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Chronicles the pioneering reformer whose 1920s study of female sexuality ignited America's first sexual revolution
Decades before Alfred Kinsey released his famous “Reports” on human sexuality, Katharine Bement Davis conducted a pioneering study of female sexuality. Published in 1929, Factors in the Sex Life of Twenty-Two Hundred Women was notable not only as the first major study of women’s sexuality and the first such study conducted by a woman, but also as the first published study of “normal” women’s sexuality—what Davis defined as the study of women who were “not pathological mentally or physically.”
In Matters of Sex, Anya Jabour offers an in-depth exploration of Katharine Bement Davis’s life and work, revealing her pioneering efforts to promote scientifically accurate information about sex. Even before publishing her study, Davis was a true trailblazer. One of the first women to earn a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, Davis worked as a schoolteacher and a social worker before serving as the first superintendent of Bedford Female Reformatory and New York City’s first female Commissioner of Correction. The book traces her journey as an advocate for female sexuality, exploring her work with birth control and free speech advocates to promote both sex research and sex education.
Jabour showcases how Davis’s candid discussion of women’s sexual behavior—from contraception to masturbation to lesbianism—challenged prevailing ideas about “pure” and “passionless” women and drove the nation’s first sexual revolution. Drawing from organizational records, Davis’s own unpublished memoirs, and family-held materials never before consulted by scholars, Matters of Sex offers a comprehensive and engaging biography of a remarkable woman whose legacy still resonates today.
— Wendy L. Rouse, author of Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women's Suffrage Movement
Introducing the relatively unknown subject of her biography, Jabour writes that "obscure, does not mean unimportant." Deeply researched, well written, and with lively detail, this nuanced study makes a strong case for Davis’s importance. An indefatigable, feminist activist, Davis contributed to many social movements of her day. Most especially, her widely read research on women and sexuality, published in the 1920s, challenged traditional norms about women’s sexuality, and assumptions about the pathology of same sex relations. In our own times, with battles raging over gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights, learning about Davis’s courageous, pioneering work can be inspiring.
— Miriam Cohen, author of Votes for Women: Vassar and the Politics of Women's Suffrage
What is 'normal' sexuality, and how could one even begin to find out? Revelatory and compulsively readable, Matters of Sex restores Katharine Bement Davis to her rightful place as the foremother of sexuality studies, and as a blazing intellect undeterred by taboo at a time when censorship had a heavy hand on American culture. Jabour's richly detailed, exhilarating narrative takes on American puritanism and patriarchy as keenly as her subject did. A triumph of feminist biography.
— Stephanie Gorton, author of The Icon and the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America