In light of recent events in Virginia I’d like to turn our attention to the Contagious Diseases Acts.
The CD Acts were passed by the British government in the 1860s as an effort to stop the spread of venereal disease in the Navy. Under the Act, prostitutes in port cities were compelled to submit to vaginal medical examinations. It was extended later in the decade to all women suspected of being prostitutes.
Agitation against the CD Acts was perhaps the first moment in Anglo-American history where we see something resembling modern feminist activism. Victorian women’s groups, led by Josephine Butler, propagated the image of “state mandated rape” (STD testing at the time was done by metal instruments penetrating the vagina). They argued it was men’s uncontrollable sexual urges, not women’s, that caused the spread of disease and moral decay.
Anyway, it worked. The Acts were repealed in the 1880s. The foundations of a modern feminist program were laid. Granted, this also established a problematic line of argument we still deal with today, that is: women deserve some rights because of their different and morally superior constitutions, not because they are human persons deserving civil rights. But it was equally an attack on the idea of masculine virtue vs. feminine debasement, and, crucially, exposed how women’s bodies are treated differently by modern liberal states.
I guess my point is that they couldn’t get away with something really similar inVictorian England. It was way too real for the Victorians. So kudos Virginia, I guess, for “taking it there.”
