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Man Who Hated Women, The
Smithsonian Magazine , 10 Best History Books of 2021 • "Fascinating . . . Purity is in the mind of the beholder, but beware the man who vows to protect yours.” ―Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker
Anthony Comstock, special agent to the U.S. Post Office, was one of the most important men in the lives of nineteenth-century women. His eponymous law, passed in 1873, penalized the mailing of contraception and obscenity with long sentences and steep fines. The word Comstockery came to connote repression and prudery.
Between 1873 and Comstock’s death in 1915, eight remarkable women were charged with violating state and federal Comstock laws. These “sex radicals” supported contraception, sexual education, gender equality, and women’s right to pleasure. They took on the fearsome censor in explicit, personal writing, seeking to redefine work, family, marriage, and love for a bold new era. In The Man Who Hated Women , Amy Sohn tells the overlooked story of their valiant attempts to fight Comstock in court and in the press. They were publishers, writers, and doctors, and they included the first woman presidential candidate, Victoria C. Woodhull; the virgin sexologist Ida C. Craddock; and the anarchist Emma Goldman. In their willingness to oppose a monomaniac who viewed reproductive rights as a threat to the American family, the sex radicals paved the way for second-wave feminism. Risking imprisonment and death, they redefined birth control access as a civil liberty.
The Man Who Hated Women brings these women’s stories to vivid life, recounting their personal and romantic travails alongside their political battles. Without them, there would be no Pill, no Planned Parenthood, no Roe v. Wade . This is the forgotten history of the women who waged war to control their bodies.
Anthony Comstock, special agent to the U.S. Post Office, was one of the most important men in the lives of nineteenth-century women. His eponymous law, passed in 1873, penalized the mailing of contraception and obscenity with long sentences and steep fines. The word Comstockery came to connote repression and prudery.
Between 1873 and Comstock’s death in 1915, eight remarkable women were charged with violating state and federal Comstock laws. These “sex radicals” supported contraception, sexual education, gender equality, and women’s right to pleasure. They took on the fearsome censor in explicit, personal writing, seeking to redefine work, family, marriage, and love for a bold new era. In The Man Who Hated Women , Amy Sohn tells the overlooked story of their valiant attempts to fight Comstock in court and in the press. They were publishers, writers, and doctors, and they included the first woman presidential candidate, Victoria C. Woodhull; the virgin sexologist Ida C. Craddock; and the anarchist Emma Goldman. In their willingness to oppose a monomaniac who viewed reproductive rights as a threat to the American family, the sex radicals paved the way for second-wave feminism. Risking imprisonment and death, they redefined birth control access as a civil liberty.
The Man Who Hated Women brings these women’s stories to vivid life, recounting their personal and romantic travails alongside their political battles. Without them, there would be no Pill, no Planned Parenthood, no Roe v. Wade . This is the forgotten history of the women who waged war to control their bodies.
400 pages, Paperback
First published July 6, 2021
87 people are currently reading
3425 people want to read
About the author
Amy Sohn
18 books144 followersAmy Sohn is the author of the upcoming novel The Actress, which will be published by Simon & Schuster in July 2014. Her other novels are Motherland, Prospect Park West, My Old Man, and Run Catch Kiss. She has been a columnist at New York magazine, New York Press, the New York Post and Grazia (UK). She has also written for The New York Times, The Nation, and Harper's Bazaar. She has written pilots for ABC, Fox, HBO, and Lifetime. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her family.
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September 20, 2021
“For someone as powerful and well-connected as he was, [Anthony] Comstock was extremely sensitive to criticism. Radical newspapers filled their pages with anti-Comstock screeds, and he attended atheist and free-thinker meetings to shout at these detractors. He was a zealot who drew no distinction between sex workers and sex radicals, between dealers of lewd postcards and gynecologists. His interest in women’s health and well-being stopped at contraception and abortion, which he often conflated. The man who did more to curtail women’s rights than anyone else in American history had nearly no understanding of reproduction; he believed a fetus could form seconds after unprotected sex. Though he revered his mother, and all Christian mothers, he despised the midwives and abortionists who helped women in trouble and who saved them from destitution and death. To his mind these practitioners were evil, manipulative, and in it for the money. He did not believe he was a man who hated women. He believed his work was to save the young and innocent from those out to get them…”
- Amy Sohn, The Man Who Hated Women
Who was Anthony Comstock? Imagine the worst neighbor in the entire world: nosy, aggressive, self-righteous, closed-minded, and imbued with the soul-deep believe that his view of life was the view of life, and that anyone who did not accept and follow his worldview should be prosecuted.
Unfortunately, instead of simply terrorizing the people in his immediate orbit, someone in Washington, D.C. had the bright idea to give him – a private citizen, and nothing more – a badge and a gun and prosecutorial authority, so that his narrow, scientifically unsound, and patently ludicrous opinions about sex and sexuality could be upheld as the law of the land.
So, again, who was Anthony Comstock?
Well, he’s like the Kool-Aid Man, except instead of bursting through your wall to give you a cloyingly sweet beverage, he is coming to make sure that you aren’t reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover or storing condoms in your medicine cabinet.
Comstock is the titular prig at the center of Amy Sohn’s The Man Who Hated Women. The Secretary for the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Comstock managed – it is not satisfactorily explained how – to parlay his broad-as-the-ocean view of obscenity into a job as a U.S. Postal Inspector. Despite never holding an elective office – one of the more galling parts of his legacy – he used his influence to support a bill that later bore his name. The so-called Comstock Law made it illegal to transport “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” material through the mail, or to publish information about abortion, birth control, or sexually transmitted diseases. Comstock zealously upheld these laws, driving numerous people to suicide, while putting many others in prison. His career lasted over forty years.
Though Sohn sets up Comstock as the villain, and provides the outlines of his biography, this book isn’t really about him at all. Instead, it is told through the eyes of some of the women who opposed his crusade. That list includes Angela Heywood, Tennessee Claflin, Victoria Claflin Woodhull, Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, and Ida Craddock.
Structuring the book this way certainly makes for an entertaining ride. These women were iconoclasts. Almost by definition – and by virtue of not only bucking the system, but tried to dismantle it – they are fascinating. Tennessee Claflin, for instance, was a suffragist who passed herself off as a healer, became very close to Cornelius Vanderbilt, and opened a Wall Street brokerage firm. Then there’s Ida Craddock, who made it her mission to provide accessible sex advice. She also truly believed that she was in a relationship with an angel-husband named Soph. Craddock kept diaries filled with graphic accounts of her alleged ghost sex, which Sohn excerpts at length (I assume this is a finger-in-the-eye to the spirit of Comstock, whose sideburns would have fallen off had he read them).
By following so many different characters, rather than choosing one, Sohn provides a sample or cross-section of many different movements happening around the same time. Sohn calls them “sex radicals,” and they stood for many different things, though their common foundation was women’s rights. Some were abortionists, some fought for birth control, and some tried to redefine marriage, especially in terms of a woman’s ability to consent to sex, and to control the number of children she had. Other goals were a bit less lofty, such as the free love movement. Some, such as eugenics – which Margaret Sanger dabbled in – are today seen as reprehensible.
The downside to this approach is a less-than-systematic summary of the movement in general. As a matter of personal taste, I like to have an overview first, and then get into the details second. Here, I found Sohn’s approach a bit pointillist, telling a bigger tale through a collection of smaller experiences. Additionally, by spending so much time on personalities, Sohn often obscured her message. Take Ida Craddock, who made a lot of pertinent, commonsense points regarding sex (mainly that it helps to know how to do it before you do it). Her contributions to this end, however, are overwhelmed by Sohn’s decision to dwell at length on Craddock’s assertions that she regularly made love to an angel that no one else could see (a facet of her personality that Sohn – perhaps rightly – makes no effort to explain or diagnose).
Sohn’s treatment of Comstock is also a bit shaky. Don’t get me wrong: Comstock was awful. He was an intimacy ghoul, haunted by the idea that someone, somewhere, might be naked. With that said, Comstock is presented as a cartoon villain, even though Sohn herself acknowledges that he wasn’t literally a misogynist – a term that wouldn’t find widespread use till the 1970s – but a freakishly sanctimonious man who not only held delusional ideas about what was right for women, but felt those ideas should be enforced through the laws of his country. Sohn’s contention aside, he was definitely not “the man who did more to curtail women’s rights that anyone else in American history.”
The perplexing thing about the Comstock presented in The Man Who Hated Women is that he is both better and worse than Sohn gives him credit for. Comstock certainly stood for a bullish patriarchy blocking the road that led to full equality and citizenship for women. Yet he also aligned himself against illicit gambling, prostitution, and child abuse, all of which were genuinely destructive forces during Comstock’s time. Sohn barely mentions this.
On the flip side, Sohn mostly ignores Comstock’s crimes against the First Amendment. As a person who loves to read, there are few things I dislike more than small-thinking busybodies trying to control access to literature. I firmly believe that if you want to peruse Tropic of Cancer on the steps of City Hall, you have a right to do it. Comstock, unsurprisingly, disagreed, and a big part of his career was spent under the misapprehension that society would fail if people got their hands on information that made him uncomfortable. Of course, censorship is not Sohn’s focus, and she makes that clear up front.
The Man Who Hated Women has a point to make, but it is not until the final chapter that Sohn finally presents her conclusions. Without agreeing with everything she said, I appreciated the passionate rhetoric and pointed commentary. I only wished she had made her arguments earlier in the book, using it as a framework instead of hiding it behind a veil of historical caricature.
The issues Sohn discusses – including abortion, contraception, and the contours of marriage – are often folded into the abstract ideological contest known as “the culture wars.” But these are not abstractions. Rather, they raise extremely important and practical questions over boundaries and limits: the boundaries that a person is allowed to set with regard to their own bodily integrity, and the limits to which government can infringe upon those lines. While imperfect, The Man Who Hated Women does a really good job of demonstrating that these topics are not theoretical, but intensely personal and intimate matters that go to the heart of what makes a human being a human being.
- Amy Sohn, The Man Who Hated Women
Who was Anthony Comstock? Imagine the worst neighbor in the entire world: nosy, aggressive, self-righteous, closed-minded, and imbued with the soul-deep believe that his view of life was the view of life, and that anyone who did not accept and follow his worldview should be prosecuted.
Unfortunately, instead of simply terrorizing the people in his immediate orbit, someone in Washington, D.C. had the bright idea to give him – a private citizen, and nothing more – a badge and a gun and prosecutorial authority, so that his narrow, scientifically unsound, and patently ludicrous opinions about sex and sexuality could be upheld as the law of the land.
So, again, who was Anthony Comstock?
Well, he’s like the Kool-Aid Man, except instead of bursting through your wall to give you a cloyingly sweet beverage, he is coming to make sure that you aren’t reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover or storing condoms in your medicine cabinet.
Comstock is the titular prig at the center of Amy Sohn’s The Man Who Hated Women. The Secretary for the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Comstock managed – it is not satisfactorily explained how – to parlay his broad-as-the-ocean view of obscenity into a job as a U.S. Postal Inspector. Despite never holding an elective office – one of the more galling parts of his legacy – he used his influence to support a bill that later bore his name. The so-called Comstock Law made it illegal to transport “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” material through the mail, or to publish information about abortion, birth control, or sexually transmitted diseases. Comstock zealously upheld these laws, driving numerous people to suicide, while putting many others in prison. His career lasted over forty years.
Though Sohn sets up Comstock as the villain, and provides the outlines of his biography, this book isn’t really about him at all. Instead, it is told through the eyes of some of the women who opposed his crusade. That list includes Angela Heywood, Tennessee Claflin, Victoria Claflin Woodhull, Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, and Ida Craddock.
Structuring the book this way certainly makes for an entertaining ride. These women were iconoclasts. Almost by definition – and by virtue of not only bucking the system, but tried to dismantle it – they are fascinating. Tennessee Claflin, for instance, was a suffragist who passed herself off as a healer, became very close to Cornelius Vanderbilt, and opened a Wall Street brokerage firm. Then there’s Ida Craddock, who made it her mission to provide accessible sex advice. She also truly believed that she was in a relationship with an angel-husband named Soph. Craddock kept diaries filled with graphic accounts of her alleged ghost sex, which Sohn excerpts at length (I assume this is a finger-in-the-eye to the spirit of Comstock, whose sideburns would have fallen off had he read them).
By following so many different characters, rather than choosing one, Sohn provides a sample or cross-section of many different movements happening around the same time. Sohn calls them “sex radicals,” and they stood for many different things, though their common foundation was women’s rights. Some were abortionists, some fought for birth control, and some tried to redefine marriage, especially in terms of a woman’s ability to consent to sex, and to control the number of children she had. Other goals were a bit less lofty, such as the free love movement. Some, such as eugenics – which Margaret Sanger dabbled in – are today seen as reprehensible.
The downside to this approach is a less-than-systematic summary of the movement in general. As a matter of personal taste, I like to have an overview first, and then get into the details second. Here, I found Sohn’s approach a bit pointillist, telling a bigger tale through a collection of smaller experiences. Additionally, by spending so much time on personalities, Sohn often obscured her message. Take Ida Craddock, who made a lot of pertinent, commonsense points regarding sex (mainly that it helps to know how to do it before you do it). Her contributions to this end, however, are overwhelmed by Sohn’s decision to dwell at length on Craddock’s assertions that she regularly made love to an angel that no one else could see (a facet of her personality that Sohn – perhaps rightly – makes no effort to explain or diagnose).
Sohn’s treatment of Comstock is also a bit shaky. Don’t get me wrong: Comstock was awful. He was an intimacy ghoul, haunted by the idea that someone, somewhere, might be naked. With that said, Comstock is presented as a cartoon villain, even though Sohn herself acknowledges that he wasn’t literally a misogynist – a term that wouldn’t find widespread use till the 1970s – but a freakishly sanctimonious man who not only held delusional ideas about what was right for women, but felt those ideas should be enforced through the laws of his country. Sohn’s contention aside, he was definitely not “the man who did more to curtail women’s rights that anyone else in American history.”
The perplexing thing about the Comstock presented in The Man Who Hated Women is that he is both better and worse than Sohn gives him credit for. Comstock certainly stood for a bullish patriarchy blocking the road that led to full equality and citizenship for women. Yet he also aligned himself against illicit gambling, prostitution, and child abuse, all of which were genuinely destructive forces during Comstock’s time. Sohn barely mentions this.
On the flip side, Sohn mostly ignores Comstock’s crimes against the First Amendment. As a person who loves to read, there are few things I dislike more than small-thinking busybodies trying to control access to literature. I firmly believe that if you want to peruse Tropic of Cancer on the steps of City Hall, you have a right to do it. Comstock, unsurprisingly, disagreed, and a big part of his career was spent under the misapprehension that society would fail if people got their hands on information that made him uncomfortable. Of course, censorship is not Sohn’s focus, and she makes that clear up front.
The Man Who Hated Women has a point to make, but it is not until the final chapter that Sohn finally presents her conclusions. Without agreeing with everything she said, I appreciated the passionate rhetoric and pointed commentary. I only wished she had made her arguments earlier in the book, using it as a framework instead of hiding it behind a veil of historical caricature.
The issues Sohn discusses – including abortion, contraception, and the contours of marriage – are often folded into the abstract ideological contest known as “the culture wars.” But these are not abstractions. Rather, they raise extremely important and practical questions over boundaries and limits: the boundaries that a person is allowed to set with regard to their own bodily integrity, and the limits to which government can infringe upon those lines. While imperfect, The Man Who Hated Women does a really good job of demonstrating that these topics are not theoretical, but intensely personal and intimate matters that go to the heart of what makes a human being a human being.
February 16, 2021
Anthony Comstock was a misogynistic zealot. This book provides a good window into his reign of terror, although there are some missteps. Sohn oversimplifies some of the collateral information she provides and doesn’t provide much in the way of historical context. I am a harsh critic - American women’s history 1840-1880 is my area of expertise. The first half of this book brought out old friends and old scandals: Victoria Woodhull and Tennje Claflin, the Beecher-Tilton scandal, the free lovers, spiritualists, and suffragists. A lot of this was oversimplified in the book and Sohn fails to discuss how novel women speaking in public still was in the early days of Comstockery. This would have provided a lot more context to why Comstock was what he was and did what he did and why he had so much support.
Still, if you’re not overly familiar with this area of history, Sohn presents a fine introduction.
Still, if you’re not overly familiar with this area of history, Sohn presents a fine introduction.
September 4, 2021
While the focus is on Comstock the true cultural lessons are much more the story. As any friend or acquaintance of me knows this book is in my wheelhouse, given my obsession to lecture on my ideas about sexuality and our culture. This book shines a light on several true American heroines and their suffering for the greater good in gender rights and sexuality specifically. It was good to get the history and personalities in one tome. Ms. Sohn is a great author with organized, interesting and clear prose, telling the story in a compelling and moving fashion.
The best chapter (IMHO) was the last when the author tied it together succinctly with thoughts about relevance today.
A should read for anyone interested in the ongoing struggle for women in our country/society/culture.
The best chapter (IMHO) was the last when the author tied it together succinctly with thoughts about relevance today.
A should read for anyone interested in the ongoing struggle for women in our country/society/culture.
October 5, 2021
Anthony Comstock was a pretty awful human being--self-righteous, petty, meanspirited, interfering, arrogant, bossy, manipulative--and he did an awful lot of damage to an awful lot of people, especially to women. And the damage continued long after his death, thanks to the awful laws passed in his name and which he vigorously (often vindictively) enforced during his lifetime. He said he was a brave warrior against vice, but he was really a nasty busybody who was sure that he knew exactly how other people ought to be living their lives and was eager to punish them for falling short of his mean standards. He started with the assumptions that sex was dirty and disgusting, so any mention of it or of body parts was inherently dirty and disgusting; that women needed to know their place and stay there, so uppity women or disobedient women or sexual women or outspoken women or rebellious women needed to be thoroughly and visibly punished lest other women get ideas; and that there was one right way to live, one right way to believe, one right way to love, one right way to speak or write or behave and that anyone who coloured outside his designated lines deserved to have the full weight of the legal system brought down on their heads. And if his harassment resulted in their suicide or other disastrous consequences, well, then they should have behaved properly in the first place, shouldn't they? There are an awful lot of people who still think like Comstock out there, and they are as contemptible as he was.
July 7, 2021
Author was on NPR being interviewed by Terry Gross today. Some new material on Comstock however I find the title sensationalistic, Comstock was just an overzealous reformer and crusader from the 19th century who enforced the law against real frauds and became fanatical in the reproductive and sexual sphere as most Victorians were.
There have been a number of important biographies of Comstock with commentaries from people like Hayward Broun. It's easy to be critical of Comstock over 100 years after his passing. You have to ask how the people of that time would feel about how our culture has tilted far in the other direction?
August 7, 2021
I didn't know very much about Comstock or his laws before reading this, so I'm glad I picked it up. However, while the author's dislike of Comstock is very understandable, I agree with the criticism that she reduced many complicated situations and issues to the "good guys" (suffragists, feminists, etc.) vs. "the bad guys" (Comstock, hardcore traditionalists). Her tendency to gloss over information that might reflect poorly on early feminists - for example, Margaret Sanger's eugenicist views- robbed the book of much-needed nuance. While Comstock was obviously a sexist douchebag who probably isn't enjoying his afterlife, critiquing him extensively using modern values and not doing the same for the rest of the characters who feature prominently in his story detracted from her overall argument.
May 4, 2021
I really enjoyed this book. it is a great first introduction to this era of history.
At times the story felt a little watered down and oversimplified, there wasn't much context provided for the time period for how revolutionary it truly was for women to write/publish books and speak at conventions. Most of the narratives were fully fleshed out and went very in-depth in the short amount of time provided to each woman.
Comstock was a man who represented all the worst parts of the era he grew up in, and his misogyny played a massive role in the development of contraceptive and abortion laws. I think this is a definite must-read for anyone interested in reproductive laws and the impact of Christian morality on the accessibility of abortion.
At times the story felt a little watered down and oversimplified, there wasn't much context provided for the time period for how revolutionary it truly was for women to write/publish books and speak at conventions. Most of the narratives were fully fleshed out and went very in-depth in the short amount of time provided to each woman.
Comstock was a man who represented all the worst parts of the era he grew up in, and his misogyny played a massive role in the development of contraceptive and abortion laws. I think this is a definite must-read for anyone interested in reproductive laws and the impact of Christian morality on the accessibility of abortion.
August 25, 2023
This book took me nearly three weeks to read because I'd be so riled up at his antics. DO NOT READ IF YOU NEED TO MONITOR YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE BECAUSE IT WILL BOIL!
Anthony Comstock can be described in a lot of ways and many, many adjectives in front of those ways. 8 women pushed back- a publisher, an editor, a doctor, a writer, the first female presidential candidate, a birth control activist, and others, and paid the price for their feminism ideals.
Anthony Comstock can be described in a lot of ways and many, many adjectives in front of those ways. 8 women pushed back- a publisher, an editor, a doctor, a writer, the first female presidential candidate, a birth control activist, and others, and paid the price for their feminism ideals.
December 4, 2021
It was hard to pick this book up, given the title, given the reality of our world, and yes, Anthony Comstock, the real 19th century man of the title is the central figure, but this book is really about the far more interesting and very different women—Angela Heywood, Dr Sara Chase, Madame Restell (Ann Lohman), Ida Craddock, Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, and Victoria Woodhull —who resisted his misogynist campaign against “obscenity.” These women advocated for (and in some cases provided) basic women’s healthcare, sex education, birth control, family planning support, and women’s rights beyond suffrage. It’s enraging to realize the extent we’re still living under the shadow of Comstock’s efforts, but inspiring how much these women accomplished in their resistance.
I think my favorite of these women is Ida Craddock, who gave lectures with titles like “The Wife Should be Queen of her own Person” and claimed marriage to a ghost husband named Soph (apparently she wasn’t the only person in that era who claimed a spirit spouse; one can see some advantages). The small-minded, puritanical, prosecutorial Comstock hounded her to suicide.
I did wonder about the women left out of this book, women who weren’t White, but were surely organizing and educating in their communities. I’d love to know about them.
This is hard to read in ways but I still finished the book feeling inspired by these women’s activism rather than depressed by the work still to do. As Sohn argues, “Greater historical awareness of the sex radicals can make them provocative role models for women emboldened by today’s #MeToo movement and outraged by the twenty-first-century rise of nativist, sexist demagogues who want to turn back the clock to the Comstock era.”
I think my favorite of these women is Ida Craddock, who gave lectures with titles like “The Wife Should be Queen of her own Person” and claimed marriage to a ghost husband named Soph (apparently she wasn’t the only person in that era who claimed a spirit spouse; one can see some advantages). The small-minded, puritanical, prosecutorial Comstock hounded her to suicide.
I did wonder about the women left out of this book, women who weren’t White, but were surely organizing and educating in their communities. I’d love to know about them.
This is hard to read in ways but I still finished the book feeling inspired by these women’s activism rather than depressed by the work still to do. As Sohn argues, “Greater historical awareness of the sex radicals can make them provocative role models for women emboldened by today’s #MeToo movement and outraged by the twenty-first-century rise of nativist, sexist demagogues who want to turn back the clock to the Comstock era.”
October 20, 2021
Academic critiques aside, I genuinely really enjoyed this book, which was narratively rich and rigorously sourced. I learned a lot, and was compelled throughout. Would highly recommend to readers of women’s history.
BUT, it was striking how uncritical the author was of her (radical women) subjects at times. The last chapter is an excellent case in point, where the author frames the women as perfectly encapsulating the ~diversity of viewpoints~ that would benefit contemporary feminism. I was also surprised that, despite frequent references to these women as supporters of eugenics, the link between eugenics and racism/ableism was not mentioned until the very last page. With Sanger especially, the effort to contextualize her views on eugenics felt overly defensive. More broadly, the book had little discussion of race or WOC, and how they may have been differently/disproportionately affected by Comstock laws.
Finally, from a historiographical point of view, I found it a little ironic that a book about radical women seeking agency had such strong Great Man History vibes with respect to Comstock himself. The notion that he singlehandedly shaped a century of obscenity jurisprudence and women’s reproductive health felt a bit surface level to me, and I would have liked more contextualized discussion of the social factors at play — which we get a little bit with the obscenity laws, but less with the birth control aspects.
BUT, it was striking how uncritical the author was of her (radical women) subjects at times. The last chapter is an excellent case in point, where the author frames the women as perfectly encapsulating the ~diversity of viewpoints~ that would benefit contemporary feminism. I was also surprised that, despite frequent references to these women as supporters of eugenics, the link between eugenics and racism/ableism was not mentioned until the very last page. With Sanger especially, the effort to contextualize her views on eugenics felt overly defensive. More broadly, the book had little discussion of race or WOC, and how they may have been differently/disproportionately affected by Comstock laws.
Finally, from a historiographical point of view, I found it a little ironic that a book about radical women seeking agency had such strong Great Man History vibes with respect to Comstock himself. The notion that he singlehandedly shaped a century of obscenity jurisprudence and women’s reproductive health felt a bit surface level to me, and I would have liked more contextualized discussion of the social factors at play — which we get a little bit with the obscenity laws, but less with the birth control aspects.
July 8, 2024
I have to agree with other reviewers that the title of Amy Sohn’s whirlwind recounting of Anthony Comstock and his eponymous laws, The Man Who Hated Women, is misleading. This book is much more about the women Comstock targeted than about the bewhiskered busybody himself. For those who aren’t familiar, Comstock crusaded against vice in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To Comstock, “vice” encompassed pornography, contraception, abortion, free love—basically, anything written or said about people doing things with their naughty bits. Leveraging his position as the head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Comstock was able to convince Congress to appoint him as an inspector with the Postal Service. This position and a growing body of laws allowed Comstock to prosecute men and women who dared to challenge mores about sex and reproduction. Because of Comstock, Sohn argues, we Americans are still decades behind the rest of the world when it comes to reproductive rights. I have to agree...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
June 23, 2021
Anthony Comstock, special agent to the Post Office, was one of the most important men in the lives of nineteenth-century women. His eponymous law, passed in 1873, penalized the mailing of contraception and obscenity, and his name was soon equated with repression and prudery.
Between 1873 and the ratification of the nineteenth amendment in 1920, eight remarkable women, also known as "sex radicals," supported contraception, sexual education, gender equality, and a woman's right to sexual pleasure. The Man Who Hated Women tells the overlooked story of their valiant attempts to fight Comstock in court and the press. Risking imprisonment and death, they redefined contraceptive access as a human civil liberty.
Author Amy Sohn does bring these women's stories to life. While the content is very graphic sexually - both in the descriptions of sexual encounters and talk about sex norms of the time - the story is important. These eight women and many other men and women fought for freedoms.
Still 140 years later, women still fight for the right to sexual freedom and the control of their bodies. This book can encourage us to keep fighting.
Between 1873 and the ratification of the nineteenth amendment in 1920, eight remarkable women, also known as "sex radicals," supported contraception, sexual education, gender equality, and a woman's right to sexual pleasure. The Man Who Hated Women tells the overlooked story of their valiant attempts to fight Comstock in court and the press. Risking imprisonment and death, they redefined contraceptive access as a human civil liberty.
Author Amy Sohn does bring these women's stories to life. While the content is very graphic sexually - both in the descriptions of sexual encounters and talk about sex norms of the time - the story is important. These eight women and many other men and women fought for freedoms.
Still 140 years later, women still fight for the right to sexual freedom and the control of their bodies. This book can encourage us to keep fighting.
June 4, 2025
The systemic misogyny runs deep. I wish I could press this book against the head of those who don’t even know where their prejudices come from, and they would instantly absorb the truth and correct their behavior.
December 21, 2021
Interesting history of the Comstock laws and the early history of the birth control movement.
Also, Anthony Comstock was an awful person who literally drove people to suicide.
Also, Anthony Comstock was an awful person who literally drove people to suicide.
October 22, 2023
A bit heavy handed at times but brings light to important moments of multiple nascent social movements
September 9, 2021
I couldn’t have read this book at a more relevant time! It gives the history of Anthony Comstock and the Comstock laws that sought to keep ANY information on family planning away from the public and the women that needed it. The book covers the time period from the mid-1800’s through the 1970’s. It isn’t what I would call a “fascinating” read, but I certainly shook my head many times as I read this history of the women’s movement in relation to contraception.
September 22, 2021
A tough one to read and rate coming off of Empire of Pain. I was really drawn in by the concept of this book, but I really could not get behind the writing. It came across as stilted and almost like a term paper, which was disappointing because nonfiction work is at its best when it’s accompanied by creative storytelling. It took a lot longer to read than I think it could have. I know Sohn has also written a few novels, so maybe those are better?
March 19, 2022
“As feminists living in the current political era find gains of the past century dialed back, we must face the difficult truth that our efforts may not pay off in our own lifetimes. We must fight not for ourselves, but for our daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters, and all the women who have not yet been born.”
September 8, 2022
Amy Sohn expertly and clearly writes about women who fought for women’s rights, primarily dealing with matters related to sex, during the Comstock era. Anthony Comstock’s obsessive crusade to rid the American people of “filth” that “could corrupt young people” held women hostage for decades. Sohn details his hunt for these strong women who are simply trying to help other women with the aid of letters, speeches, and trial documents.
While the lives of the various women, their supporters, husbands, lawyers, and others tended to intertwine, Sohn keeps their stories cleanly understandable without muddling them.
I learned an incredible amount of information, as well as beginning to fear where the country is now heading with the recent Roe ruling. I would highly recommend this book for it’s informative history as well as for the knowledge that could prevent us from sliding back into such a repressive position for women, their sexuality, and their decisions related to birth control and abortions.
While the lives of the various women, their supporters, husbands, lawyers, and others tended to intertwine, Sohn keeps their stories cleanly understandable without muddling them.
I learned an incredible amount of information, as well as beginning to fear where the country is now heading with the recent Roe ruling. I would highly recommend this book for it’s informative history as well as for the knowledge that could prevent us from sliding back into such a repressive position for women, their sexuality, and their decisions related to birth control and abortions.
March 27, 2022
A little slow at the end, but what a story. Meticulously researched, grippingly told, and, sadly, timeless. A religious zealot bound and determined to impose his standards of morality on others—women especially—by controlling what others can read, learn, or do with their bodies. Hmm, where have we heard that before?
July 28, 2022
A good but difficult book to read. It’s horrifying to think how so much has changed and then immediately gone backwards in the last 150+ years.
January 8, 2023
I agree with another reviewer who said it reads like a term paper. There is a lot of good information here and I was grateful for the opportunity to learn about these women but I struggled to get myself to finish it.
September 19, 2021
3.5/5. The work of the women profiled in this book is critical to understanding the continued politicization of women's bodies and the history of the feminist and reproductive rights movements in the US. That said, unfortunately I found the first half or so of this book to be a bit of a slog at times. I also wish the author would have spent more time addressing the eugenicist inclinations of some of these women along with their terrible views on disability and those living in poverty. It goes unaddressed until the epilogue and feels pretty limited and apologist.
January 17, 2022
Anthony Comstock, American vice hunter & vehement moral crusader, is, through the Comstock Act of 1873, responsible for much misery & death, mostly experienced by women. He was a man who “saw himself as a guardian of women…He believed he revered women, but he felt that he should dictate how they should conduct their lives.” As far as he was concerned, a woman who wore a dress that showed her clavicle or used the word penis was lewd & vulgar & women who wanted to manage how many children they had betrayed their “natural” female duties.
As Sohn details, “The federal Comstock law itself is remarkable for its linkage of obscenity and contraception.” Not only was creating or distributing images or descriptions of naked people (the horror!) & sex acts deemed obscene & punishable by law, so was giving people ANY information about contraception. Even “marriage advice” (practical, anatomical sex guides for couples) was deemed obscene. Comstock, mainly through deceptive letters & entrapment, arrested many people & ruined many lives (his actions led to suicides, which some said he bragged about). He was given an extraordinary amount of power & used it fully, the whole while convinced he was in the moral right.
Sohn tells the story of many forgotten women who suffered because of Comstock, but also how some of them fought back. Probably the most well known are Emma Goldman & Margaret Sanger, who come in at the end of the book & at the end of Comstock's career. My favorites, however, are Dr. Sara Chase who renamed her vaginal douching syringe “The Comstock Syringe” after her arrest & Ida C. Craddock, self-appointed sexologist, who claimed her extensive sexual knowledge came from her union with a ghost lover.
In telling their stories she also tells the stories of American radicalism, people who fought for freedom of information, of speech, thought & choice, & free love (which might not mean what you think it does). Some were problematic in their own ways (eugenics-tinged thinking, for one) & they didn’t always agree with one another, but they were united in the belief that women (& men) have the right to be informed about their own bodies, to healthy, pleasurable sex lives & to decide if & when to have children.
January 30, 2022
As many have pointed out, the title of this book is both misleading and almost a little clickbait-y. This is not a book about Anthony Comstock, per se, but one about the female-driven activism that grew alongside Comstock's aggressive obscenity laws in Gilded Age America. I appreciated the centrality of these women's stories and learned a lot from them. And even though this might have been incorporated a little more thoughtfully, this book was refreshing in that the author framed Anthony Comstock's very very very long career in terms of his upbringing, the traditional gender roles modeled for him, the impact of his Congregationalist doctrine, and just generally his personal experience. This was so welcome because these factors are often missing in other recent biographies of him that I have read. If a historical figure-- a living, breathing human like you and me, with all of our complexities and contradictions and goodness and ugliness-- is going to be branded "single-minded," some inquiry into //why// he projected that image is critical.
With its obvious drift toward presentism aside, the book, I thought, was missing a little bit of political, social, religious, and technological context. The connection between advocacy of women's sexual freedom and the anarchist movement of the late 19th century, for example, is one that I previously wasn't too aware of. Before reading this, I was much more familiar with Emma Goldman as an anarchist than a birth control advocate. More exploration between these coexisting movements, why they sprang up around the same time, and their interaction with one another would have been welcome for me personally.
Again, the women are the stars of this book, which was a brilliant way of framing Comstock's career prosecuting the distribution of everything from sex education literature to contraceptives, nude statues to pornography.
Also the naming of the “comstock syringe” truly killed me
With its obvious drift toward presentism aside, the book, I thought, was missing a little bit of political, social, religious, and technological context. The connection between advocacy of women's sexual freedom and the anarchist movement of the late 19th century, for example, is one that I previously wasn't too aware of. Before reading this, I was much more familiar with Emma Goldman as an anarchist than a birth control advocate. More exploration between these coexisting movements, why they sprang up around the same time, and their interaction with one another would have been welcome for me personally.
Again, the women are the stars of this book, which was a brilliant way of framing Comstock's career prosecuting the distribution of everything from sex education literature to contraceptives, nude statues to pornography.
Also the naming of the “comstock syringe” truly killed me
August 7, 2021
Raised in rural Connecticut, Anthony Comstock moved to New York after the Civil War. He joined the YMCA movement that sought to provide a wholesome outlet for young men with athletics, lending libraries, and lectures to distract them from the allure of gambling dens and brothels. With his work in the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice he lobbied successfully for what is known as the Comstock Act -- federal legislation that made it illegal to distribute or even talk publicly about sex and sexuality, from pornographic novels, titillating photographs, and belly dancing to contraceptives and sex education books.
Sohn profiles eight women who were targets of Comstock's witch hunts. Though they were quite different from one another, they all advocated for women's autonomy and the ability (and authority) to make their own choices about marriage and childbearing. Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin were sisters, suffragists, and successful financiers. Madam Restell was an abortionist. Ida Craddock, Angela Heywood, and Sara Chase provided information in publications and public lectures. Emma Goldman and Marjorie Sanger advocated for family planning and birth control.
This is an informative and lively addition to women's history.
Sohn profiles eight women who were targets of Comstock's witch hunts. Though they were quite different from one another, they all advocated for women's autonomy and the ability (and authority) to make their own choices about marriage and childbearing. Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin were sisters, suffragists, and successful financiers. Madam Restell was an abortionist. Ida Craddock, Angela Heywood, and Sara Chase provided information in publications and public lectures. Emma Goldman and Marjorie Sanger advocated for family planning and birth control.
This is an informative and lively addition to women's history.
October 24, 2021
It’s depressing to learn about how women, like our grandmothers and great grandmothers, had so little access to sexual Information and contraception not that long ago. And the women who tried to provide that information were hounded, threatened, forced to leave the country or in prisoned. I very much enjoyed reading about the women who fought for women’s rights. Didn’t enjoy reading about Comstock, but then again, he played a major role (unfortunately) in suppressing women in the 19th and 20th century. As the author stated “ Anthony Comstock’s reign was devastating to American women, but his era was a thrilling period of transformative feminist activities.” Sometimes the detail in the book made it a bit dry, but I would give it a 4.5 rating.
August 21, 2021
Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. This is a fascinating story about a man in history I’d never heard of before. Anthony Comstock, in New York between 1873 and his death in 1915, was the US Postal Inspector in charge of obscene material going through the mail system. Along with materials of female nudity, Comstock makes his name by opposing anything to do with contraception and abortion, making him the enemy of women that are trying to further women’s rights. With fines and imprisonment Comstock battles well know activists Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman, but also a group of earlier activists that were crucial in this fight, sometimes giving up their very lives.
November 14, 2021
eBook. As I was reading, kept thinking "plus ca change...". Spends more time discussing the women he persecuted for writing and talking about sex and birth control (some of whom had pretty strange ideas to a modern reader. but at least they were talking, as opposed to Comstock and the Societies for the Prevention of Vice, who wanted to suppress all this information. And I had forgotten they were not formally overturned until 1965.
December 8, 2021
I will agree with the other reviewers that the book is terribly mistitled and is more a history, a good one, of the early movements of anti-censorship, birth control, and sexual liberation. Very well researched. However, not much flow as it is more an individual biography of many different, mostly, women in the movement.
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