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 stars4/5What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siecle France Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Civilization without Sexes
Titles in the series (23)
Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court: Music and the Circulation of Power Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGender and the Politics of Welfare Reform: Mothers' Pensions in Chicago, 1911-1929 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 ratingsWomen of the Renaissance Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, a Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCity 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 stars4/5Oglala Women: Myth, Ritual, and Reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making Gray Gold: Narratives of Nursing Home Care Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEquivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s--Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoyal Representations: Queen Victoria and British Culture, 1837-1876 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Prostitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300-1550 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities 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 stars3/5Women, Compulsion, Modernity: The Moment of American Naturalism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related ebooks
Sinister Wisdom 101: Variations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSinister Wisdom 109: Hot Spots Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings50 Feminist Art Manifestos Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe Have Never Been Middle Class: How Social Mobility Misleads Us Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIt's All Connected: Feminist Fiction and Poetry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInterdisciplinary Approaches to Twilight: Studies in Fiction, Media and a Contemporary Cultural Experience Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVarieties of Feminism: German Gender Politics in Global Perspective Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpeaking of Feminism: Today's Activists on the Past, Present, and Future of the U.S. Women's Movement Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIntroductions, Femspec Issue 15 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFeminist Praxis Revisited: Critical Reflections on University-Community Engagement Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSinister Wisdom 95: Reconciliations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOut of the Fog: On Politics, Feminism and Coming Alive Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The futures of feminism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFeminism and Community Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rebel Crossings: New Women, Free Lovers and Radicals in Britain and the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5queersexlife: Autobiographical Notes on Sexuality, Gender & Identity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Society of Young Women: Opportunities of Place, Power, and Reform in Saudi Arabia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMatter, Affect, AntiNormativity: Theory Beyond Dualism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen and the Subversion of the Community: A Mariarosa Dalla Costa Reader Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Feminism's Founding Fathers: The Men Who Fought for Women's Rights Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaternalism Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMothers, Mothering and Sex Work Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCapitalism on Campus: Sex Work, Academic Freedom and the Market Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe women's liberation movement in Scotland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMothers of Invention: Film, Media, and Caregiving Labor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVortex: The Crisis of Patriarchy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Gender Studies For You
All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women Don't Owe You Pretty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Communion: The Female Search for Love 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 stars3/5Period Power: Harness Your Hormones and Get Your Cycle Working For You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Cute When You're Mad: Simple Steps for Confronting Sexism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Vagina: A re-education Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Letter to a Bigot: Dead But Not Forgotten Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Transgender 101: A Simple Guide to a Complex Issue Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When Women Kill Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rape: The Politics of Consciousness Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) 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 stars4/5Jesus, Justice, and Gender Roles: A Case for Gender Roles in Ministry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women Who Kill Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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