I have encountered a surprising number of people in my life who hold that they, belonging to a certain ethnic, national, cultural or religious group, have permission to make jokes that deride members of that group. This idea has a certain inherent logic to it: someone who belongs to a group probably lacks the malice or bigotry against their group that someone from the outside might have. Yet, I think that, more often than not, we have learned to internalize cultural bigotry against our own groups, and that a demeaning joke is demeaning no matter who delivers it.<\/p>\n
I believe that the effective female advocates of the Female Moral Reform Society in Utica suffered because of their lack of prescience to see that an argument which pushed women into a separate sphere for purposes of sexual purity, would necessarily push them into a separate sphere in other ways. The joke-telling rule echoes the Society women’s mistake, in that both did not or do not see that crafting a certain vision of a group will create an identity for that group in the populace’s mind, and those identities are not easily shifted. Perhaps, however, some of the women of the FMRS intended that they should eventually be separated, once they enforced some level of social discipline on alcoholic or licentious behavior.<\/p>\n
Ryan begins her piece with a discussion of contemporary historiography in an effort to illumine the political implications of her own writing in history. The time during which she wrote (1979), there were efforts to shows the suffering that women experienced at the hands of male-dominated societies, but there were also efforts to acknowledge women’s agency within the course of historical events. Then, others countered with criticism that to do so puts the responsibility for their treatment on women’s shoulders. Her examination seems like a perfect exposition of the truth: that disfranchised groups suffer from their disfranchisement, yet they can also find influence and power in surprising places, despite their oppression.<\/p>\n
As often before, women found influence in moral discussions occurring in Utica and elsewhere during the 1830s and 40s. The first item at issue was sexual promiscuity, and though Ryan attempts an empirical analysis,\u00a0 it feels incomplete. The only data with which Ryan works is a 1843 survey by the Utica Society which contains 11 acts of sexual offense, and marriage records in concert with birth records of children. As she seems to understand, this is a paltry substitute for actual data and concludes from this that the issue was likely not an increase in the amount of sexual promiscuity, but rather an erosion of the “community’s ability to monitor and regulate such behavior” (71). Lack of control then, instead of an actual problem, precipitated concern over morals.<\/p>\n
David Sierra writes that “The revivalist Presbyterian church provided them with the framework to build their own associations and the pre-industrial economy made a population density more conducive to a more even distribution of influence”(74-5). Though I recognize the enormous significance of the church, I think that other elements were just as essential in the growth of the women’s organizations, such as McDowall’s Journal, the network of charitable middle class women already established, and the organization of women in nearby polities before Utica.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have encountered a surprising number of people in my life who hold that they, belonging to a certain ethnic, national, cultural or religious group, have permission to make jokes that deride members of that group. This idea has a certain inherent logic to it: someone who belongs to a group probably lacks the malice … <\/p>\n