The Industrial Revolution & the Sexual Revolution

Here we have a new morality and a new woman, and a world that in so many ways is changed in appearance and ideal. These newnesses belong to a new age. A new age, however, does not burst upon us with the unanticipated treachery of a typhoon, sweeping all before it with its suddenness. It is only its external manifestations that sometimes dart upon us unawares, and with a strange violence. Its underlying forms are often of old duration. 

The question—how did we get this way—is, therefore one of very intricate and complicated character. The World War, after all, was in itself but a sharp climax in the career of modern industrial civilization. It gave rise to a number of forces that otherwise might have taken much longer to acquire their present momentum. The old morals had begun to decay before the war. The economic rise of woman had occurred before the War also; it was the War, nevertheless, that inspired this rise with a sharp spurt and made it take on more gigantic proportions. Behind it all, of course, as the fundamental cause of the changes that we have recorded, is the development of the machine age and industrial civilization. Industrialism drew women into industry and destroyed the unity of the home. The economic independence of woman was made possible through the advance of industry.

Economic independence soon brought about moral independence. The clinging vine type of girl and the submissive type of mother, apostrophized in song and celebrated in sermon, have become obsolescent.

Woman's demands for equal rights with man have extended to the sexual sphere as well as to the social. The invention of contraceptives has fortified her independence as a sexual being, and given her an opportunity for a sex life that is no more handicapped than that of man. With economic freedom there is no need for the surrender of her rights to a morality prescribed for her by man. As long as she owed her livelihood to man, she owed him her virtue. It was a debt that was obvious and unavoidable. With the gradual disappearance of this economic dependence, the necessity for moral subjection was no longer urgent. Liberty to live her life as she pleased, in terms of equality of privilege, now became possible for her after centuries of moral enslavement. This meant revolt against the home, the family, and the rigorous demands of domestic life and virtue.

The Industrial Revolution forced women out of the old ways of life. Eventually women of all classes were drawn into economic endeavor. From the quiet submissive housewife she has now become active as factory worker, vocational adviser, stenographer, teacher, politician, orator, preacher, lawyer, doctor, and in fact, has entered into almost every occupation undertaken by men. This change from the static life of a mother into the dynamic life of worker revolutionized her entire outlook upon existence. It effected the feminine revolt against masculine oppression in economics, politics, education and morals.

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