The Man Who Hated Women

Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age

By: Amy Sohn

Narrated by: Amy Sohn

Best-selling author Amy Sohn presents a narrative history of Anthony Comstock, anti-vice activist and US postal inspector, and the remarkable women who opposed his war on women’s rights at the turn of the 20th century.

Anthony Comstock, special agent to the US Post Office, was one of the most important men in the lives of 19th-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.

©2021 Amy Sohn (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing

Fabulous. Great research.

I’d love to see these characters in a movie. Sohn does a great job digging deep into the world of 19th and early 20th century women’s rights revolving primarily around birth control and the human skin tag that was Anthony Comstock. I didn’t like him before I read this and found new reasons to dislike him. The brave women she highlights are some complex and contradictory characters. I’d heard of a few but Sohn goes really deep. This whole progressive era is a warren of important things that have had a huge impact on where we are now. Much of it looks very familiar but the combination of values of these figures is often just different enough that making sense of them is hard to navigate. Sohn presents them with empathy and clarity. Learning about the 19th century is a passion of mine and this is an excellent place to learn about this part of that century. I’m going to get a hard copy so I can look at the foot notes. Bravo!

Worth the read

if you support Reproductive Health and love history, this is a great look at how we are still dealing with the fallout of Comstock's paternalism and Victorian beliefs.

unable to finish due to poor narration

great subject and a book that I was looking forward to but I was unable to finish it due to the poor narration. first chapter was superfluous commentary.