The Economics of Sex

[thalassa]

Re: The Economics of Sex

Ok. Let me ask this because I'm confused. Who the hell were these soldiers doing the hokey pokey with to get all these venereal diseases?

Prostitutes, mostly. But, also other soldiers (male and the few females pretending to be males), camp laundresses and cooks, loose women in town (they were often in barracks in a friendly area), desperate women that wanted food or currency worth the paper it was printed on.

[Medusa]

Re: The Economics of Sex

Prostitutes, mostly. But, also other soldiers (male and the few females pretending to be males), camp laundresses and cooks, loose women in town (they were often in barracks in a friendly area), desperate women that wanted food or currency worth the paper it was printed on.

Off topic. I wish I could remember the name of the book. But PBS had this great doc on a female Spanish Civil War gal who pretended to be a man to fight in the war. Was awesome.

[thalassa]

Re: The Economics of Sex

Off topic. I wish I could remember the name of the book. But PBS had this great doc on a female Spanish Civil War gal who pretended to be a man to fight in the war. Was awesome.

Loreta Janeta Velazquez?

[Medusa]

Re: The Economics of Sex

Loreta Janeta Velazquez?

Yaaas. It was so awesome! It was so interesting.

[thalassa]

Re: The Economics of Sex

Yaaas. It was so awesome! It was so interesting.

The entire topic of women that served in the Civil War by dressing as men is interesting. We only know of a handful of well-documented cases--Albert Cashier/Jennie Hodges, Loreta Velazquez/Harry Buford, Sara Edmonds, etc...but estimates vary from a couple hundred to a couple thousand, depending on how one extrapolates mentions in diaries and letters and official documents to the wider population. There were a number of women that followed lovers and husbands, others that came from poor families and wanted to earn decent money. I remember reading one account (ans I'm paraphrasing) of a "soldier sent home after presenting to the the company a fine new recruit, who wouldn't be able to hold a rifle for quite a few years, and we can only hope to God, the war does not last that long". There were men that knew and helped hide the gender of a female soldier from the officers, and men that turned them in. Some of them went back to being women after the war, and some continued to live as men--I believe it was Jennie Hodges (though it might have been Sara Edmonton) that called upon the local girls as a suitor. There is even at least one woman that is known to have served with the Colored Troops..

<---bad off topic mod!

[DanieMarie]

Re: The Economics of Sex

I'm glad you let it happen and got into it, because that's fascinating!

[thalassa]

Re: The Economics of Sex

I'm glad you let it happen and got into it, because that's fascinating!

Thanks! I find it an interesting topic myself, as well as the subject of sex and sexuality and gender roles in the time period.

I guess my point is that we have a really narrow idea of *what people did* in history...as a result its impossible to make comparisons in anything other than gross generalizations. I mean...there's a saying about "winners write history" for a reason...but really, winners that have the ability to read and write write history. And, when most of the educated populace (in terms of Western history) has been male, white, and wealthy (or less commonly, at least two of the three)...that makes history written from a series of biases that leaves out a lot of what was going on (even when they are exceptions that prove the rule, they illustrate that history isn't homogeneous).

[Historyforall]

Re: The Economics of Sex

It should be noted std's did not kill most Civil War soldiers, dysentery, measles and chicken pox were the biggest killers. Thousands of people from all over the nation merging at one location sent tens of thousands to the grave. This is why we get all those shots as kids now so we have at least some immunity to these things.

"Sex in the Civil War: the story the soldiers wouldn't tell" is a great book to really understand mid-19th century sexual behavior. Like all wars men use it as an excuse for loosing their inhibitions.

They use to predict about less than 1% of those who fought in the Civil war were female. Now that number may be higher. As soon as a women was discovered they were sent home, the ones who fought as mentioned earlier meant there was no way to tell by looking at them. So we will never really know how many fought.

[thalassa]

Re: The Economics of Sex

"Sex in the Civil War: the story the soldiers wouldn't tell" is a great book to really understand mid-19th century sexual behavior. Like all wars men use it as an excuse for loosing their inhibitions.

Its a great book, though its been a while (at least 2 years) since I read it. I'm also a fan of Mother of Invention, which talks about women's roles in the South...and This Republic of Suffering, on death in the Civil War.