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Sex Education and the Great War Soldier: A Queer Analysis of the Practice of “Hetero” Sex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Laura Doan
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , July 2012 , pp. 641 - 663
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2012

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References

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3 I wish to thank the film historian Kevin Brownlow for providing me with a statement Joseph Best prepared for Rachel Low in January 1949 (hereafter referred to as “Notes by Joseph Best”). “Whatsoever a Man Soweth” (1917) appears in a 2009 British Film Institute (BFI) DVD collection called “The Joy of Sex Education” (which includes a pamphlet with a short statement by Bryony Dixon [16]). Brief discussions of “Whatsoever a Man Soweth” appear in Low, Rachel, The History of the British Film, 1914–1918 (London, 1950), 149–50Google Scholar; Brownlow, Kevin, Behind the Mask of Innocence: Sex, Violence, Crime, Films in the Silent Era (Berkeley, 1992), 63–65Google Scholar.

4 Brownlow, Behind the Mask of Innocence, 63. Bob Geoghegan of the Archive Film Agency estimates the original running time as about fifty minutes; the first reel of four is now missing (private e-mail correspondence, 24 May 2011).

5 Paget, Stephen, The Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases (London, 1916), 10Google Scholar. For two excellent accounts of these sociocultural shifts, see Mort, Frank, Dangerous Sexualities: Medico-Moral Politics in England since 1830, 2nd ed. (London, 2000)Google Scholar; Weeks, Jeffrey, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800, 2nd ed. (London, 1989)Google Scholar.

6 As Frank Mort (Dangerous Sexualities, 143) explains, “gonorrhea” was “the race poison of the eugenicists.”

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22 Halperin, David M., How to Do the History of Homosexuality (Chicago, 2002), 108Google Scholar.

23 Katy McGahan, “Sea, Sailors, and Syphilis: Birds, Bees, and Bunny Rabbits,” appears in a pamphlet called The Joy of Sex Education, which accompanies the BFI DVD (London, 2009), 1; “Notes by Joseph Best.”

24 “Notes by Joseph Best.”

25 “The Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases,” The Lancet (11 March 1916)Google Scholar. For discussions of the war’s impact of British society, see Braybon, Gail and Summerfield, Penny, Out of the Cage: Women’s Experiences in Two World Wars (London, 1987)Google Scholar; De Groot, Gerard J., Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (London, 1996)Google Scholar; Grayzel, Susan R., Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill, NC, 1999)Google Scholar; Gullace, Nicoletta F., “The Blood of Our Sons”: Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship during the Great War (New York, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marwick, Arthur, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London, 1965), esp. 105–13Google Scholar; Robb, George, British Culture and the First World War (Basingstoke, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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27 “Notes by Joseph Best”; Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society, 188.

28 Proceedings of the Imperial War Conference, 13th Day (19 July 1918), 4, The National Archives (TNA): PRO WO 32/11404. For a thorough discussion of the tensions between the Canadian military and British government, see Buckley, Suzann, “The Failure to Resolve the Problem of Venereal Disease among the Troops in Britain during World War I,” in War and Society: A Yearbook of Military History, ed. Bond, Brian and Roy, Ian (London, 1977)Google Scholar. For further discussions of venereal disease in wartime Britain, see: Beardsley, Edward H., “Allied against Sin: American and British Responses to Venereal Diseases in World War I,” Medical History 20, no. 2 (April 1976): 189–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hall, Lesley, Hidden Anxieties: Male Sexuality, 1900–1950 (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar and “‘War Always Brings It On’: War, STDs, the Military, and the Civilian Population in Britain, 1850–1950,” in Medicine and Modern Warfare, ed. Cooter, Roger, Harrison, Mark, and Sturdy, Steve (Amsterdam, 2000)Google Scholar; Harrison, Mark, “The British Army and the Problem of Venereal Disease in France and Egypt during the First World War,” Medical History 39, no. 2 (April 1995): 133–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sauerteig, Lutz D. H., “Sex, Medicine, and Morality during the First World War,” in War, Medicine, and Modernity, 1860–1945, ed. Cooter, Roger, Harrison, Mark, and Sturdy, Steve (Stroud, 1996), 167–88Google Scholar.

29 SirMacpherson, William Grant and Mitchell, Thomas John, Medical Services: General History, 4 vols. (London, 1921), 1:201Google Scholar. Magnus Hirschfeld suggests a ratio of 173.8 per 1,000 in England, while Sir Andrew Macphail put the number of Canadian soldiers affected at 158 per 1,000; see Hirschfeld, Magnus, The Sexual History of the World War (Honolulu, 2006), 93Google Scholar; SirMacphail, Andrew, The Official History of the Canadian Forces in the Great War; the Medical Services (Ottawa, 1921), 293Google Scholar. Historian Jay Cassel (The Secret Plague, 123) writes that of the “418,052 Canadian troops [who] were sent overseas” the number of men infected with VD was recorded as 66,083. Cassel further argues that accurate numbers are difficult to ascertain because, among other reasons, relapses were erroneously counted twice; in any case, “there was no avoiding the conclusion that a great many Canadians were infected while on military service.”

30 “The Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases,” 583. Infection rates in the British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders between 1914 and 1918, and the problem of underreporting, is discussed by Harrison, “The British Army and the Problem of Venereal Disease in France and Egypt during the First World War,” 145.

31 “The Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases,” 582.

32 Ibid. For discussions of the VD debates during the First World War, see Harrison, Mark, The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War (Oxford, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tomkins, S. M., “Palmitate or Permanganate: The Venereal Prophylaxis Debate in Britain, 1916–1926,” Medical History 37, no. 4 (April 1993): 382–98CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Towers, Bridget A., “Health Education Policy 1916–1926: Venereal Disease and the Prophylaxis Dilemma,” Medical History 24, no. 1 (January 1980): 70–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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34 Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society, 188.

35 Gotto, Sybil, “The Changing Moral Standard,” The Nineteenth Century and After 84 (1918): 718Google Scholar.

36 Mort, Dangerous Sexualities, 146.

37 Hirschfeld, The Sexual History of the World War, 191–92.

38 “The Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases,” 581–82.

39 Donkin, “The Fight against Venereal Infection,” 587. For a good overview of the state of sex education in twentieth-century Britain, see Cook, Hera, The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex, and Contraception, 1800–1975 (Oxford, 2004), esp. 165–206Google Scholar.

40 White, Synopsis of the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases, 52; “The Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases,” 582.

41 For an excellent study of public exhibition of cinema during the First World War, see Hammond, Michael, The Big Show: British Cinema Culture in the Great War, 1914–1918 (Exeter, 2006)Google Scholar.

42 Brownlow, Behind the Mask of Innocence, 64.

43 Ibid., 63.

44 Bourke, Joanna, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain, and the Great War (Chicago, 1996), 156Google Scholar.

45 Donkin, “The Fight against Venereal Infection,” 586.

46 Mason, M. H., “Public Morality: Some Constructive Suggestions,” The Nineteenth Century and After 82 (1917): 187Google Scholar.

47 The Cinema: Its Present Position and Future Possibilities (Being the Report of and Chief Evidence taken by the Cinema Commission of Inquiry Instituted by the National Council of Public Morals) (1917), 84, http://www.archive.org.

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50 Subsequent references to intertitles from the film appear without citation.

51 Mason, “Public Morality,” 187.

52 Sellers, Edith, “Boy and Girl War-Products: Their Reconstruction,” The Nineteenth Century and After 84 (1918): 704Google Scholar.

53 Ibid., 704–3.

54 Mason, “Public Morality,” 186–87.

55 Ibid., 186.

56 Gotto, “The Changing Moral Standard,” 724; The Times (December 1917), as cited in Lucy Bland and Frank Mort, “Look Out for the ‘Good Time’ Girl: Dangerous Sexualities as a Threat to National Health,” in Formations Editorial Collective, Formations of Nation and People (London, 1984), 140Google Scholar.

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58 Bland and Mort, “Look Out for the ‘Good Time’ Girl,” 140; Gotto, “The Changing Moral Standard,” Look Out. In a pioneering essay on the feminist response to VD around the time of the First World War, with a particular focus on the interplay between “moral prevention and medical treatment,” see Bland, Lucy, “‘Cleansing the Portals of Life’: The Venereal Disease Campaign in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Crises in the British State 1880–1930, ed. Langan, Mary and Schwarz, Bill (London, 1985), 206Google Scholar.

59 Bland and Mort, “Look Out for the ‘Good Time’ Girl,” 140.

60 Sellers, “Boy and Girl War-Products,” 704.

61 Ibid., 704. In his brief statement on aspects of the film’s production, Joseph Best makes no mention of casting. Presumably, the film’s graphic depiction of female solicitation precluded the use of women under the age of consent. The greater sexual danger in “Whatsoever a Man Soweth” comes from the professional prostitute, who is known for receiving payment for her services.

62 Harrison, Medical Practitioners and the Management of Venereal Diseases in the Civil Community, 11.

63 Kuhn, Annette, Cinema, Censorship, and Sexuality, 1909–1925 (London, 1988), 104Google Scholar. Kuhn offers excellent close readings of several commercial films produced in the United States, including “Damaged Goods” (1915), “The End of the Road” (1918), and “Fit to Fight” (1918).

64 Harrison, Medical Practitioners and the Management of Venereal Diseases in the Civil Community, 12; Stopes, Marie, Truth about Venereal Disease: A Practical Handbook on a Subject of Most Urgent National Importance (London, 1921), 46Google Scholar.

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66 Cassel, (The Secret Plague, 32–33) explains that “some of Wassermann’s basic assumptions were actually untenable, and what he thought he was looking for was not what he found. Moreover, the initial experimental results could not be reproduced.” Hans Neefs also argues that the Wassermann test was “cumbersome, theoretically ambiguous and neither very sensitive nor very specific”; see Hans Neefs, “The Introduction of Diagnostic and Treatment Innovations for Syphilis in Postwar VD Policy: ‘L’expérience Belge,’” Dynamis 24 (2004): 93–118, esp. 99Google Scholar.

67 White, Synopsis of the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases, 52.

68 “The Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases,” 582.

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72 For a discussion of “reproductive futurism” in the context of queer critique, see Edelman, No Future, esp. 2–4.

73 See Kevies, Daniel J., In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 39Google Scholar.

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76 Ibid., 60.

77 Sir Archdall Reid, New Statesman (15 November 1919), cited by Stopes, Truth about Venereal Disease, 47.

78 Gotto, “The Changing Moral Standard,” 718.

79 Champneys, Francis, “The Fight against Venereal Disease: A Reply to Sir Bryan Donkin,” The Nineteenth Century and After 82 (1917): 1052Google Scholar.

80 Paget, The Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases, 10; Ostherr, Cinematic Prophylaxis; Champneys, “The Fight against Venereal Disease,” 1052.

81 Champneys, “The Fight against Venereal Disease,” 1045.

82 Mort, Dangerous Sexualities, 30.

83 Dixon, BFI pamphlet, 16.

84 Ibid.

85 Champneys, “The Fight against Venereal Disease,” 1048, 53.

86 Ibid., 1048.

87 These lines appear in a slightly different version as “The Price He Paid,” in Wheeler, Ella Wilcox, Poems of Problems (London, 1914), 27–29Google Scholar.

88 Stopes, Truth about Venereal Disease, 52.

89 Ibid., 47.

90 Ibid., 48.

91 P.P. 1916, Cd. 8189, Royal Commission on Venereal Disease: Final Report of the Commissioners; Donkin, “The Fight against Venereal Infection,” 593.

92 Harrison, Medical Practitioners and the Management of Venereal Diseases in the Civil Community, 10.

93 Donkin, “The Fight against Venereal Infection,” 585. A thorough discussion of the queer engagement with sexual shame is beyond the scope of this article; important work includes: Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC, 2003)Google Scholar; Halperin, David M. and Traub, Valerie, eds., Gay Shame (Chicago, 2009)Google Scholar.

94 Champneys, , “The Fight against Venereal Disease,” 1052. Numerous scholars have examined social constructions of manliness and sexual self-control. See, for instance, Lesley Hall’s examination of the literature from nineteenth-century social purity movements that believed in limiting sexual expression to the married; see Lesley Hall, “Forbidden by God, Despised by Men: Masturbation, Medical Warnings, Moral Panic and Manhood in Great Britain, 1850–1950,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 2, no. 3 (January 1992): 365–87Google Scholar.

95 Marcus, “Queer Theory for Everyone,” 213.

96 Halperin, How to Do the History of Homosexuality, 105.

97 Freccero, Carla, “Queer Times,” South Atlantic Quarterly 106, no. 3 (2007): 485CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jakobsen, Janet R., “Queer Is? Queer Does? Normativity and the Problem of Resistance,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 4, no. 4 (1998): 518Google Scholar.

98 Berlant and Warner, “Sex in Public,” 554.

99 Ibid., 552.

100 For a longer discussion of these methodological difficulties, see Laura Doan, Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and Women’s Experience of Modern War (Chicago, forthcoming).