Sex, Knowledge, and Control

The Progressive Invention of Sexual Modernity

Chapter 21, Lecture 3

Welcome to Lecture 3

This lecture examines how Progressives transformed sexuality from a subject of moral judgment into an object of scientific study and expert management. We'll explore how "knowing" about sex became a form of power and control.

What makes this lecture important:

It shows how science and expertise can be tools of social control
It reveals the origins of modern sexual regulation through medical and legal authority
It introduces Margaret Sanger as a complex figure who both challenged and used Progressive sexual governance

Key theme to watch for:

How sexual knowledge became power—the ability to define, categorize, and regulate intimate behavior.

From Policing to Explanation

Lecture 2 examined how fear and panic turned sexuality into an object of policing

This lecture shifts the register again:

If fear justified coercion, knowledge justified authority

What You Need to Know

We're building on the last two lectures. Lecture 1 showed disgust leading to regulation. Lecture 2 showed fear leading to surveillance. Now we see how knowledge created a different kind of power.

The progression:

Disgust → Protective regulation (food safety, workplace safety)
Fear → Surveillance and policing (Mann Act, vice commissions)
Knowledge → Expert authority and scientific management (this lecture)

Why knowledge is powerful:

When experts claim to understand something scientifically, they gain authority over it. If sex can be studied, measured, and explained, then experts can prescribe how people should behave.

Discussion Prompt

Who has authority over sexual behavior in our society today? Parents? Churches? Medical professionals? The law? How did we decide who gets to be an expert?

The Progressive Faith in Knowledge

Progressives increasingly believed that sexuality could be:

Studied
Classified
Normalized
Improved

What You Need to Know

This list represents a fundamental shift in thinking about sexuality. Before the Progressive Era, sexuality was primarily understood through religion and morality. Now it was becoming a subject of scientific study.

What each term means:

Studied: Sexuality could be researched using scientific methods
Classified: People could be sorted into categories (normal/abnormal, healthy/unhealthy)
Normalized: Standards could be established for "normal" sexual behavior
Improved: Through education and intervention, sexual behavior could be made "better"

Why this shift mattered:

Once sexuality was framed as a scientific problem, experts (doctors, social workers, psychologists) gained authority that previously belonged to religious leaders and families.

Senior Historians' Corner

Michel Foucault argued that modern power operates not by forbidding things but by producing knowledge about them. The more we talk about, study, and classify sexuality, the more it becomes subject to regulation.

The Progressive Transformation of Sex

Central Interpretive Claim

The Progressive Era did not simply repress sex

It reorganized it—transforming sexuality into a modern social problem governed by experts, laws, and institutions

Why This Matters

This is the key insight that will guide our entire lecture. Progressives weren't just saying "sex is bad"—they were creating entirely new systems for understanding and managing sexuality.

What "reorganized" means:

Sexuality moved from private to public concern
Authority shifted from families/churches to professionals/government
Moral judgment was replaced (or supplemented) by medical/scientific classification
New institutions were created to study, teach about, and regulate sex

The modern sexual world:

Many features of modern sexuality that we take for granted—sex education, birth control access, sexual medicine, legal definitions of consent—originated in Progressive-era attempts to manage sexuality "scientifically."

Critical thinking:

Is scientific management of sexuality better or worse than moral regulation? Or is it just a different form of control with different assumptions?

Part I

Why Sex Became a Problem to Solve

Structural change before moral judgment

Why Sex Became a Problem to Be Solved

Several developments destabilized older sexual norms:

Urban anonymity and mobility
Wage labor for young men and women
Delayed marriage and declining parental supervision
Commercial leisure and dating culture
Immigration and racialized fears of difference

What You Need to Know

These are the same structural changes we discussed in Lecture 2, but now we're seeing a different response: instead of just policing behavior, Progressives tried to study and explain it.

Key Historical Context

By the early 1900s, millions of young people were living in cities, working for wages, and socializing in public spaces. Traditional mechanisms of sexual regulation (family supervision, church authority, community gossip) were breaking down.

Why this created a "problem":

Old rules no longer worked in new social conditions
Different ethnic and class groups had different sexual norms
Young people had new freedoms but little guidance
Authorities feared social disorder and moral decline

Senior Historians' Corner

John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman in Intimate Matters (1988) show how the transition from a family-based economy to wage labor fundamentally transformed American sexuality. Beth Bailey in From Front Porch to Back Seat (1988) traces the emergence of modern dating culture.

Sex as Political Question

Interpretive Claim

Sex became politically salient not because it was new, but because it was no longer easily governed by family, church, or community custom

Progressives increasingly framed sexuality as a social risk with public consequences

What You Need to Know

This slide explains why sexuality became a Progressive issue. It wasn't that sex was new—it was that the old ways of regulating it were breaking down.

The shift in authority:

Before: Family elders, religious leaders, and tight-knit communities enforced sexual norms through personal relationships and social pressure
After: These authorities lost power in anonymous urban settings, creating a vacuum that government and experts filled

Why "social risk" framing mattered:

By framing sexuality as a social problem with public consequences (disease, poverty, social disorder), Progressives justified government intervention into private life. This was the same logic used for other reforms like public health and workplace safety.

The pattern:

Throughout Progressive reform, we see private behaviors being redefined as public problems: what you eat (food safety), where you work (labor regulation), how you raise your children (compulsory education), and who you have sex with.

Discussion Prompt

Where's the line between private behavior and public concern? Who decides?

Part II

Making Sex Knowable

From taboo to expertise

From Silence to Expertise

A major Progressive shift was epistemic

Sex moved:

From taboo to topic
From private experience to expert discourse
From moral judgment to medical explanation

What You Need to Know

This slide describes a fundamental change in how Americans thought and talked about sexuality.

Key Definitions

Epistemic shift: A change in how knowledge is created and who has authority to create it
Expert discourse: Specialized language and knowledge controlled by trained professionals

The three movements:

From taboo to topic: Sex became something people could discuss openly (in certain contexts)
From private experience to expert discourse: Instead of learning about sex from family or experience, people increasingly got information from doctors, books, and lectures
From moral judgment to medical explanation: Sexual behavior was increasingly explained in medical/scientific terms rather than purely moral terms

What didn't change:

Notice that moral assumptions didn't disappear—they were just repackaged in scientific language. What was called "sin" became "deviance" or "unhealthy." The judgments remained but claimed scientific neutrality.

Senior Historians' Corner

Michel Foucault argues that the Victorian era wasn't actually silent about sex—it produced an explosion of discourse about sex, but channeled through medical and scientific language. The Progressive Era intensified this pattern.

Arenas of Sexual Knowledge

Key arenas where sexual knowledge was produced:

Public health campaigns
Hygiene lectures
Medical textbooks
Early sexology
Social work and case files

IMAGE PLACEHOLDER
Dimensions: 900x500px

Search terms: "progressive era sex education poster"
"social hygiene movement 1910s"
"American Social Hygiene Association materials"

Suggested sources: Library of Congress, National Library of Medicine

What You Need to Know

These are the institutions and practices through which sexual knowledge was created and distributed in the Progressive Era.

Each arena explained:

Public health campaigns: Government efforts to educate about venereal disease, especially targeting military recruits and young people
Hygiene lectures: Educational talks in schools, community centers, and workplaces about "proper" sexual behavior
Medical textbooks: Professional literature that trained doctors to view sexuality as a medical issue
Early sexology: Scientific research attempting to classify and explain sexual behavior
Social work case files: Detailed records social workers kept about families' intimate lives

What this created:

A massive apparatus for producing, distributing, and controlling sexual knowledge. This wasn't just repression—it was the creation of entirely new forms of authority over sexuality.

Senior Historians' Corner

Christina Simmons in Making Marriage Modern (2009) examines how sex education and marriage counseling emerged as professional fields in this era.

Knowledge as Power

Interpretive Emphasis

Talking about sex as science allowed reformers to claim neutrality and authority, even as moral assumptions remained deeply embedded

Sexual knowledge became a form of power

What You Need to Know

This is the key analytical point. Scientific language gave reformers a way to regulate sexuality while claiming they weren't making moral judgments.

How this worked:

Instead of saying "premarital sex is sinful," say "it's unhealthy"
Instead of saying "homosexuality is immoral," say "it's deviant" or "abnormal"
Instead of saying "women should be chaste," say "sexual restraint promotes wellness"

Why scientific language was powerful:

It claimed objectivity and neutrality
It was harder to challenge (who can argue with "science"?)
It gave authority to professionals rather than ordinary people
It made moral judgments seem like natural facts

The reality:

Behind the scientific language, the same moral assumptions remained: heterosexuality was normal, marriage was proper, procreation was the purpose, etc. But now these assumptions were dressed up as medical facts.

Why "sexual knowledge became a form of power":

Whoever controls knowledge about sex—what's normal, healthy, proper—controls how people think about and manage their own sexuality. Doctors, social workers, and scientists gained enormous power over intimate life.

Discussion Prompt

Can science ever be truly neutral about sexuality? Or do scientists always bring moral assumptions to their research?

Part III

Categorizing Sexuality

Normal, deviant, and dangerous

Normal, Deviant, and Dangerous Sex

Progressives increasingly sorted sexuality into categories

Emerging distinctions included:

Healthy vs. unhealthy
Marital vs. illicit
Reproductive vs. wasteful
Normal vs. deviant

What You Need to Know

Once sexuality became an object of scientific study, experts began creating classification systems. These categories weren't neutral—they reflected and reinforced social hierarchies.

Each distinction explained:

Healthy vs. unhealthy: Medical language replacing moral judgment—but often the same behaviors (premarital sex, masturbation, etc.) were labeled "unhealthy"
Marital vs. illicit: Marriage remained the dividing line between acceptable and unacceptable sex
Reproductive vs. wasteful: Sex for pleasure was seen as "wasteful"; sex should produce children
Normal vs. deviant: Heterosexual, marital, procreative sex was "normal"; everything else was "deviant"

What these categories did:

Created standards against which everyone was measured
Gave authorities power to label people as normal or abnormal
Justified intervention for "deviant" behavior
Made certain sexual expressions seem natural and others unnatural

Senior Historians' Corner

George Chauncey in Gay New York (1994) shows how medical and legal categories of sexual "deviance" were created in this era and used to criminalize same-sex desire.

Categories Reflect Power

These categories were not neutral

They reflected:

Class norms
Racial hierarchies
Gender expectations
Assumptions about productivity and social order

What You Need to Know

Sexual categories that claimed to be scientific actually reflected existing prejudices and power structures.

How each factor shaped categories:

Class norms: Middle-class sexual behavior was considered "normal"; working-class sexuality was often labeled "promiscuous" or "immoral"
Racial hierarchies: White sexuality was the standard; Black, Asian, and Indigenous sexuality was stereotyped as "primitive" or "dangerous"
Gender expectations: Men were assumed to be sexually aggressive; women were supposed to be passive. Behavior that violated these norms was labeled "deviant"
Productivity assumptions: Sex was supposed to serve social purposes (reproduction, marriage stability); pleasure for its own sake was seen as wasteful

Examples:

Working-class women's dating practices labeled "promiscuous" while similar middle-class behavior was acceptable courtship
Black women stereotyped as hypersexual; white women as pure (with heavy consequences for those who violated expectations)
Women who desired sex labeled "nymphomaniacs"; men with high sex drives considered "virile"

Discussion Prompt

Do our sexual categories today reflect power and prejudice? What counts as "normal" sexuality now, and who decides?

Ranking Before Biology

Interpretive Claim

Before sexuality was biologized through genetics, it was already being ranked and disciplined through social science and medicine

This sets the conceptual groundwork for eugenics

What You Need to Know

This slide bridges to next lecture on eugenics. Once experts created hierarchies of sexual behavior (normal/deviant, healthy/unhealthy), it was a short step to arguing that some people shouldn't reproduce.

The progression:

Sex becomes an object of expert knowledge
Experts create categories ranking sexual behavior
People are labeled based on their sexual behavior
Those labeled "deviant" or "unfit" are targeted for intervention
Eventually, this extends to preventing "unfit" people from reproducing

The logic:

If some sexual behavior is "unhealthy" or "deviant," and if experts can identify who engages in such behavior, then perhaps society should prevent those people from passing on their traits. This is eugenic logic emerging from Progressive sexual regulation.

Why this matters:

It shows how eugenics didn't come out of nowhere. It emerged logically from Progressive assumptions about expertise, social efficiency, and the right to manage populations for the collective good.

Part IV

Controlling Knowledge

Who gets to know what about sex?

Law, Censorship, and the Control of Sexual Knowledge

Knowledge itself became a target of regulation

Progressive-era law treated sexual information as:

Dangerous
Corrupting
Socially destabilizing

What You Need to Know

This is a paradox: while Progressives promoted expert knowledge about sex, they also heavily censored sexual information available to ordinary people.

The logic:

Experts could study sex because they were trained and objective
Ordinary people couldn't be trusted with sexual information because they might misuse it

What was considered "dangerous":

Information about contraception
Discussion of sexual pleasure
Any material that might "arouse" readers
Information about sexual variation (especially homosexuality)

The double standard:

Medical textbooks could discuss sexuality in clinical terms, but popular materials about sex were banned as "obscene." This created a knowledge hierarchy where only professionals had access to information.

Mechanisms of Censorship

Key mechanisms for controlling sexual knowledge:

Obscenity statutes
Censorship of contraceptive information
Postal regulation
Criminalization of sexual education

What You Need to Know

The government didn't just regulate sexual behavior—it regulated what people could know about sex.

Each mechanism explained:

Obscenity statutes: Laws defining "obscene" materials as illegal. These were interpreted broadly to include educational materials about sex.
Censorship of contraceptive information: It was illegal to mail, sell, or distribute information about birth control
Postal regulation: The U.S. Post Office had enormous power to determine what could be mailed, and used it aggressively to suppress sexual information
Criminalization of sexual education: Teaching about contraception or sexual health could result in criminal prosecution

The Comstock Era:

From 1873 through the 1930s, federal obscenity laws (the Comstock Acts) made it illegal to distribute contraceptive information or devices through the mail. Many states had additional laws criminalizing the sale or use of contraception.

Who this affected:

Primarily poor and working-class people who couldn't afford private doctors (who sometimes provided contraception discreetly to wealthy patients). Knowledge became a class privilege.

Senior Historians' Corner

Andrea Tone in Devices and Desires (2001) chronicles the history of contraception in America and how censorship created a black market for birth control devices.

Who Controls Knowledge?

Interpretive Emphasis

The state claimed the authority not only to police sexual behavior, but to decide who was allowed to know what about sex

Ignorance was often framed as protection

What You Need to Know

This is a crucial insight: controlling knowledge is a form of power. By deciding who can access information about sexuality, authorities controlled people's ability to make informed choices.

Why "ignorance as protection" mattered:

Authorities argued that sexual information would "corrupt" young people and women
They claimed ignorance preserved innocence
They believed knowledge would encourage sexual experimentation

The reality:

Ignorance didn't prevent sexual activity—it just made it more dangerous
Without information about contraception, women faced unwanted pregnancies
Without information about disease, people couldn't protect themselves
Censorship created a knowledge gap that harmed the most vulnerable

The pattern:

Throughout Progressive reform, we see paternalism: authorities claiming they know what's best for people and restricting autonomy "for their own good." This happened with sexual knowledge, alcohol (Prohibition), immigration (Americanization), and more.

Discussion Prompt

When is ignorance protection, and when is it disempowerment? Should any information be censored "for people's own good"?

Part V

Margaret Sanger

Challenging sexual governance from within

Case Study: Margaret Sanger

Introduce Sanger as a figure embedded within this broader sexual regime

Situate her activism within:

Immigrant tenement life
Public-health nursing
Maternal mortality and unsafe abortion
Working-class family survival

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Search terms: "Margaret Sanger portrait photograph"
"Margaret Sanger birth control clinic"
"Margaret Sanger 1916"

Suggested sources: Library of Congress, Margaret Sanger Papers Project

What You Need to Know

Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) was a nurse and birth control activist who founded what became Planned Parenthood. But she was also a controversial figure whose methods and alliances raise difficult questions.

Key Definitions

Margaret Sanger: Nurse, birth control activist, founder of the American Birth Control League (later Planned Parenthood)
Birth control: Sanger coined this term to replace "contraception" because it emphasized women's control

Sanger's background:

Born 1879 in Corning, New York, to a large working-class Irish Catholic family
Trained as a nurse
Worked on New York's Lower East Side among poor immigrant families
Witnessed women dying from botched abortions and exhaustion from constant childbearing

What she observed:

Poor women trapped in cycles of pregnancy, childbirth, and poverty. They desperately wanted to control their fertility but had no access to contraception. Middle-class women could sometimes get contraception from private doctors, but poor women were left ignorant and vulnerable.

Her famous story:

Sanger claimed a patient named Sadie Sachs died after a botched abortion because doctors refused to tell her how to prevent pregnancy. This motivated Sanger's activism. (Historians debate whether this story is true or a compelling narrative Sanger used to explain her activism.)

Sanger's Epistemic Intervention

Her intervention was epistemic as much as political

Sanger's Reframing

Sanger reframed birth control as necessary knowledge, not obscenity

What You Need to Know

Sanger didn't just demand access to contraception—she challenged who got to define what counted as "obscene" vs. "necessary information."

What "epistemic intervention" means:

Sanger challenged the knowledge system itself. She argued:

Information about contraception wasn't "obscene"—it was essential health information
Women weren't corrupted by sexual knowledge—they were empowered by it
Experts shouldn't monopolize information—ordinary people needed access
The government shouldn't decide what women could know about their own bodies

Her tactics:

Published The Woman Rebel magazine with contraceptive information
Opened birth control clinics (first in Brooklyn, 1916)
Deliberately violated Comstock laws to challenge them in court
Traveled internationally to study contraceptive methods
Built a movement to legalize birth control

The risks:

Sanger was arrested multiple times, faced prison, and lived in exile for a period. Her clinics were raided and shut down. But publicity from arrests built support for her cause.

Tensions in Sanger's Activism

Key tensions to emphasize:

She challenged sexual silence
She invoked science and health
She sometimes adopted Progressive language of fitness and improvement

What You Need to Know

Sanger is a complicated historical figure. She did important work expanding reproductive access, but she also used problematic eugenic arguments.

The three tensions:

Challenged sexual silence: This was radical and necessary—breaking taboos about discussing sexuality and reproduction
Invoked science and health: This was strategic—using Progressive language to build legitimacy
Adopted eugenic language: This was problematic—reinforcing hierarchies of human worth

Why historians emphasize these tensions:

Sanger shows that even progressive activists operated within the assumptions of their era. She challenged some aspects of Progressive sexual regulation (censorship, ignorance) while accepting others (expert authority, eugenic logic).

The eugenic dimension:

Sanger sometimes argued birth control would prevent the "unfit" from reproducing. She spoke to eugenic conferences. She accepted funding from eugenics supporters. This deeply complicates her legacy, especially given how birth control was later used coercively.

Senior Historians' Corner

Linda Gordon in Woman's Body, Woman's Right (1976) provides a nuanced account of Sanger's activism and its contradictions. Betsy Hartmann and others have critiqued how population control movements have targeted marginalized communities.

Discussion Prompt

Can we appreciate Sanger's work for reproductive access while criticizing her eugenic rhetoric? How do we evaluate historical figures who did both liberating and oppressive things?

Working Within the System

Interpretive Claim

Sanger did not stand outside Progressive sexual governance

She contested it from within, using its tools while resisting its constraints

What You Need to Know

This is the key interpretive point about Sanger. She wasn't a complete outsider attacking the system—she was working within Progressive assumptions while trying to expand reproductive autonomy.

What "contested from within" means:

She accepted the Progressive emphasis on expertise and science
She claimed authority as a trained nurse and health professional
She used eugenic arguments that resonated with reformers
But she challenged censorship, paternalism, and male control over reproduction

Why this matters:

It shows how change happens—usually not from complete outsiders, but from people working within existing systems who push boundaries and challenge specific constraints. Sanger accepted some Progressive assumptions while rejecting others.

The broader pattern:

Many progressive activists of this era used the tools of Progressive reform (expertise, science, government intervention) while contesting who wielded those tools and to what ends. This created both progress and new forms of control.

Part VI

Sexual Autonomy and Its Limits

Partial, uneven, contested

The Progressive Contradiction

Sanger's activism reveals a larger Progressive contradiction

On One Hand

Expanding sexual knowledge
Greater bodily autonomy
Challenges to censorship

On the Other

Persistent moral regulation
Unequal access to information
Racialized and class-based judgments

What You Need to Know

Progressive sexual reform produced both liberation and control simultaneously. This is the central contradiction.

The progressive side:

Expanding knowledge: More information about sexuality available (though controlled by experts)
Greater autonomy: Women gaining some control over reproduction
Challenging censorship: Activists like Sanger pushing back against Comstock laws

The controlling side:

Persistent regulation: Government and experts still controlling sexual behavior
Unequal access: Knowledge and contraception available to middle-class people but not poor people
Racialized judgments: Birth control encouraged for "unfit" populations but restricted for "fit" populations

Why both things happened at once:

Progressive reform expanded some freedoms while creating new forms of control. The same movement that gave women access to contraception also created systems for judging who should and shouldn't reproduce.

Discussion Prompt

Is reproductive autonomy possible when experts control access to knowledge and technology? What would true autonomy look like?

Contested Sexual Modernity

Interpretive Synthesis

Sexual modernity emerged through conflict, not consensus

Autonomy was:

Partial
Uneven
Constantly negotiated

What You Need to Know

Modern sexual freedom didn't simply emerge—it was fought for, contested, and always incomplete.

What "sexual modernity" means:

The modern regime of sexuality based on science, medicine, individual choice
Access to contraception and sexual knowledge
Legal frameworks around consent and sexual rights
Professional expertise in sexual health

Why it was "contested":

Religious and moral conservatives opposed sexual liberalization
Medical establishment wanted to control access
Government enforced censorship and restrictions
Activists pushed for expanded access and knowledge
Different communities had different norms and needs

What "partial, uneven, constantly negotiated" means:

Partial: Some autonomy gained but within limits
Uneven: Available to some people (privileged) but not others (marginalized)
Constantly negotiated: Ongoing struggle, not a final victory

The takeaway:

Sexual freedom and autonomy are always works in progress, shaped by ongoing struggles between different visions of how sexuality should be organized.

Part VII

Bridge to Eugenics

From managing behavior to managing heredity

Preparing the Ground for Eugenics

By the 1910s:

Sexuality had been medicalized
Reproduction had been politicized
Bodies had been categorized
Experts had gained authority

What You Need to Know

Everything we've discussed in this lecture created the conditions for eugenics to emerge as policy.

How each development enabled eugenics:

Sexuality medicalized: Doctors claimed authority over reproduction
Reproduction politicized: Government claimed interest in who reproduced
Bodies categorized: People sorted into "fit" and "unfit"
Experts gained authority: Professionals could override individual choice

The logic:

If sexuality is a matter of public health, if experts can identify "unhealthy" or "unfit" sexuality, if reproduction affects social welfare, then perhaps society should prevent "unfit" people from reproducing. This is how eugenics became thinkable.

From Behavior to Heredity

Interpretive Bridge

Once sex and reproduction were framed as matters of social efficiency and population quality, it became possible to argue that some reproduction should be discouraged or prevented

This transition sets the stage for Lecture 4

What You Need to Know

This slide explains how the logic of this lecture leads directly into eugenics. Once reproduction is framed as a social problem requiring expert management, forced sterilization becomes thinkable.

The progression across lectures:

Lecture 2: Fear justifies surveillance and policing of sexual behavior
Lecture 3: Knowledge creates expert authority over sexuality and reproduction
Lecture 4: Experts use that authority to prevent "unfit" people from reproducing

Why this matters:

It shows that eugenics didn't emerge from nowhere. It was a logical extension of Progressive assumptions about expertise, efficiency, and the right to manage populations for collective welfare.

The warning:

When we allow experts to define who is "fit" or "unfit," and when we prioritize social efficiency over individual rights, we create conditions for profound injustice.

Concluding Insight

The Progressive Era did not simply liberate or repress sexuality

It transformed sex into:

A public concern
A scientific object
A legal category
A site of state power

Key Takeaway

Modern sexual freedom emerged not in opposition to Progressivism, but through prolonged struggle within it

What You Need to Know

This is the summary of our entire argument about Progressive sexual regulation.

The four transformations:

Public concern: Sexual behavior no longer seen as purely private
Scientific object: Sexuality became something to study and classify
Legal category: Law defined acceptable and unacceptable sexuality
Site of state power: Government claimed authority over intimate life

The final insight:

"Modern sexual freedom emerged not in opposition to Progressivism, but through prolonged struggle within it." This means:

The sexual freedoms we have today were fought for by people working within Progressive systems
Those systems both enabled and constrained liberation
The struggle is ongoing—we still negotiate between autonomy and regulation

Looking forward:

Next lecture will show the darkest outcome of Progressive sexual governance: eugenics and forced sterilization. This will complete our understanding of how Progressive faith in expertise and efficiency could produce both protection and coercion.

Next Time

Eugenics and Progressive Social Engineering

How Progressive assumptions about expertise and improvement led to coercive population control

The logical conclusion of managing populations

Sex, Knowledge, and Control

The Progressive Invention of Sexual Modernity

From Policing to Explanation

The Progressive Faith in Knowledge

The Progressive Transformation of Sex

Part I

Why Sex Became a Problem to Solve

Why Sex Became a Problem to Be Solved

Commercial Leisure and Dating Culture

Sex as Political Question

Sexuality as Social Risk

Part II

Making Sex Knowable

From Silence to Expertise

What Does "Epistemic" Mean?

Arenas of Sexual Knowledge

Early Sexology

Knowledge as Power

Part III

Categorizing Sexuality

Normal, Deviant, and Dangerous Sex

Categories Reflect Power

Ranking Before Biology

Part IV

Controlling Knowledge

Law, Censorship, and the Control of Sexual Knowledge

Mechanisms of Censorship

The Comstock Laws

Who Controls Knowledge?

Part V

Margaret Sanger

Case Study: Margaret Sanger

Sanger's Epistemic Intervention

Tensions in Sanger's Activism

Sanger and Eugenic Language

Working Within the System

Part VI

Sexual Autonomy and Its Limits

The Progressive Contradiction

On One Hand

On the Other

Contested Sexual Modernity

Part VII

Bridge to Eugenics

Preparing the Ground for Eugenics

From Behavior to Heredity