Feminism, racism, clash of civilizations. A history book that feels frighteningly relevant today. (And for the academic types: it's a really brilliant set of illustrations of the way sexual or gender claims in the U.S. context are raced from their inception.)

Perfection.

From an academic point of view, this book has it's good points and it's bad. Bederman really supplies example after example. Unfortunately the examples are undocumented, and sometimes complete assumptions about how things might have been. However, she puts forth an interesting idea about Mankind as prey leading to the "Man's War" mentality of today.

Categories are produced by political choices and events. Power disappears the traces of this process, making categories like gender and sex appear fixed. Often it’s not that things are natural, it’s that they are naturalized. Currently people conflate anatomy with gender identity with authority. However, these actually have no inherent association. They became conflated as part of a historical process. In particular, gender norms (ideas of what men and women are and should do) are shaped by legacies of racism.

In the early 20th century, eugenic scientists and policy makers in the US used the rhetoric of “civilization” to naturalize patriarchy and white supremacy. They argued that the US was destined to become the ultimate, divine-ordained nation on Earth, the pinnacle of racial evolution. Where other empires had failed in the past, they felt the US was destined to succeed. Part of this pursuit of perfection required “the most perfect manliness and womanliness the world had ever seen” (26). This entailed distinguishing American masculinity from its European Victorian predecessor. Whereas Victorian manhood was considered restrained and polished, American masculinity was re-imagined as aggressive and rugged.

Policing sex became seen as necessary to advance the white race and stave off the threat of racial decay (“primitive” gender non-conformity). American masculinity became redefined as a form of racial genius that was only achievable by white people and inaccessible by “savages” who were not seen as advanced enough to display sex differences between men and women. Doctors like George Miller Beard invented a medical diagnosis called “neurasthenia” to pathologize the “cultural weakness” that came from being “over-civilized.”

There was a widespread anxiety that the development of society was actually making white men too delicate and effeminate, and that they needed to be revitalized in order to truly achieve greatness. Eugenicists resolved this crisis by redefining “civilized” and “savage” from dichotomy to continuum: instead of being defined against “primitivity” (associated with aggression), the new American masculinity re-casted “primitivity” as an essential component of white masculinity. Eugenicists believed that “primitivity” had to be exercised during youth in order for white men to eventually grow into their manhood.

They argued that white men had an inherent “genocidal urge” that needed and deserved to be expressed. In fact, Teddy Roosevelt believed that white men had to invade foreign lands in order to evolve to the greatest manhood. In this way: eugenicists redefined gender norms to facilitate racial violence and conquest. No longer were overt displays of violence incompatible with civilized masculinity, they were integral to it. Toxic masculinity became seen as a patriotic duty.

Even though white men used the rhetoric of civilization to justify discrimination against white women (arguing that civilized races deepen the divide between men in the public sphere and women in the private sphere), white feminists nonetheless resourced the rhetoric of civilization for their own ends. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, one of the most prolific white feminist voices, argued that white society should end sexism in order to unify the white race to work together to advance civilization. She maintained that “lower races” were not “developed” enough to have equality between the sexes and therefore Black, Indigenous, and racialized women (BIPOC) were not yet “advanced” enough for women’s rights.

“Gender” and “race” don’t exist in isolation from one another: they were co-developed as categories and remain co-evolving. Racism is foundational to gender norms and gender norms are essential to racism. Gender is a racial construct; race is a gendered construct. The next time someone insists what a man or a woman” should be” ask what political histories led to this definition? Are these traditions we want to transmit or transform?

i'm reading this for my independent study and it is great! it is a great read even for those who are not history nerds...

Great book. As a hispanic from a country colonized by souther european catholics that didn´t prohibit miscenegation, I was impressed by all the bs that whites thought about themselves and about others in the US. Roosvelt´s ideas about masculinities were so fucking surrealistic and bizarre to the point that I started laughing. I was also schocked to read all the upheaval that ocurred when the first black boxer defeated a white boxer: riots, killings, beating, laws in the congress were passed and at the end Jack Johonson had to go into exlite because the police wanted him in jail. His crime? Defeating a white boxer!! What a barbaric time for America. Fortunately a lot of things have changed, although there are still a lot of remnants of the old white small penis complex.

Just finished re-reading this for a class I'm teaching. Such a wonderful, thoughtful, well-constructed argument. If you were the kid who worked their way through each and every biography in your elementary school library, this is a book for you! Love it!

A wonderful research commentary on women, gender, race and culture that helped me understand why librarianship was a vital skill for women in the 19th century.