Editors Picks: 8 Events for Your Art Calendar This Week, From a History of Censorship in Art to a Robert Longo Show in East Hampton
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A resonant tussle between sex radicals and a 19th-century censor
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ONLINE: Amy Sohn
Craig LaCourt
The latest book by author Amy Sohn is The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age.
A Room of One s Own hosts author Amy Sohn for a discussion of the new book
The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age. The titular character is Anthony Comstock, who used a position as a U.S. postal inspector to harass and prosecute those who ran afoul of his narrow vision of morality, and influenced federal laws on what was legal to mail. Needless to say, he was not popular with early civil liberties or women s rights groups, and it is the stories of his opponents that provide the heart of Sohn s book. She will be joined in conversation by former
Originally published on July 7, 2021 5:44 pm
In 1873, Congress passed a law outlawing the distribution, sale, mailing and possession of obscene materials including contraception.
The Comstock Act, as it became known, was named after Anthony Comstock, an anti-vice crusader who later became a special agent to the U.S. Post Office, giving him the power to enforce the law.
In her new book,
The Man Who Hated Women, author Amy Sohn writes about Comstock as well as eight women charged with violating the Comstock Act
.
While working for the post office, Sohn says, Comstock decoyed people by using the mail to solicit obscenity and contraception.