{"id":21830,"date":"2020-08-27T00:11:36","date_gmt":"2020-08-27T00:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=21830"},"modified":"2020-08-28T12:04:30","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T12:04:30","slug":"the-white-supremacist-origins-of-modern-marriage-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-white-supremacist-origins-of-modern-marriage-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"The white supremacist origins of modern marriage advice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jane Ward<\/a>, University of California, Riverside<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

When I was conducting research for my new book<\/a> on the destructive aspects of modern heterosexual relationships, I started looking into the archives of early 20th-century books about courtship and marriage written by physicians and sexologists.<\/p>\n

In the process, I made a discovery that would radically alter my understanding of why so many parts of heterosexual culture remain mired in violence and inequality.<\/p>\n

Almost all of the original self-help books for couples were written by proponents of the eugenics movement<\/a>, an ostensibly scientific project that aimed to encourage reproduction among the white middle class, while discouraging or preventing population growth among people of color and the poor.<\/p>\n

These early marriage manuals revealed that the project of defining healthy heterosexual marriage in the United States was also a white supremacist campaign designed to help white families flourish. As the marriage counseling industry evolved in the 20th century, some of the key assumptions made in these original manuals would persist, even influencing marriage advice aimed at Black families.<\/p>\n

Far from perfect unions<\/h2>\n

By the early 20th century, many prominent eugenicists were concerned about the state of marriage. White women, cowed by abusive husbands, were unwilling to have sex, and marriage increasingly seemed to be an exercise in mutual misery.<\/p>\n

This, in their view, could limit the ability of the best elements of the human gene pool to propagate. So, with the support of the Eugenics Publishing Company<\/a>, they set out to educate white readers with tips for how to achieve a friendly and harmonious marriage.<\/p>\n

These texts reveal some common assumptions made about early 20th-century marriage. Women were not expected to feel an easy or instinctive attraction to men, nor were men expected to concern themselves with women\u2019s emotional or physical well-being. One point nearly all sexologists agreed upon: Women needed to understand that men were naturally inclined toward aggression and sexual selfishness, so they should cut their husbands a little slack.<\/p>\n

William Robinson, an early 20th-century sexologist, hoped that his marriage advice manuals<\/a> would address the \u201cdisgust,\u201d \u201cdeep hatred\u201d and \u201cdesire for injury and revenge\u201d that heterosexual couples felt for one another.<\/p>\n

Marie Stopes, a British eugenicist, wrote at length<\/a> about how most new brides were repulsed by the revelation of their husbands\u2019 naked bodies, and were \u201cdriven to suicide and insanity\u201d by men\u2019s violence during \u201cthe first night of marriage.\u201d Harland William Long, another eugenicist writer, agreed, observing<\/a> that \u201cmany a newlywed couple have wrecked the possibility of happiness of a life time\u201d because \u201cthe great majority of brides are practically raped on entrance into the married relation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A
Havelock Ellis was a prominent physician who served as president of the Eugenics Society.<\/span>
\nHulton Deutsch via Getty Images.<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The British sexologist and eugenicist Havelock Ellis argued<\/a> that this violence was natural, and explained that a husband took \u201ca certain pleasure in manifesting his power over a woman by inflicting pain upon her.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Ellis also insisted that \u201cthe pain he inflicts, or desires to inflict, is really part of his love,\u201d and that, with proper training, a man could be taught to express this \u201clove\u201d with more gentleness, and mitigate the \u201crepulsion and passivity\u201d that seemed to be a normal part of women\u2019s experience of sex.<\/p>\n

Eugenicists were well-aware that white men regularly raped white women, so it\u2019s striking that this period coincided with the widespread lynching of Black boys and men falsely accused of raping white women<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet eugenicists described white men\u2019s rape of women not as criminal, but as an inherent masculine impulse in need of suppression. Of course, they didn\u2019t advocate for the lynching of these men. Instead, education and good hygiene would do. Sexologists promoted<\/a> soaps, perfumes, makeup, douches and corsetry as the key to marital happiness. If women and men smelled better, maybe, the thinking went, men wouldn\u2019t need to force their wives to have sex with them.<\/p>\n

Old ideas live on<\/h2>\n

Some of the core tenets of those first self-help books written by eugenicists \u2013 incompatibility and deference to men \u2013 persist in modern marriage advice.<\/p>\n

With the rise of the self-help industry<\/a>, late 20th-century marriage advice shifted from men\u2019s and women\u2019s repellent bodies to their incompatible personalities.<\/p>\n

Relationship counselor John Gray\u2019s \u201cMen Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus<\/a>\u201d sold over 50 million copies and was the best-selling<\/a> nonfiction book of the 1990s. The book\u2019s central message is that men and women do not naturally like or respect one another, and need to learn to accept and accommodate their innate gender differences for the sake of their relationships.<\/p>\n

\"A
\u2018Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus\u2019 sold the most copies of any book in the 1990s.<\/span>
\nLisa Lake via Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The central themes found in these self-help books are now marketed to straight Black readers, too. For instance, Steve Harvey\u2019s 2009 New York Times bestseller, \u201cAct Like a Lady, Think Like a Man<\/a>,\u201d sold over 3 million copies and repackaged many well-worn marriage tropes for Black women readers. In it, Harvey argues that men and women are fundamentally at odds, that straight couples must work to be attractive to each other and that Black women need to accept men\u2019s limitations for the good of Black families and communities.<\/p>\n

Men, Harvey writes, have \u201cgot to feel like we\u2019re king, even if we don\u2019t act kingly.\u201d A man, he continues, \u201cneeds that from his woman\u201d so that he can have \u201cthe strength to keep on doing right by you and the family.\u201d Because Black men suffer the burden of anti-Black racism, it is in their homes and relationships, according to Harvey, that they must be treated like royalty.<\/p>\n

[You\u2019re too busy to read everything. We get it. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve got a weekly newsletter.<\/em> Sign up for good Sunday reading.<\/a> ]<\/p>\n

Omitted from all of this, of course, is Black women\u2019s experience of anti-Black racism, and the various ways it is compounded by the unique forms of misogyny that Black women endure \u2013 what queer Black feminist Moya Bailey has termed misogynoir<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Much has been written about the hardships<\/a> endured by queer people. Almost all of us are familiar with queer suffering. Yet we tend to overlook the miseries of straight culture, despite overwhelming evidence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Relatively honest accounts of these miseries exist in the past and present world of self-help books, or what I call the \u201cheterosexual repair industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inside the volumes of marriage advice for straight couples, one message has been clear: forging modern heterosexuality is a difficult accomplishment, one undeniably shaped by the intersections of white supremacy and misogyny.\"The<\/p>\n

Jane Ward<\/a>, Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of California, Riverside<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jane Ward, University of California, Riverside When I was conducting research for my new book on the destructive aspects of modern heterosexual relationships, I started looking into the archives of early 20th-century books about courtship and marriage written by physicians and sexologists. In the process, I made a discovery that would radically alter my understanding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":21831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[8553,365,8555,314,498,162,8554,2950],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21830"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21830"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21837,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21830\/revisions\/21837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}