Anti-Sex Era
(388 AD - 1950 AD)
Victoria Woodhull
(September 23, 1838 - June 9, 1927)
Victoria Woodhull, a former prostitute, was the first woman to run for president. She and her sister were the first female Wall Street stock brokers. They used their friendships with New York madams to garner inside information revealed by men in brothels. Woodhull was also a prominent feminist and suffragette.
Woodhull spread the notion that love, not marital status, should legitimate sexual relations. (In the Victorian Era marriage was unjust. A wife had no legal rights, could be beaten as long as death did not result, could not refuse sex, and could be recaptured if she ran away.) Woodhull said of the repressed Victorian women who gloried in their frigidity, "No sexual passion, say you. Say, rather, a sexual idiot, and confess that your life is a failure ...."
Woodhull exposed the hypocrisy of Victorian men who sought the services of prostitutes - who they publicly scorned - while demanding chastity from their wives. She took on the Billy Graham of her day by exposing his adultery and therefore was unfairly targeted for prosecution by the Victorian censorship zealot, Anthony Comstock. Her spectacular rise to become one of America's most colorful reformers and her eventual breaking by dastardly politicians are presented in the 1999 book, Other Powers by Barbara Goldsmith.
The Woodhull Freedom Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports sexual freedom, is named in her honor.
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Information and illustration taken from You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos, Book I, Version 1, by Robert R. Arthur. Detailed documentation of sources can be found therein.
Page last modified July 19, 2007.
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