Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal 18.1 (2021) ISSN: 2160-617X (online) blogs.uoregon.edu/ourj The Nuclear Family and Gender Roles in Oregon’s Venereal Disease Campaign: 1911-1918 Dimitra Fellman*, Biology ABSTRACT The Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon (later renamed the Oregon Social Hygiene Society - or OSHS) was founded in 1911 in order to combat venereal disease in the city and eventually across the state. Oregon’s efforts were part of the broader social hygiene movement taking place across America during the second decade of the twentieth century, which most notably advocated for an equal standard of chastity for men and women. Despite this single standard, promiscuous women (women engaged in premarital sex or sexual relations with multiple sexual partners) were systematically persecuted and punished while men were not. While a large amount of existing scholarship focuses on how the social hygiene movement targeted prostitutes and not the men seeking their services, little work has been done to investigate how the movement viewed husbands and wives within the nuclear family and whether partnerships were equal when it came to combating venereal disease. This paper investigates how the social hygiene campaign in Oregon from 1911 to 1918 viewed the nuclear family and conceptualized parental duties in combating venereal disease. It also analyzes how those duties equalized husbands and wives while simultaneously reflecting social gender norms of the time that relegated women to the home. 1. INTRODUCTION In September of 1911, doctors, health workers, social workers, and other prominent Portland community members gathered at the invitation of the Portland YMCA and founded The Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon (later renamed the Oregon Social Hygiene Society, or OSHS) in order to combat venereal disease in the city and eventually across the state.1 Oregon’s efforts were part of the broader social hygiene movement taking place across America during the second decade of the twentieth century, which blended purist values with new medical knowledge in order to cure America of venereal disease through both moral reform and medical education.2 Creating a single standard for male and female chastity became one major tenet of this national campaign, bringing together social reformers and medical men in the fight against venereal disease. However, conflicting agendas between medical men and female reformers — the former *Dimitra Fellman is a senior majoring in biology and minoring in global health and dance. She works as a research assistant investigating the ethics of malaria eradication and elimination campaigns and as an undergraduate tutor for biology courses. In her free time, she enjoys playing the flute and dancing to her favorite music. Please direct correspondence to dimitraf@uoregon.edu. Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Fellman viewing the single standard as a means to remove venereal disease and the latter perceiving it as a step towards gender equality — would ultimately result in inequality.3 Kristin Luker argues that in the process of fighting venereal disease and the immoral actions that caused them, promiscuous women (women engaged in premarital sex or sexual relations with multiple sexual partners) were systematically persecuted and punished while men were not. Her work and a large amount of existing scholarship focus on how the social hygiene movement targeted prostitutes and promiscuous women, but not the men seeking their services. However, no work has been done to investigate how equal the treatment was between married men and women.4 Previous scholarship demonstrates that during the Progressive Era, society increasingly viewed marriage as a partnership and union of love as opposed to an arrangement,5 yet no one has investigated whether this newly conceptualized spousal equality existed in the social hygiene movement. Bridging the gap between the social hygiene movement and newly emerging perceptions of spousal partnership is critical because the social hygiene movement called for a single standard of chastity in which women and men were expected to wait until marriage to have sex and justified such a standard using rhetoric that targeted the married and unmarried by emphasizing the importance of a disease-free nuclear family in one’s life. With a focus on both uniform behavioral standards before marriage and the nuclear family, it is important to ask whether uniform standards extended to the nuclear family as well. In order to fill this gap, this paper analyzes Oregonian articles, Oregon state legal documents, as well as OSHS pamphlets and essays—widely circulated in Oregon through fairs, public lectures, publicly displayed billboards, private visits to homes, and the mail6—to answer the following questions: How did Oregon’s venereal disease campaign view the nuclear family? What were husbands’ and wives’ roles within the family, and how were they expected to use their respective positions to combat venereal disease? How did these respective roles equalize or differentiate husbands and wives? The evidence makes it clear that the social hygiene campaign in Oregon from 1911 to 1918 strived to protect the nuclear family, calling upon both men and women to remain chaste before marriage and carry out specific tasks related to education, childrearing and the home in order to do so. While some of these roles and the reasoning behind them theoretically equalized husbands and wives, the campaign’s rhetoric reinforced 20th century gender norms that limited women and ultimately situated them within the home. 2. PROTECTING AND CREATING VENEREAL DISEASE-FREE FAMILIES VIA THE SINGLE STANDARD Oregon’s social hygiene campaign aimed to protect nuclear families via the single standard of chastity, a standard which OSHS believed would keep families free from venereal disease and the horrible physical conditions OSHS thought would arise within families as the result of venereal diseases. Promotion of a single standard created equality in marriages by expecting the same behavior from both men and women and giving women some legal agency. However, OSHS’s campaign limited women by expecting them to want and have children and by depicting women in ways that deprived them of agency. Volume 18 Issue 1 Winter 2021 14 Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Fellman 2.1. PROTECTING MARRIAGE Chasity guidelines from Oregon’s social hygiene movement drew on national social hygiene reforms striving to refine society through sexual purity. OSHS’s pamphlet Keeping Fit (Illustrated), which contains images of posters distributed throughout the state, includes a poster that proclaims: “Somewhere the girl who may become your wife is keeping clean for you. You expect her to remain pure. Resolve that you will bring to her a life equally as clean.”7 Not only does this statement create clear standards for women who will become wives, but it holds that men must remain chaste as well.8 At the time, many social hygienists in Oregon presumed all women engaged in extra- or pre-marital sex carried venereal disease; therefore, chastity would be the only way for men to remain clean for marriage.9 This rhetoric, indicating that women must remain clean for the sake of their husbands and men must do the same for their wives, exemplifies Oregon’s efforts to protect the nuclear family. This single standard also brought equality to marriages by holding both future husbands and future wives to the same expectations. Legally protecting disease-free marriages served as one way to achieve a single standard and furthered equality between husbands and wives. In 1913, Oregon passed a law requiring men to obtain a venereal-free certification in order to obtain a marriage certificate.10 Like the single standard, this law held men to the same expectations women had been historically held to, equalizing men and women entering marriage. In addition to Oregon’s 1913 marriage certificate law, a 1916 Oregon Supreme Court case granted a woman a divorce, one-third of her ex-husband’s land, and the ability to take back her maiden name because her husband gave her a venereal disease.11 This ruling shows legal support for disease-free marriages and protecting nuclear families because the husband was held legally responsible for his actions. Furthermore, the case exemplifies a phenomenon described by Robert Griswold: as societal values change, what is considered deviant and cause for divorce changes as well.12 This court case indicates that in Oregon, the adoption of a single standard expanded the grounds for women to divorce, extending women’s legal power in marriage. This court proceeding and law further indicate that Oregon’s social hygiene movement aimed to protect nuclear families by holding husbands and wives to the same standards, which simultaneously expanded wives’ power to control marriage outcomes. Statements on Oregon’s venereal disease laws reveal the underlying motive for a single standard in Oregon’s social hygiene campaign was that maintaining such a standard would generate healthy, disease-free families. William T. Foster, Vice President of OSHS spoke about how Oregon’s 1913 marriage certificate law protected families: As a measure for preventing the spread of diseases, this law has probably been of no great direct value, for few physicians have the means of making adequate examinations. The value of the law has been educational. It has forced thousands of men and women to face marriage more seriously, to consider the nature of venereal diseases, the laws of heredity, and the consequent responsibilities of parenthood.13 Foster admits that the OSHS’s goal is to prevent the spread of venereal disease by promoting family-centered values and making young men and women more carefully consider their sexual Volume 18 Issue 1 Winter 2021 15 Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Fellman activities in relation to their future marriage. Overall, Oregon laws and OSHS rhetoric surrounding marriage in Oregon’s social hygiene campaign aimed to protect both husbands and wives, creating equality within marriages. 2.2. PROTECTING WOMEN AND CHILDREN Male chastity in the form of abstinence until marriage also protected the nuclear family by safeguarding the health of women and children. According to OSHS’s Vigorous Manhood pamphlet, a man who engages in intercourse with a prostitute can contract venereal diseases that linger for years and pass them to future wives, possibly causing birth defects, blindness, or deafness in future children.14 Other OSHS material claimed mothers infected by their husbands could experience stillbirths or infect their children during pregnancy. OSHS emphasized that when both parents carried a venereal disease, the child suffered the most, facing mental illness due to impediments in neurological development.15 A published version of a lecture given by Dr. William House, an OSHS executive board member, also insists that marriage laws protected families by keeping parents free of venereal disease and preventing them from passing them to their children. For Oregon’s social hygiene movement, then, maintaining a single standard would create disease-free families and protect women and children. Furthermore, while OSHS told men to remain chaste for the sake of their future wives and children, women were told to remain chaste only to protect their future children, not their future husbands.16 This suggested that women, but not men, needed protection. Such a differentiation affords men more agency because OSHS presumed men could protect themselves while women could not. OSHS’s portrayal of husbands as the cause of some venereal disease cases depicted wives as victims and further deprived them of agency. One OSHS pamphlet follows a fictional man who does not receive a proper sex education, leading him to infect his wife with a venereal disease. The story only focuses on the man’s perspective, emphasizing how his improper upbringing and actions result in disaster. The woman has no control over her fate and, in the last image, lies helplessly in bed (Figure 1).17 Another pamphlet describes a woman “laying down her life for a venerated companion, and doing this with so whole-hearted a devotion that she never knows that her own youthful aspirations and ebullitions are repressed.”18 In this excerpt, the woman is wholly innocent and unaware of her risk of contracting venereal disease. The quotation also suggests that the woman is no longer able to have children as a result of her “venerated companion,” and so her dreams are completely crushed. This stresses OSHS’s focus on protecting the nuclear family and reinforces gender expectations of the time. Depicting wives as innocent victims whose life purpose is lost as a result of their husband’s actions while placing the responsibility of clean families on men deprived women of agency. This created inequality between husbands and wives because it purported that only husbands, and not wives, could control whether they would have a venereal disease-free future. Volume 18 Issue 1 Winter 2021 16 Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Fellman Figure 1: A page from OSHS pamphlet How One Boy was Instructed in Sex Matters and What Happened depicting how a lack of proper sex education ruins families.19 3. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE NUCLEAR FAMILY AND PARENTAL EDUCATION Like the single standard, OSHS’s efforts to educate husbands and wives together emphasized the importance of both in combating venereal disease. Although the social hygiene movement believed public education was crucial for preventing venereal disease, the movement in Oregon viewed parents and the home as the best medium through which venereal disease education could be disseminated.20 According to one venereal disease educator, “If the proper person to teach the child is the parent and if the parent does not know how, the obvious thing to do is to call the parents together and to try to teach them how.”21 This sentiment rang true throughout the OSHS’s educational campaign. In their first year alone, the OSHS held 98 meetings for parents, and over 200 by 1917.22 What is noteworthy about these meetings is that husbands and wives were allowed to attend together. The presence of both spouses at these events suggests OSHS believed that parents should receive information together, which would give both genders equal importance in fighting venereal disease. However, an Oregonian article describing one of these events suggests that in practice, wives had less agency in receiving this education because they reportedly did not choose to attend or were always escorted by their husbands. Furthermore, the article describes Volume 18 Issue 1 Winter 2021 17 Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Fellman how these lectures were only of interest to housewives of businessmen.23 As a result, OSHS emphasized parental co-education while simultaneously reinforcing gendered husband-wife dynamics within the familial structure that deprived wives of agency. Further divides existed in how husbands and wives were educated individually. In 1911, thirty- four percent of OSHS events exclusively for men were given at their workplace, and by 1917 four- hundred lectures had been delivered to men at work.24 Interestingly, from September of 1912 to August of 1913 the OSHS held seventy-one meetings for women at their place of employment.25 While providing this type of education to both working men and women suggests equality between them, the OSHS’s education for married women suggests that once married, a woman belonged in the home. The OSHS used door-to-door workers to deliver venereal disease information to 4,030 mothers in their homes in the program’s fourth year and 3,842 in the fifth. Yet husbands received no home lectures.26 Although this may be the result of a society with already gendered spheres, educating mothers but not fathers at home only served to reinforce women’s roles in the home and a husband’s status as the breadwinner. 4. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE NUCLEAR FAMILY IN CHILD-REARING These gendered spheres were reinforced by the social hygiene movement’s beliefs regarding how men and women should be raised in order to become dutiful parents. Despite an emphasis on fatherhood for men, the only source cited as an obstacle in fulfilling this role was immoral pleasure.27 For women, on the other hand, schooling took away from household responsibilities and the creation of unified families. Furthermore, a lack of domesticity was cause for female nervousness and stress.28 Attributing schooling to a woman’s inability to foster a proper family— and not doing so for men—and making negative associations with time spent away from the home ultimately places women, but not men, in the domestic sphere. Additionally, women were told to take their outdoor amusements and activities in moderation and as prescribed by a physician, as too much stimulus could cause undue stress.29 On the other hand, these types of stimuli were the best way to distract adolescent boys from sexual desires and maintain purity.30 Differing advice on how to raise girls and boys to achieve a proper family limited future wives compared to their husbands. While inequalities existed in how OSHS thought men and women should be raised to become proper parents, much of the discussion around families focused on both mothers’ and fathers’ responsibility to protect and raise children. According to Lebert Weir, a guest lecturer at an OSHS sponsored event, “One field of neglected social activity is the home as a recreation and social center […] The revival of the small group social in the home for the young people would be a constructive contribution to some of the moral problems of the young.”31 Here, Weir advocates for family-oriented activities because he believes that such events will strengthen family ties, affording parents greater opportunities to educate and influence their children’s morals, including those sexual in nature. This further emphasizes OSHS’s focus on the nuclear family as a means for preventing the spread of venereal diseases. Volume 18 Issue 1 Winter 2021 18 Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Fellman Notably, familial bonds between parents and children were crucial for both fathers and mothers to combat venereal disease. Previous scholarship by Margaret Marsh indicates that late nineteenth-century men supported the idea of “masculine domesticity” and encouraged fathers to play a larger role in raising male children to keep sons away from immoral actions.32 The OSHS’s campaign was no different, promoting father-son rapport. One OSHS member Henry Moore stressed the importance of fathers in the sex education of their children, writing, “We should endeavor to include the father in our plans of sex instruction and be careful not to break down such confidence as exists between father and son.”33 The society’s actions matched Moore’s words, mailing letters to fathers throughout Portland inviting them to attend father-son lectures. If the father could not go, the letter also included a ticket he could give their son so he could attend by himself.34 Promoting events specifically for fathers and sons, requiring them to attend the event together or requiring sons to obtain a ticket to go alone — which would inevitably bring about a discussion of venereal disease — reflects a belief in family-based education. The idea of male domesticity also emphasizes an inclusive and more gender equal approach to venereal disease education within the family. Unsurprisingly, women were portrayed as an integral part of raising children as well. The OSHS held both mother-daughter meetings and mother meetings in order to provide venereal disease education strictly for mothers.35 However, there was an underlying assumption that the best type of woman was one who served the household in some capacity. The most obvious way she was told to fulfill this role was as a mother, which OSHS’s campaign described as her chief responsibility and interest.36 Even women who could not have their own children were encouraged to dedicate their life to the care of others’ children.37 One OSHS pamphlet author goes so far as two say the two times he looks up to women the most are when they pray and when they complete “with infinite cheerfulness the repetitious tasks of wifehood and motherhood.”38 By explicitly telling women that their priorities should be raising children and that they are most admired when they do so, Oregon’s social hygiene movement drives home the importance of family and makes it clear a woman’s fundamental arena is the home. In addition to motherly rhetoric in the society’s educational pamphlets, OSHS took actions reflecting their support of a proper family and a mother’s role within them. An Oregonian newspaper article published in 1918 asked Portland citizens to help find homes for promiscuous young women on a path to recovery. The article stresses that these women will return to their misguided ways if they simply return to their previous accommodations. Instead, the society looked to place them in homes where “the housewife is a woman who applies her Christianity in a practical way.”39 The fact that the OSHS explicitly looked for housewives to prevent women from reverting to actions that could spread venereal disease emphasizes the importance of a motherly figure in a girl’s life and the importance of domestic mothers in fighting venereal disease. So, while OSHS increased equality between husbands and wives by expecting both to spend time educating their children, they expected only wives to dedicate themselves to parenthood, maintaining gender norms that restricted women more than men. Volume 18 Issue 1 Winter 2021 19 Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Fellman 5. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE NUCLEAR FAMILY AND A WOMAN’S ROLE AS HOMEMAKER Even when described in contexts outside motherhood, women were portrayed as vital members of their homes and communities. One emotionally charged OSHS pamphlet set extremely high standards for a divine woman. The author Lyman Abbott provides vignettes of divine women—including one depicting a poor woman who can still create a beautiful home— and a second who brings… …into her village home the culture which education, social advantage, and travel have given to her, and giving herself to the new and unknown neighborhood with such devotion that local jealousies are laid aside, gossip and slander are stilled, the spirit of sectarianism gives place to a spirit of brotherhood, and the whole community feels the pulsation of a new life of good will.40 Both of these examples focus on a woman’s ability to create a pleasant home and community, whether she is a woman of means or disadvantaged. The second excerpt also implies that even when women do leave their homes and communities to travel or study, their ultimate reason for doing so should be to provide service to their own or another community. Two other vignettes describe women who leave their household duties only to educate and care for others who do not have homes, solidifying this point.41 Advertising the ideal woman as one who serves domestic spheres reinforces traditional gender roles that relegated women to the home. Evidence suggests the OSHS practiced what they preached with the women they employed. The Oregonian article seeking homes for young wayward women portrays an OSHS worker by the name of Miss Murphy as a “good Samaritan” finding homes for misguided women with proper Christian families, reflecting Abbott’s divine woman.42 Although a working woman, Miss Murphy takes on the role of house matchmaker for others and serves as a vehicle for creating proper home environments for misguided women. Other women working for the OSHS served as educators for girls, women and mothers, offering their uncompensated time to bettering society through venereal disease education.43 These women’s ultimate service was to the domestic sphere or serving communities in Oregon. Men who worked for OSHS lecturing also served the domestic sphere by providing venereal disease education that OSHS believed would protect families. However, the fact that men served in this capacity resulted from the nature of OSHS’s goal to protect and create healthy families. Men, unlike women, were never explicitly praised for being homemakers or told that they must act in that capacity, further separating male and female roles in combating venereal disease. While men were expected to take part in child-rearing, they were not as limited to this sphere as their female counterparts, since wives played second fiddle to husbands when it came to supporting their families financially. Firstly, women who did work were encouraged to avoid “the mechanical pursuits [and work] into those which are more or less associated with the domestic arts.”44 Asserting that women should only be employed in tasks related to the home reinforces female roles in the domestic sphere. Volume 18 Issue 1 Winter 2021 20 Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Fellman While the idea of women as homemakers and caregivers was nothing new, what was perhaps more progressive is that the social hygiene movement supported wages for working women. In OSHS’s call for homes for “wayward” young women, the writer states the women will work in downtown Portland to pay for their room and board.45 Additionally, Oregon’s social hygiene campaign supported increasing wages for women to ten dollars a week. Their reasoning for this call was that working single women who did not receive proper wages were forced to turn to what OSHS saw as immoral means of living.46 While the OSHS supported working women, they only supported those who were unmarried and without children. Every example provided regarding the correlation between women’s wages and vice depicts women who support either themselves or their parents, implying that once a woman marries, she should no longer work outside the home. The author also alludes to this belief when he encourages increasing wages for working men so they can support their wives and children, suggesting married women should not work but instead rely on their husbands.47 Limiting women’s working capabilities and arguing that married women should not hold jobs separated male and female spheres within the nuclear family. 6. CONCLUSION The single standard in Oregon’s social hygiene campaign, which required both women and men to abstain from sex before marriage and lessened differences in gender role expectations by holding both to the same standards. While a focus on the nuclear family increased male household responsibilities and created some gender equality regarding roles in parental co-education and child-rearing, women were ultimately charged with home-focused roles in combating venereal disease and afforded less agency and mobility than their husbands. These findings indicate that overall, Oregon’s social hygiene campaign propagated gender norms and expectations of the time, but, due to the nature and basis of its campaign, also afforded women some opportunities for equality. Although Oregon’s social hygiene campaign reflected the national social hygiene movement by utilizing the single standard, the OSHS was established two years before the national body coordinating venereal disease reforms and education—The American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA)—was founded.48 This generates further questions as to whether ASHA or other social hygiene campaigns across America maintained similar perspectives on marital and parental equality, or if Oregon’s campaign was unique in its perspective on familial and parental roles in combating venereal disease. More broadly, these observations are reflective of the longer fight for gender equality that began during the Progressive Era and slowly gained new ground throughout the twentieth century. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Professor Ocean Howell for his support and guidance during the research and writing process. Volume 18 Issue 1 Winter 2021 21 Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Fellman REFERENCES Abbott, Lyman. Womanhood, Portland: The Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon, 1917. https://digital.osl.state.or.us/islandora/object/osl%3A94705. Burnham, John C. "The Progressive Era Revolution in American Attitudes Toward Sex." The Journal of American History 59, no. 4 (1973): 885-908. doi:10.2307/1918367. Cocks, Catherine. “Rethinking Sexuality in the Progressive Era,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 5, no. 2 (2006): 93-118, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25144430. Elliot, William G. “Teaching Phases: For Children.” In Foster, The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals, 104-26. Foster, William T. "State-Wide Education in Social Hygiene." The Public Health Journal 8, no. 7 (1917): 167-71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41997187. Foster, William T., ed. The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1914. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uva.x000617350. “Girls Need Homes — Appeal Made by Social Hygiene Society Worker.” Oregonian (Portland, OR), July 31, 1918, Morning Edition. Horton, Claire. “Combating Venereal Disease: ‘Oregon Responds to the Social Emergency’ 1911- 1922.” Undergraduate thesis, University of Oregon, 2013. House, William. “Physiological Aspects.” In Foster, The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals, 25-31. Luker, Kristin. "Sex, Social Hygiene, and the State: The Double-Edged Sword of Social Reform." Theory and Society 27, no. 5 (1998): 601-34. http://www.jstor.org/stable/657941. Marsh, Margaret. "Suburban Men and Masculine Domesticity, 1870-1915." American Quarterly 40, no. 2 (1988): 165-86. doi:10.2307/2713066. Moore, Harry H. “Teaching Phases: For Boys.” In Foster, The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals, 127-53. Basch, Norma. “The Emerging Legal History of Women in the United States: Property, Divorce, and the Constitution.” Signs 12, no. 1 (1986): 97-117. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3174359. "Oregon: Marriage—Certificate of Health Required. (Chap. 187, Act Feb. 26, 1913)." Public Health Reports 29, no. 7 (1914): 438. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4570518. Pivar, David J. Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control 1868-1900. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1973. Volume 18 Issue 1 Winter 2021 22 Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Fellman Smith, Andrew C. “Medical Phases.” In Foster, The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals, 32-44. Stuart, Bertha. “Teaching Phases: For Girls.” In Foster, The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals, 154-67. The Oregon Social Hygiene Society. Five Years’ Work in Oregon — Fifth Annual Report of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society. Portland: The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, 1916. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112107699156;view=1up;seq=33. The Oregon Social Hygiene Society. The Fourth Annual Report of The Social Hygiene Society. Portland: The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, 1915. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112073716448&view=1up&seq=1. The Oregon Social Hygiene Society. Healthy Womanhood. Portland: The Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon, 1917. https://digital.osl.state.or.us/islandora/object/osl%3A94701. The Oregon Social Hygiene Society. How One Boy was Instructed in Sex Matters and What Happened. Portland: The Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon, 1917. https://digital.osl.state.or.us/islandora/object/osl%3A94698. The Oregon Social Hygiene Society. Keeping Fit (Illustrated). Portland: The Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon, 1917. https://digital.osl.state.or.us/islandora/object/osl%3A94713. The Oregon Social Hygiene Society. Progress — The Second Annual Report of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society. Portland: Portland Printing House Co., 1913. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112073716398;view=1up;seq=5. The Oregon Social Hygiene Society. A Social Emergency: The First Annual Report of the Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon. Portland: The Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon, 1912. doi:10.6083/M4DF6QRV. The Oregon Social Hygiene Society. The State-Wide Work of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society. Portland: The Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon, 1917. https://digital.osl.state.or.us/islandora/object/osl%3A94712. The Oregon Social Hygiene Society. Vigorous Manhood. Portland: The Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon, 1917. https://digital.osl.state.or.us/islandora/object/osl%3A94700. Turner, Frank A. “Wagner v Wagner.” In Reports of Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon 80, 256-9. San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney Company, 1916. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b5038321;view=1up;seq=300. Vandenberg-Daves, Jodi. "The Manly Pursuit of a Partnership between the Sexes: The Debate over YMCA Programs for Women and Girls, 1914-1933." The Journal of American History 78, no. 4 (1992): 1324-346. doi:10.2307/2079345. Volume 18 Issue 1 Winter 2021 23 Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Fellman Weir, Lebert. “Recreational Phases.” In Foster, The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals, 70-83. “Women to Hear Lectures — Much Interest Shown in Course on Sex Hygiene Problems.” Oregonian (Portland, OR), February 2, 1913, Sunday Edition. Wood Arthur E. “Economic Phases,” In Foster, The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals, 45-69. NOTES 1 The Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon, A Social Emergency: The First Annual Report of the Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon (Portland: The Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon, 1912), 7, doi:10.6083/M4DF6QRV. 2 John C. Burnham, "The Progressive Era Revolution in American Attitudes Toward Sex," The Journal of American History 59, no. 4 (1973): 907, doi:10.2307/1918367; Kristin Luker, “Sex, Social Hygiene, and the State: The Double- Edged Sword of Social Reform,” Theory and Society 27, no. 5 (1998): 613, http://www/jstor.org/stable/657941. 3 Luker, “Sex, Social Hygiene, and the State,” 606. 4 “Sex, Social Hygiene, and the State,” 623-24. Also see Horton, Claire, “Combating Venereal Disease: ‘Oregon Responds to the Social Emergency’ 1911-1922,” Undergraduate thesis, University of Oregon, 2013. 5 Catherine Cocks, “Rethinking Sexuality in the Progressive Era,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 5, no. 2 (2006): 98, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25144430; Jodi Vandenberg-Daves, "The Manly Pursuit of a Partnership between the Sexes: The Debate over YMCA Programs for Women and Girls, 1914-1933," The Journal of American History 78, no. 4 (1992): 1325. doi:10.2307/2079345. 6 For a better picture of just how widely publicized OSHS’s documents and lectures were see The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, The Fourth Annual Report of The Social Hygiene Society (Portland: The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, 1915), 13-36, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112073716448&view=1up&seq=1 and The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Five Years’ Work in Oregon — Fifth Annual Report of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society (Portland: The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, 1916), 20-37, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112107699156;view=1up;seq=33. 7 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Keeping Fit (Illustrated) (Portland: The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, 1917), 10, https://digital.osl.state.or.us/islandora/object/osl%3A94713. 8A more thorough analysis of male chastity, its origins and relationship to the social hygiene movement can be found in John C. Burnham, "The Progressive Era Revolution.” Also see David J. Pivar, Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control 1868-1900 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1973). 9 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Vigorous Manhood (Portland: The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, 1917), 5, https://digital.osl.state.or.us/islandora/object/osl%3A94700. 10 "Oregon: Marriage—Certificate of Health Required. (Chap. 187, Act Feb. 26, 1913)," Public Health Reports 29, no. 7 (1914): 438, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4570518. 11 Frank A. Turner, “Wagner v Wagner,” in Reports of Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon 80 (San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney Company, 1916), 259, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b5038321;view=1up;seq=300. 12 See discussion and summary of Griswold’s argument in Basch, Norma, “The Emerging Legal History of Women in the United States: Property, Divorce, and the Constitution,” Signs 12, no. 1 (1986): 110, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3174359. 13 William T. Foster, "State-Wide Education in Social Hygiene," The Public Health Journal 8, no. 7 (1917): 168. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41997187. 14 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Vigorous Manhood, 5. 15 Andrew C. Smith, “Medical Phases,” in Foster, The Social Emergency, 34-35. 16 In all OSHS source material there is not one instance in which women are told they must remain caste to protect their husbands. For instance, in OSHS’s Healthy Womanhood pamphlet women were encouraged to take “care of yourself not just for your own health, beauty, happiness and welfare, but also for the health, beauty, happiness and welfare of the babies that may someday be yours.” 17 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, How One Boy was Instructed in Sex Matters and What Happened, 1-8. 18 Lyman Abbott, Womanhood (Portland: The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, 1917), 2, https://digital.osl.state.or.us/islandora/object/osl%3A94705. Volume 18 Issue 1 Winter 2021 24 Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Fellman 19 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, How One Boy was Instructed in Sex Matters and What Happened (Portland: The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, 1917), 8, https://digital.osl.state.or.us/islandora/object/osl%3A94698. 20 Burnham, "The Progressive Era Revolution," 898; The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, The State-Wide Work of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society (Portland: The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, 1917), 5, https://digital.osl.state.or.us/islandora/object/osl%3A94712. 21 William G. Elliot, “Teaching Phases: For Children,” in Foster, The Social Emergency, 122. 22 The Social Hygiene Society of Portland, Oregon, A Social Emergency, 10; The State-Wide Work, 5. 23 “Women to Hear Lectures — Much Interest Shown in Course on Sex Hygiene Problems,” Oregonian (Portland, OR), February 2, 1913, Sunday Edition. 24 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, The State-Wide Work, 5; The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, A Social Emergency, 19-20. 25 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Progress — The Second Annual Report of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society (Portland: Portland Printing House Co., 1913), 17, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112073716398;view=1up;seq=5. 26 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Five Years’ Work in Oregon, 37. 27 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Vigorous Manhood, 5; Moore “Teaching Phases: For Boys,” in The Social Emergency, 132. Also see previous arguments regarding how men pass venereal disease to wives and children, leading to “failed” families. 28 Bertha Stuart, “Teaching Phases: For Girls,” in Foster, The Social Emergency, 157. 29 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Healthy Womanhood, (Portland: The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, 1917), 5, https://digital.osl.state.or.us/islandora/object/osl%3A94701; Stuart, “Teaching Phases: For Girls,” in Foster, The Social Emergency, 159. 30 Moore, “Teaching Phases: For Boys,” in The Social Emergency, 138-39. 31 Lebert Weir, “Recreational Phases,” in Foster, The Social Emergency, 78-79. 32 Margaret Marsh, "Suburban Men and Masculine Domesticity, 1870-1915," American Quarterly 40, no. 2 (1988): 176. doi:10.2307/2713066. 33 Harry H. Moore, “Teaching Phases: For Boys,” in Foster, The Social Emergency, 150. 34 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Progress — The Second Annual Report, 21-22. 35 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Progress — The Second Annual Report, 23; The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Five Years’ Work in Oregon, 34. 36 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Vigorous Manhood, 8. 37 Abbott, Womanhood, 2. 38 Abbott, Womanhood, 3. 39 “Girls Need Homes — Appeal Made by Social Hygiene Society Worker,” Oregonian (Portland, OR), July 31, 1918, Morning Edition. 40 Abbott, Womanhood, 2. 41 Abbott, Womanhood, 2. 42 “Girls Need Homes — Appeal Made by Social Hygiene Society Worker,” Oregonian (Portland, OR), July 31, 1918, Morning Edition. 43 The Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Five Years’ Work in Oregon, 47. 44 Arthur E. Wood, “Economic Phases,” in The Social Emergency, 49. 45 “Girls Need Homes — Appeal Made by Social Hygiene Society Worker,” Oregonian (Portland, OR), July 31, 1918, Morning Edition. 46 Wood, “Economic Phases,” in Foster, The Social Emergency, 48. 47 Wood, “Economic Phases,” in Foster, The Social Emergency, 62. 48 Luker, "Sex, Social Hygiene, and the State,” 610. Volume 18 Issue 1 Winter 2021 25