for their own conduct.[26] Regulation of vice, in all forms, was seen as the chief political enemy, since it was seen as a state sponsorship for those behaviors. //

White-Cross and White-Shield Movements

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New Chivalry

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Social Hygiene

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Social Gospel

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The Rise of Eugenics

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Criticism and Legacy

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Notes

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  1. ^ The New York Times 1896
  2. ^ a b The Pulpit Record 1883, p. 153
  3. ^ a b c Hunt 1999, p. 155-157
  4. ^ a b c Ditmore 2006, p. 371-377
  5. ^ Gordon 2002, p. 72-75
  6. ^ Bailey 1871
  7. ^ Wilberforce 1888, p. 334
  8. ^ Gregory 1883, pp. 276–277
  9. ^ Washburn 1876, p. 128-149
  10. ^ Washburn 1876, p. 135
  11. ^ Prothero 1835, p. 97
  12. ^ Muir 1860, p. 122
  13. ^ Alcott 1872
  14. ^ The New York Times 1912
  15. ^ The New York Times 1903
  16. ^ The Spokesman-Review 1904
  17. ^ The New York Times 1908
  18. ^ Philadelphia Record 1901
  19. ^ a b The New York Times 1893
  20. ^ a b D'Emilio & Freedoman 1998, p. 149-156
  21. ^ Cook 1995, pp. 90
  22. ^ Lyons Weekly Monitor 1887
  23. ^ The New York Times 1894
  24. ^ Grace 2008, p. 18-21
  25. ^ Tosh 2007, p. 153-156
  26. ^ Cooke 1890, p. 3-4 harvnb error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFCooke1890 (help)
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References

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