HIS 184 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Anthony Comstock, Comstock Laws, United States Postal Service
Document Summary
Sex in the marketplace: pornography, prostitution/sex shows. Anti-vice campaign: anti-obscenity campaigns, attack on prostitution. Sexuality permeates many aspects of public sphere via commercialization. Turn to the government to reform and support agendas. Expression of concern of new groups of people and somehow being behind these public ideology of sexuality. Theme: regulation of the role of state and the regulation of the sexuality. Pornography was imported from europe and it is available in the united. It is not indigenous and not produced for commercial selling. The civil war was the turning point of pornography. The congregation of men in homeward social environment. Started selling pornography because of the extended war. The manuscripts of abraham lincoln reveal that commanders were complaining to lincoln that he was upset pornography was reaching the troops: prostitution/sex shows. Prostitution was not new to the united states but becomes more visible in the 19th century, also during the civil war.
