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The Man Who Hated Women by Amy Sohn
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The Man Who Hated Women

Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age

$20.99

Retail price: $22.95

Discount: 8%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Narrator Amy Sohn

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Length 11 hours 47 minutes
Language English
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Bestselling author Amy Sohn presents a narrative history of Anthony Comstock, antivice activist and US postal inspector, and the remarkable women who opposed his war on women’s rights at the turn of the twentieth century.

Anthony Comstock, special agent to the US 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 prison 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 birth control pill, no Planned Parenthood, no Roe v. Wade. This is the forgotten history of the women who waged war to control their bodies.

Amy Sohn, former New York magazine columnist, writes nonfiction, novels, picture books, and more.

Amy Sohn, former New York magazine columnist, writes nonfiction, novels, picture books, and more.

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Reviews

“An engrossing account of…rising demands for free speech, gender equality, and a better quality of life for women…with sharp insights into just how revolutionary these new ideas were.”

“How the reactionary Christian ideology of one government official contributed to the suppression of women’s reproductive freedom for decades…Stellar research in women’s history, especially crucial due to recent threats to abortion rights across the country.”

“This stupendous history, skillfully researched and delightfully narrated by Amy Sohn, is sure to light up all your chakras.”

“This entertaining, powerful, lovely book throbs with the flare of brilliance and anger… a vital service on behalf of the right and the true.”

“In this powerful, entertaining, and supremely engaging history of one man’s crusade against women’s reproductive rights…the narrative is vivid, propulsive, and revelatory―and sure to have you cheering from the benches.”

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