Latest / Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood / 133. America's Forgotten War on Women

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133. America's Forgotten War on Women · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to a special bonus episode
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of Who Did What Now? The history podcast It's Not
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Your History Class with Mere host Katie Charlewood, history harlot
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and reader of books. If you are listening on day
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: of release, it is International Women's Day, and long time listeners,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: you'll know that I wasn't going to let this day
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: go by and not do something for it. Absolutely not.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: And for new time listeners it has been said you
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: are forewarned suggested. It has even been that I on
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: occasion swear like a sailor with a box of croola,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: which is to say, my language can get away bit
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: colorful sometimes. So again, if that's an issue, you might
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: want to exit stage left. Okay. Yeah, So, as I
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: said at the beginning of the episode, I'm known as
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: the history harlot and reader of bits, and I had
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: someone complain today was it today? It was? At some
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: point time is an illusion that you know, they liked
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: my stories and they liked this stuff, but there was
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: just too much TNA going on. And I was like TNA,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: and I had to think because I had no idea
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: what TNA was. And then I realized they meant tits
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: and ass, and I was like, okay, well I have
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: what many have referred to. Okay, I have what at
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: least one person has referred to as a fearsome bisom. Okay,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: like what am I supposed to do? Leave it at home?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Like I can't help that, you know, boobooch happens, it's there.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: But like I had, I had no idea about the
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: ass thing. I was like, when have I ever shown ass?
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Like when do you ever see me from behind? Even
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: in a video, Like you don't. There's like there's like
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: no ass. So I was like, okay, but I don't
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: know why you're telling me this because I don't care.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: But it was just a weird thing. I was like, okay,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: that was odd. And I also had another person ask
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: me if I was in the de camera and it's like,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: that's not me, that's Sirisha Maloney Jackson. And I do
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: not think that I look or sound like Sisha Maloney Jackson,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Like one, she's much prettier than I am, and I
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: just I don't think we have similar voices, like I
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: don't hear it, but I don't. But this happens like
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: quite often that people think I'm her, which is nice
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: that they think I'm that young, I guess, which is
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: quite nice. Do you remind everyone as well before we
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: get into today's story that I am on tour this year,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: so I'm going to be in Dublin in Ireland. It's
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: my only Irish show of the year as far as
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I know, but it's the only Dublin show I'm definitely having.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: All yel So if you want to see me, get
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: your tickets, tell your friends, tell your enemies. And so
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I've also got shows over in the States. So I've
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: got Philadelphia, Rochester. No, I don't have Rochester, that's a lie.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I have Philadelphia, Albany, Syracuse. I'm in Toronto, I Boston.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: So like just they're down below. Just click on a link,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: go see me, get your tickets in let's do this.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: But I know what you're thinking, Katie, quite your jibbl jabba,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: in fact me, in fact you I will. But first
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: we've got to get our source on and without further ado,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: our sources are the social hygiene movement in the American
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  Speaker 1: Journal of Public Health, The Great War against Venereal Disease,
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  Speaker 1: how the government used pr to wage an anti vice
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: campaign by William B. Anderson, Sex, social hygiene and the State,
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  Speaker 1: The double edged Sword of social Reform by Kristin Luker.
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  Speaker 1: Americans and sexual Victorianism in the Social hygien Movement nineteen
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  Speaker 1: ten to nineteen forty by Christina Simmons. The Trials of
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Nina McCall, Sex Surveillance and the decades long government plan
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: to imprison promiscuous women by Scott W. Stern. This social
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: hygiene campaign that sent thousands of American women to jail
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: by Cynthia Gourney. A Forgotten War on Women by Kim Kelly.
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  Speaker 1: The American Plan, the US government's forgotten planned to lock
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  Speaker 1: up women and free the country from the scourge of
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  Speaker 1: disease by Scott W. Stern. Report of the United States
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  Speaker 1: Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board for the fiscal year ended June thirtieth,
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  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty. The United States in the First World War
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  Speaker 1: and Encyclopedia by an CIPRIANO Venzen. The Social hygien Campaign
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: in America by Erin Woobker. We also have a draft
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  Speaker 1: pamphlet on social hygiene nineteen eighteen by Francis Mayers Huntington Wilson.
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  Speaker 1: And of course we have our old favorites Smithsonian, Dot
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: com Andhistory dot Com. I also did him coomfortably good.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Then let's begin. So it is Women's History Month and
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: I was thinking to myself, what could I possibly chat about? Right?
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: What could I possibly discuss as a bonus that would
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: be like an extra special episode to release on International
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Women's Day? And for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I don't
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: know why this popped into my head. It was a
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: crazy random happenstance. I thought, why not just maybe have
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: a wee chin wag about so as a historian during
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Women's History Month, obviously I'm going to talk about women,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: and I thought, why not do a little bit of
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: a deep dive into one of the lesser known events
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: in history. And by crazy random happenstance, for no reason whatsoever,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: and it was in no way influenced by any current events,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: I thought, why not have a we chat about the
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  Speaker 1: American Plan, or, as some may call it, America's War
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: on Women, which lasted for decades. The American Plan is
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: a controversial and largely forgotten public health initiative from the
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: early twentieth century. It was a nationwide campaign aimed at
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: preventing the spread of sexually transmitted infections, particularly among soldiers
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: and workers. However, it quickly became something much darker. Women,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: especially poor in working class women, were targeted, detained and
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: forcibly examined and tested for STIs. Some were even sterilized
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: without their knowledge or consent, and others were involuntarily institutionalized.
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  Speaker 1: And you might be thinking, how in under good did
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: this policy come about? What effect did I have on people?
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  Speaker 1: And why has it basically been a rased from both
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: public memory and history. Well, I'm glad you asked, because
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you now. To really understand the American Plan,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: we have to like go back to about the early
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  Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds and just slip into some context.
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  Speaker 2: Here.
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  Speaker 1: We're talking like the tail end of the Victorian era,
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  Speaker 1: the Gilded Age, and is a huge period of change,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: like all over the world, but especially in the US,
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  Speaker 1: Like there are just massive changes happening throughout the country.
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  Speaker 1: You've got industrialization, you've got urbanization, and you've got just
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  Speaker 1: a huge change in social norms. And with these changes
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  Speaker 1: came some concerns about public health and morality, and this
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: fear and world or I managed to form itself as
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: the social hygiene movement, which is effectively just a more
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: professional version of the social purity movement, like the Social
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Hygiene campaign is effectively purity culture in a different font.
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  Speaker 1: The American Social Hygiene Association put a lot of the
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: blame on urbanization, which anybody who's ever heard any person
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: in government referred to something as urban, what they mean
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: is not white. And like social hygiene actually grew alongside
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: social work and public health movements of the era. In
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: social hygiene, like it grew alongside social work and public
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: health movements of the era, and it was intertwined in
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: a way. And like it was so focused on eliminating vices,
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  Speaker 1: eliminating vice that they wanted to regulate prostitution and also
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: control venereal diseases and ensure sanctual continents. Like it's effectively
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: they mean abstinence, right, it's what they mean. You know,
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  Speaker 1: it's again purity culture and a different font. It's just
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  Speaker 1: official purity culture. Like it's got a stamp and a seal,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: and like they wanted to do all this to, you know,
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  Speaker 1: protect the moral hygiene of the country, but especially the
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: moral hygiene of their soldiers. But why military men specifically, Well,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: you see something happened on the sixth of April nineteen seventeen,
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  Speaker 1: And that's something was the United States of America declared
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  Speaker 1: war on Germany and joined World War One. So that
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: was April, and by July of that year, like almost
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  Speaker 1: two million America men had been called up to serve.
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  Speaker 1: And so when you enter the military, you have to
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  Speaker 1: undergo like a medical exam, Like that's just how it works.
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  Speaker 1: You have to be sure that you're fit for service.
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  Speaker 1: And upon this medical exam, soldiers were tested for a
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  Speaker 1: whole host of conditions and diseases, including syphilis and gonorrhea,
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  Speaker 1: and well a good chunk of them tested positive. In
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  Speaker 1: like between August nineteen seventeen and August nineteen eighteen, the
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  Speaker 1: Surgeon General of the Army reported that nearly thirteen percent
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  Speaker 1: of all soldiers had been treated for STIs. And here's
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: the thing. If you have to take your boys out
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  Speaker 1: of judy or out of training in order to give
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: them medical treatment that you then have to pay for.
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  Speaker 1: You know, this is costing time and money, and it's
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: it's not good for the military, right If you're sick,
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  Speaker 1: you can't fight. So in order to protect the soldiers
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  Speaker 1: from contracting venereal diseases, the government comes up with a
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  Speaker 1: great idea, and that is too band sex work for
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  Speaker 1: a five mili radius all around, like camps and bases.
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  Speaker 1: So the USA enters the Great War in April nineteen seventeen,
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  Speaker 1: and by May, Senator Wesley Livesey Jones introduces an amendment
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  Speaker 1: to the Selective Service Act, which is the one that
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: invokes the draft right. And it's called Section thirteen. So
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  Speaker 1: like initially, even those who were part of the original
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  Speaker 1: like social hygiene movement, initially there was this accepted belief
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  Speaker 1: that prostitution, sex work, et cetera was a necessary evil.
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  Speaker 1: You know, that it provided a service to to you know,
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  Speaker 1: the fellas, because boys will be boys, and soldiers will
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  Speaker 1: be soldiers, and you know they have needs, you know.
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  Speaker 1: But over time that this changed somewhat. And so this
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  Speaker 1: section thirteen, it gave the Secretary of War the power
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  Speaker 1: to do everything by him deemed necessary to suppress and
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  Speaker 1: prevent the keeping or setting up of houses of ill fime, brothels,
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  Speaker 1: or body houses within such distance as he may deem
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  Speaker 1: needful of any military camp. And yeah, Newton Baker, the
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  Speaker 1: Secretary of War, he wrote to all these officials in
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  Speaker 1: all these areas with military camps in them, and he
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  Speaker 1: told them that sex work had to be shut down
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  Speaker 1: within a five mile radius of every camp. And to
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  Speaker 1: make sure that this was being in forced right, the CTCA,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: which is the Commission on Training Camp Activities, they were
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: sent out across the country to investigate whether these areas,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: like whether they were actually implementing this rule. But like,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: they didn't do it all on their own. They had
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: asha so the American Social Hygiene Association, they had members
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: of them, They had the Bureau of Investigation, which is
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: like the pre FBI, and so initially they were sort
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: of focused around areas that were just around like the
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  Speaker 1: army camps, but this grew over time. Of course, there
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: were a bunch of private groups that were involved too,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: and then you have progressive reformers who are just like
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: really into this anti vice campaign, like Raymond fozz Dick,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: who I may have mentioned because of his name or
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: because he worked with the War Department's Commission on Training
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Camp Activities. You can decide. So this whole anti vice campaign,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: their goal was to keep soldiers away from immoral temptations,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: which shockingly enough, seemed to target women, women who they
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: suspected of engaging in sex work, whether or not they
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: actually were, And after a wee bit of investigation, army
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: medical officers figured out that about five out of every
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: six cases of sexually transmitted infections and soldiers had been
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  Speaker 1: contracted before the soldier had even arrived at the camps.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: And of course, if the military wanted healthy soldiers, they
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: were going to need a healthy population. So like the
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  Speaker 1: banning sex work for a five mile radius around these
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: military camps wasn't that effective because they were getting these
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  Speaker 1: diseases from their hometowns, not from playing to hide the
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: sausage with a lady of the night behind the guard
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: tower during recover. You know what I mean. Learn an
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: absolutely bugger roll from this. The US federal government began
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: motivating cities and states to stamp out sex work like
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: even further than that five mile radius, and one of
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: the ways they motivated them was to blacklist them for
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the military. So if they didn't reduce their STI rates,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't be allowed to have any military camps there
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: and they would be completely off limits to military personnel.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: And that is a massive economic blow for any area,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: because if you've got the army coming in, you have people,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: you have boots on the floor, you have bums in seats,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: they are buying products, they are going to your nightlife,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: they are around and they are using the area. To
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: make sure this all ran smoothly, local jurisdictions were encouraged
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: to pass laws that allowed health of issuals to detain, examine,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: and quarantine women. In March nineteen eighteen, officials met to
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: draft a model law and this was divided like guidelines
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: for the states to enact the Social hygien Campaign. And
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: it was done in a way that like this was
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: the guideline, like this is the skeleton of it, and
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: this could be molded and altered, you know, to suit
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: each state, Like they could amend it to make it
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: work for them. And this model law, it had twelve
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: recommendations right including for physicians to report all sdis to
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the state for quarantine and compulsory treatment. It stopped all
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: pharmacies and drug stores from selling treatments for STIs, meaning
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: that if you were infected, if you had contracted any
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: venereal disease, you would have no choice. If you want
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: a treatment, you would have to go visit like you
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to fly under the radar. Anyone with
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: an SDI had to be quarantined and receive compulsory treatment
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: for the disease. And like, the dodgiest part of all
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: this is it gave local health officers the power to
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: examine anybody that they suspected of having an STI. Like
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: the actual quote is busins reasonably suspected of having civilists
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: gunner hia or shancroid. And that is such a weird way,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Like it's so vague, like reasonably suspected, Like someone has
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: to be reasonably suspected of having an STI. Like it's
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: such bullshit to see the American plan. It wasn't just
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: this set of guidelines. It had teeth and not just
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: like regular teeth, like shark teeth, like rows upon rows
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: of them, Like it had many ways to bite you,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: and it was going to do it. Under these policies,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: law enforcement, both local and federal, worked together to d
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: ten women suspected of carrying venereal diseases. And like, here's
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: the thing. If a woman was reported as being promiscuous,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: or even if she was slightly suspected of being involved
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: in sex work, she could be stopped in the street
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: arrested without any evidence of a crime. Whatsoever, and then
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: subjected to invasive medical exams. And there were any number
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: of bloody reasons like why you would come under suspicion
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: like being in the company of a soldier talking to
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: a woman who was suspected of being a sex worker,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: dining alone, changing jobs, and having a funny walk like
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: what and may I add the fuck like imagine being
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: like detained, imagine being forced to undergo like an invasive
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: like medical investigation, or because you walk funny, like what
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: if you've got sciatica or you stubbed your toe dancing
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: like what if one of your legs is just an
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: in short on the other? Like what?
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Like what?
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: It's absolutely ridiculous after you undergo an invasive medical exam.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: If a doctor determined that a woman had syphilis or
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: gonorrhea or shankrodes, she could be forcibly quarantined in the
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: detention hospital, which weren't exactly the most pleasant places to stay.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: So these detention hospitals or houses, they were like prisons, right.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Most of them had armed guards, trenches outside like a
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: dry moat like. Some of them had trenches to stop
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: you going past them, and a lot of them had
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: barbed wire like They were not places you would want
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: to go voluntarily, you know. And inside, I mean outside
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: is bad enough, but inside they were often cramped and overcrowded.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: The women who were sent there had to perform manual
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: labor and do domestic work when they were there while
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: receiving all of these terrible, terrible treatments. And on top
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: of everything else, the women weren't allowed to communicate with
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: each other. They weren't allowed to talk to each other.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: They weren't even allowed to smile at each other, you know,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: in case it caused vice and ill repute, like who right, Okay,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: But yeah, like it was handy to have all these
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: women in there performing all this domestic labor because well one,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: it was really handy not having to pay for orderlies
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: to do all the cleaning. But they thought that they
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: were doing like moral hygiene, right, So they wanted to
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: cure them of disease and illness and whatever. They also
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: wanted them to follow specifically gendered social norms. And so
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: not only the living in this code of silence, but
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: by getting them to perform all of these domestic duties,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: they're sort of conditioning them to the lives that they
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: expect them to live like you're supposed to live a
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: clean life, both like inside your body and outside your body.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: And like if they didn't do their tasks, if they
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: weren't silent, then there would be corporal punishment, like they
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: would get their asses whipped effectively, Like whipping may not
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: have been involved. I feel like caning was still very
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: much a thing at that point, Like there would have
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: been physical, harsh, physical punishments for these women for not complying.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: So while they're getting their morals corrected, they are also
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: receiving treatment for their STIs, you know, if they actually
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: had STIs. But these weren't actually the most effective treatments
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: because penicillin isn't around yet, Like penicillin doesn't come into
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: play until like the nineteen forties. And what treatment did
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: they use? Well, keep poison. Of course, it's always poison, right,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: I mean arsenic and mercury, Like that's exactly what you
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: want to be putting in your body. Yeah, so you've
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: got mercury, which is a cur al at this point
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: in time, because you've got scney. Shove some mercury on it.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Are you constipated? Forget about the fiber. Shove some mercury
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: up your arse like, oh my teether sore have some
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: arsenic like, right, And then in order to cure like
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: cure gonorrhea air quotes is, they would put a silver
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: cream on. So it's like cool, just lots and lots
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: of heavy metal poisoning. It's fine, don't you worry about it.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: So when these hospitals, women had to deal with enforced silence,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: domestic labor, poison treatment, and IQ tests. Now I hate this.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Women had their intelligence assessed with these shitty shitty IQ tests,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: like they were completely discriminatory, right, and every woman was
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: found to be quote feeble minded she could be imprisoned
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: for the rest of her life indefinitely. And feeble minded
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: women were seen to be prone to immorality, and a
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: lot of these women ended up being sterilized without their consent.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Now you may have noticed, gentle listener, that I haven't
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: really mentioned men being affected by this, and that's because
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: of misogyny. Ah, the patriarchy just bollocks in it up again.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: So while the Model Law was very gender neutral in
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: its language, like it's all about persons in people and
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: the American Plan, It's framed as this sort of public
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: health measure, but in reality, it disproportionately targeted poor and
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: working class women. It targeted immigrants and black women. And
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: many of the women who had been detained had done
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: nothing wrong. They were just women out and about. Like
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: most of the time, it was just someone in public alone,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: they were working as a waitress or in a factory.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Some of them were even just wearing provocative clothing for
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the time period. Oh no, what did they do? They
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: showed some shin and maybe a dash of knee shock. Horror,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: what happened? I saw a shoulder? Oh shit, Like it
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: really shows the gender bias and the double standards in
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: society that punished women while allowing men to escape consequences
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: because men aren't being targeted, not really, and they're just
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: as responsible for spreading STIs. Like very very few men
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: were ever examined or quarantined under these laws, and like
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: there's this like it was assumed that men took more
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: precautions than women, and that women, because of their silly
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: little lady brains, were more negligent when it came to sex,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Like it's assumed that women were supposed to be more
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: promiscuous than men were, as if fellas aren't out there
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: slutting it about, like it's a common misconception that women
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: would spread STIs more than men would, which clearly is
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: absolute bollocks. So, like, here's the thing. In nineteen eighteen
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: in Michigan, and twenty one people were hospitalized at the
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: expense of the state, right because the authorities believed they
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: had STIs. Forty nine of these people were men, one
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: thousand and seventy two were women. Now this may shock you,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: but the American plan was also incredibly racist, So investigators
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: were instructed to focus on black neighborhoods and especially on
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: black women. Now, in many states, officials didn't have any
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: issue with this. They're like, yeah, that sounds about right,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: and they just allowed it to happen.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Forced to endure these invasive medical exams just because they
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: were walking home from work. And a lot of them
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: were detained in these pest houses, like not even the hospitals.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: They were called pest houses, and these are segregated facilities
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: in which the treatment for them was much harsher than
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: in the hospitals. Se Ye, at the time, there is
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: this dodgy assumption that poc so like immigrant women and.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Black women, are more promiscuous. They have looser morals and
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: they are disease carriers, and it's all based on these
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: shitty racist stereotypes. Like in New Orleans, black domestic workers
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: were often arrested and subjected to these invasive medical exams
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: just for like walking home from work, and they were
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: detained in these pest houses like not even detention hospitals
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: right or reformatories. No, no pest houses, and they were
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: segregated facilities. And the treatment there, like anything that the
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: white women indured, the harsh and severe treatment that they suffered,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: you can bet your ass that black women had it
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: fifty times worse, like every single time. And then you've
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: got cities like La and Chicago where immigrant women, especially
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: those of Chinese or Mexican descent, were frequently stopped, examined,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: and institutionalized under the suspicion that they were spreading disease.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: And many of these women didn't have the opportunity to
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: fight back, like there was no choice for them because
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: they had legal discrimination, there was societal prejudice, and of
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: course language barriers that that is terrifying if you don't
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: fully understand or speak a language and you are arrested
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: under a suspicion of something you're not doing, and then
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: you are taken to a doctor who assaults you. Because
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: there's no other way to put it, like, you can
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: dress it up anyway you want, but this is an
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: act of sexual violence, and this is what they felt
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: was acceptable to do to these women. They performed sexual
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: violence on these women, and then they were taken to
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: these pest houses and reformatories and they were subjected to
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: horrible treatments, corporal punishment, and just who knows what other
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: abuse they faced in there, like just because you know
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: they existed, and they don't know how to explain it
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: or understand it. They were just forced into the system
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: where they don't know what's happening. Like that's going to
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: be terrifying. And now you might be thinking to yourself,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: would this have been unconstitutional to, you know, lock people
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: up without due process? Well, I mean it would have
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: been accept The United States Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: wrote a letter to every United States attorney across the
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: entire country, ordering that anyone arrested for prostitution should first
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: be sent to health officials for an STI examination, and
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: if a woman was found to have an infection. She
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: was to be quarantined and treated, and she was not
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: to be prosecuted for her crimes until after quarantine, so
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: that this meant that she would be you know, incarcerated
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: without a trial. He also told the attorneys to report
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: any local officials who refused to go along with his plan,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: and this was in April nineteen eighteen. He also sent
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: like a really similar message to all of the US
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: district judges, like he was really getting the ball rolling here,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: and he stated that it was constitutional because it was
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: about pretty detecting like everybody. But some of these laws
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: were already in place in some states before the Model
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Law came into it, Like in nineteen seventeen, the Michigan
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: State Board of Health ordered all doctors to report all
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: cases of syphilis and gonorrhea, and that they were to apprehend, detain,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: and treat anyone found to be infected. The secretary of
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: the board, Richard m Ollen, He also met with the
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: pharmacist associations and he got them all to agree to
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: stop selling STI treatments, which meant that anybody suffering from
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: a venereal disease would have to go to a doctor
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: for treatment, which meant he could then be reported. So
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: when the model Law came into play, Michigan was already
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: set up and someone who was severely affected by this
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: was Nina McCall. On the thirty first of October nineteen eighteen,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Nina McCall, who had just turned eighteen two months prior,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: she was outrunning errand in Saint Louis, Michigan when she
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: is approached by the Deputy Sheriff, Lewis Martin, and like
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: she knows Martin, she knows his daughter. She's been to
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: his house right, and she's she used to get on
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: like they were fine, but in recent months she's noticed
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: him like talking to a lot of young women recently,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: and as he gets closer to her, she's apprehensive, and
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: so he comes up to her and he tells her
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: that a state official had to examine her for an
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: STI and it had to happen straight away. In this
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: teenager she is not only bewildered by this comment, but
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: she's incredibly upset because she's never had sex, so she
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: doesn't know how she's supposed to have a sexually transmitted infection.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: But this is an order from the sheriff. So what
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Nina does is she goes home, gets her mom and
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: gets her to accompany her to the office of doctor
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Thomas J. Carney, the health official in Alma, which is
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: like a nearby town. So when they get to the
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: doctor's office, he tells them that somebody had reported Nina
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: as having an STI and because of that, he had
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: to examine her. And Nina's like again, she's just scared
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: and upset because like she's a virgin and she doesn't
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: want this man to put his hands on her, and
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: he says that he has to and if she doesn't,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: she's going to go to prison. Like fuck this guy.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: And Nina she's not had a gynecological exam before. She's
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: never needed one because she's not doing anything to need one,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: and it was scary and painful. After the examination, doctor
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Carney is adamant that Nina has gone a rhea and
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: again she doesn't understand. She's terrified and her mom is
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: fighting for her going she's never had sex, like you
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: can't like this can't be right, but he says she
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: has to be taken for treatment and if she doesn't
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: like prison now her mom doesn't want her daughter to
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: be sent away to a detention hospital. And so she asks,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: like why can't she do the treatment at home? And
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: the doctor tells her that it's too expensive for a
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: single mother to afford. Like, if she's not paying for
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: it to happen in the detention center, why can't she
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: do it for free at home like this mathm. And
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: so they argue back and forth a bit, and you
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: know that they're trying to ensure that Nina doesn't have
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: to go to this detention hospital. And doctor Carney tells
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: her that if she doesn't go, he would hang a
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: red placard on the front of her family home declaring
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: in capital letters that someone inside the house had a
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: venereal disease. And this is the time where sdis were
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: massive stigma, I mean, the stigma of having an SCI
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: hasn't really gone away, Like that's still that still has
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: a level of stigma today. But back then, the shame,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: the shame that would not only bring to her but
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: her family, like it was too much for Nina to bear.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: And so she agrees, So she agrees to go, that
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: she's going to go to the Bay City detention hospital.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Now she's told that it is imperative that she gets
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: locked away and gets this treatment as soon as possible,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: and so when she returns the next day, his assistant
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Ida Peck, she's supposed to be escorting her, but he's like, oh,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: she's sick, you'll have to come back another day. And
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Nina comes back every day for seven days, and every
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: day she's set home, like, clearly it's not this big
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: of an issue. But eventually Nina Pick ends up escorting
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: her to the Bay City Hospital. It's this three story
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: building with a massive trench out front, and Nina is
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: kept there for three months. When she arrives, there's a
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: room with two beds, but she has to share a
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: bed with another girl. Right, So this is hospital of
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: the Bay City Hospital. It used to be a containment
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: sort of hospital for contagious diseases like smallpox, you know,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: and scarlet fever, but now it's used to house these women,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: and the hospital it actually received fifty dollars per women
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: per week that stayed there, which almost gives a financial
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: incentive for women to be incarcerated, I mean held in
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: this establishment. Now, Nina, she's been sent to ba City
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: because doctor Carney says that she's caught gonorrhea. But when
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: she's tested there, it says that she has syphilis. Now,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: the test they use at the time for syphilis, it
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: had a twenty five percent false positive rate, so like
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: one in four, which I'm sorry there is too many.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: That is too many false positives. And like they're saying
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: that she had gone rhea and now she's got syphaloss
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: like in between then and there, and so they end
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: up giving her syphilis treatment, which is just injections of
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: like mercury and arsenic and she gets in her arm
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: and over the time that she's there, her arm swells
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: and it's so painful that it hurts for her to
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: raise it. And she's doing all this like domestic labor
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: at the time. She's cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors because
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: they're trying to like push domesticity in them. And she's like,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: on top of this, it's poison. They are giving her poison.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Because this is the way that as a result of
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: the mercury and arsenic treatments, her hair starts to fall out,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: her teeth become loose, she becomes lethar. It's not good,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: and it leaves her with health problems for the rest
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: of her life, Like and she ends up getting two
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: gonna rhea treatments and it's like a silver cream that's
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: placed on her vulva, right, And she only gets two
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: of these because she effectively hides and sort of evades
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: getting them. And so after she's there for three months,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: she gets and all clear, which like, one, those treatments
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: are quite ineffective, and two to assume that both of
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: these diseases went into the latent stage so quickly is
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: sus to say the least. So eventually she's released after
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: these three months, and she thinks, great, I'm cured. I'm
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: done right. I don't have to deal with this anymore.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: But when she gets home, these state health officials I
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: depict she is consistently harassing her. She's showing up at
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: her house. Doctor Carney says that she has to go
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: undergo more treatment, and she's like, but I got a
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: clear bill of health. I'm disease free. Everything should be
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: good now. And so I depect showing up so much
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: that Nina thinks I'm a single lady, like, that's why
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: she's coming after me. And she thinks how to get
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: out of this, and so she decides to get married,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: and she marries a guy called Clear rock and oh
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: it is out of the frying pan and into the fire.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: So she marries him, thinking it's all nice and dandy, right,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: and then on their wedding night, he tells her that
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: the only reason he married her is because he knew
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: that she'd been to the Bay Center, right. He knew
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: she'd been to the hospital, which meant that she was
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: damaged goods and he could do whatever he wanted, and
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: his plan was to have her sell herself.
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: He wanted to be her pimp, and so that happens
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: and they have a very unhappy marriage. Afterwards, she returns
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: back to her mother's house because she's still being harassed
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: by Ida pic With the help of a benefactor, Nina
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: ends up taking the US government to court, but because
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: of the way that the law is structured, she loses.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: But it's not all bad news for her because her
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: terrible husband ends up being shot by the jealous husband
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: of a woman he's shipping, so and eventually she remarries
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: and settles down. But everything that Nina went through, her
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: story is not a unique one.
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: Nelly was certainly not the only victim of the American Plan.
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: In Sacramento, seventeen year old Irene Gentry was walking home
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: from the movie theater when she was stopped by police.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: They accused her of being a sex worker because guess what,
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: she was.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Alone at night, and even though she told them she
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: was just going home, she was arrested and then taking
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: to a detention hospital. Like by passed the doctor's completely
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: straight to the hospital. When she was there, she had
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: an invasive geneological exam, which she ended up later describing
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: as painful and humiliating. The physician there claimed that she
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: tested positive for syphilis even though no symptoms were present,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: and she was locked in that hospital for nearly two
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: months and forced to undergo painful mercury treatments. Irene later
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: said that the experience left her feeling like a criminal,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: even though she had done nothing wrong, and her case
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: was one of thousands like it where young women were
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: arrested for simply existing in public spaces. Nelly Banyard was
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: another victim of the American plan. However, she decided to
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: challenge her attention in court. She was arrested in Washington,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: d c. In nineteen nineteen for being a suspected carrier
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: of disease, and she was subjected to an invasive medical
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: exam and detained in a hospital for weeks upon end,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: and unlike many women who suffered in silence, Nelly fought back.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: In nineteen eighteen, in Sacramento, California, the nineteen year old
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: waitress Alice Stokes was arrested under suspicion of having a
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: venereal disease. Like so many other women, she was forcibly
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: examined and detained in a detention hospital for over two months,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: despite neither being a sex worker or having a venereal disease.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: Alice Stokes later filed a lawsuit arguing that her constitutional
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: rights had been violated, but the courts ruled that the
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: public health concerns justified hard attention. The same year, in California,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: another teenage girl, Stella Wildon, was arrested under the American
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Plan and sent to a state hospital for treatment. Interesting
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: that so many of these women are teenagers during a
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: period where casually dating first starts to step onto the scene,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: and like women are being blamed for this. Really so
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: her case becomes known afterwards a rule that she had
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: to deal with painful mercury treatments, which again was a
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: very common but dangerous sti remedy at the time, and
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: her experiences, like so many others, horrible medical treatment without
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: her consent. In nineteen nineteen in La Grace, Canode, was
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: detained and forcibly examined at the cibil Brand Institute, which
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: was a women's detention center in La She later challenged
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: her detention in court, making her one of the few
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: women to publicly resist the American Plan, and despite her fight,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: the court ruled against her, upholding the government's right to
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: detain women under public health laws. Again in nineteen nineteen,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: but over in Portland, Oregon, the twenty two year old
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: department store clerk Ida Spitz was stopped by the police
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: and accused of loitering for prostitution and again without any
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: criminal charges, without due process, she was subjected to a
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: forced gyneological exam, and when she refused, she was held
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: in isolation until she complied. Another victim of the American
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: Plan was Nellie Baniard, but she decided to challenge her
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: attention in court. In nineteen nineteen, she was arrested in Washington,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: d c. For being a suspected carrier of disease, and
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: she was subjected to an invasive medical exam and detained
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: in a hospital for weeks, and, unlike many women who
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: suffered in silence, fought back. She sued the authorities for
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: violating her rights, arguing that she had been detained without
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: cause and treated as a criminal despite having committed no crime.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: And while her case gained some attention, the courts largely
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: upheld the government's authority to detain women under the guise
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: of public health. Now maybe noticing a wee pat on here,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: which is when women did try and resist, they were
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: met with legal justifications that prioritized the government control over
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: individual freedoms. In nineteen twenty, Lower Purvis, a twenty four
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: year old factory worker, was arrested on her lunch break
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: in downtown Portland. A police officer claimed she looked suspicious
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: and brought her in under the assumption that she was
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: engaging in sex work. Laura had no prior record, no
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: evidence against her, and absolutely no reason to be detained,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: but because of the American Plan, she was forcibly examined
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: by doctors at a local clinic, and when she refused
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: to comply, she was held down by nurses while the
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: examination was performed against her will. The results came back negative.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: Laura had no disease, but instead of being released, she
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: was warned that if she was found in the same
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: area again, she would be quarantined. Now, Laura's story shows
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: that these laws were not just about health, they were
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: about control. Women could be arrested and subjected to invasive
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: exams without any evidence of wrongdoing, and those who resisted
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: faced even harsher treatment. They pinned her down. In Indianapolis
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, the twenty two year old seamstress Janet Maze
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: was picked up by police for waiting for her friend
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: outside a department store. She was taken to the police
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: station and told she had to undergo an SDI exam.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Janet initially refused, arguing that she had committed absolutely no crime. However,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: under local ordinances that followed the American Plan's guidelines, women
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: could be detained indefinitely if they were suspected of carrying
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: venereal diseases, and so Janet was forcibly examined, declared infected,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: and sent to a detention hospital for six weeks, where
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: she was subjected to experimental treatments that left her with
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: permanent health issues. After her release, Janet attempted toursue the city,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: but the courts ruled in favor of public health authorities,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: stating that her detainment was necessary for the greater good,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: which was a common legal argument used to justify these
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: abuseseteen twenty one, Riebahrn, a young woman from Spokane, Washington,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: found herself caught in the American plans web when she
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: was detained for standing outside a restaurant. Like many other women,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: she was assumed to be a sex worker because she
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: was alone at night, and like the others, she was
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: arrested forcibly examined and sent to a detention hospital. Now
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: what makes reebis stories stand out is that she went
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: on to become one of the first women elected to
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: the Washington State Senate, and she later used her position
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: to advocate against the unjust treatment of women under these laws.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it feels like these authorities had a certain quota
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: they needed to meet, because like in Sacramento in nineteen
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: nineteen and one day, nearly two dozen women were rounded
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: up by authorities, one of which was Margaret Hennessy. She
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: was walking with her sister to the meat market and
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Margaret tries to explain who she is and what she's
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: doing there and she even tries to show the officer's ID, right,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: she tries to show them identification, and she even says
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: that her six year old son is attending school in
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: a local convent and if they arrest her, there's no
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: one to take care of him, like who's going to
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: get him? And the officers did not give a shit.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: The moral squad delivered Hennessy and her sister to the
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Canary Cottage, which was the isolation hospital there, and it
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: was there a doctor probed and prodded the genitalia of
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: both of these women, examining them for STIs And she
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: even says herself that it was one of the most
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: degrading experiences of her life, that her reputation meant something
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: to her and she was going to defend it, Like
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: she goes to the newspapers after this, because she's like,
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: I've got a son in convent school, Like she's Hennessy,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: that's an Irish woman. I'm gonna go with Irish Catholic.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: So there are some strict moral laws here for them.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: And so she's got a husband back home, but she's
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: there with her sister and she's forced to go to hospital.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: She's forced to undergo these horrible treatments, and this cottage, well,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: it was unsanitary to say the least. And she was
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: there for three months, and she was subjected to the
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: mercury treatments. And this is not a unique story. It's
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: far too common. But again, she's not the only person
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: who was affected by this. And so far I've only
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: spoken about white women. Black women were especially vulnerable under
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: the American Plan. And Willieie Jones, a twenty eight year
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: old domestic worker in New Orleans. Yeah, she's arrested walking
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: home from work. Police officers claimed she was loitering with intent,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: which is a very vague charge often used to justify
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: the arrest of black women. Now, I don't mean to
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: be a pedant. However, if one is loitering, one is
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: not doing so with intent, because the whole point of
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: loitering is you're just kind of hanging about. There's no
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: reason for loitering, ergo, there can be no intent because
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: you're loitering. Pick a fucking lane, guys, right, that's it.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a shitty excuse because it doesn't even
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: make sense. Right, So she's charge and she's taken to
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: a segregated detention facilityest Pest sentence, where she was held
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: without trial for over a month. Unlike white women who
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: were sometimes released if their SDI tests came back negative,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: black women like Willie were often held indefinitely or forced
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: to undergo additional treatment, even if they were healthy. When
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: a local journalist exposed the conditions of the detention hospitals,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: describing how black women were shackled to their beds and
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: denied basic medical care, it sparked outrage, but despite the attention,
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: few policy changes were made, and Willie was just one
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: of many black women targeted under the guise of public health. Now.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: The American plan, as you can tell so far, didn't
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: quite end with the First World War. It continued for decades,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: with another wave of enforcement during World War II. Dorothy Zanger,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: a twenty one year old secretary in La was arrested
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: during a police raid on a neighborhood known for its nightlife.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: She was out with friends, but was accused of being
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: a loose woman based on nothing more than the fact
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: that she was socializing with men. Dorothy was taken to
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: a clinic where she was examined without consent, and even
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: though she tested negative for STIs. She was held for
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: three days in a detention center before being released with
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: a warning, and her arrest, like many others like it,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: show how the American Plan expanded beyond sex workers to
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: target any woman who didn't fit the moral expectations of
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: the time. Now again we're in the nineteen forties and
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: this is really pushing through. So in nineteen forty two,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Billy Smith is arrested in her hotel room for violating
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: two sections of a Little Rock ordinance that prohibited prostitution
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: and immorality. Now she pleads guilty to get out of
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: jail and pay a fine of ten dollars and like
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: she's like great, outdone by. But after she paid the fine,
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: Little Rock's health officer informed Billy that he was going
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: to force her to undergo a medical examination because he
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: suspected that she had an STI. Her blood is taken
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: to test for syphilis and her genitalia is examined for
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: signs of gonorrhea. And while the health officer was waiting
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: on the results of the blood test, Billy Smith was
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: held behind bars in the Pulaski County jail and after
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: a day miraculous the test results were back and Billy
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: Smith allegedly had ciphilists. Not only that, but it said
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: she had gone a rear too, and that she had
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: to be quarantined in a detention hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Now, Billy,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: she'd already paid her fine, so she didn't think this
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: was fair by any stretchery imagination. So Billy she's behind
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: bars for four days, and then she has her day
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: in court. Following a hearing, the judge rules that Little
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: Rock's ordinance was void, describing it as dictatorial. But when
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: the Arkansas Supreme Courts heard about it, yet it overruled,
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: the judge, stating that Billy Smith's status as infected affect
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: the public health so intimately and so insidiously that consideration
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: of delicacy and privacy may not be permitted to thwarted
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: measures necessary to avert public peril. And with this being overturned,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: the Pulaski County Sheriff is ordered to remand Billy Smith
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: in isolation and quarantine. So when this is overturned, like Billy,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: she's already had her day in court and she's gone,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: so when they go looking for her, nobody can find her.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: She is gone without a trace, because she doesn't want
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: to go back into this and she doesn't want forced
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: SDI treatment. And it takes a month before she's captured
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: in Memphis, and she has found one hundred and twenty
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: seven dollars for like a bunch of crimes, including prostitution,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: and she was sent to an isolation unit. And it
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: wasn't until like the end of the year, so it
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: was like six months after being arrested initially that she
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: was returned to the Pulaski County Jail before being sent
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: to the detention facility in Hot Springs, an institution that
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: she herself referred to as a concentration camp. Now this
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: is nineteen forty two. There is not a whole lot
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: of information about concentration camps at this time, at least
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: not the German ones. But now this isn't even the
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: end of Billy Smith's story. After a few days in
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: the Hot Springs facility, she and another woman try to escape,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: and after this, like the detention hospital refuses to take
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: them back, and so she ends up back in jail
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: for a few more weeks, but she no longer has
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: to spend the time in Hot Springs. Now Billy Smith
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: wasn't the only woman to try and escape one of
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: these facilities. At least one woman jumped out of a
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: window to her death, another try to leap from a
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: moving train to try and avoid the being taken in,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: and others would call the press or cause a scene
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: or you know, cause issues in the detention hospitals. Some
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: would commit arson, others would go on a hunger strike,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: and some would even try and call the press to
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: try and work this out and get out of it.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: Over the years, the American Plan continued to be enforced,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: like Denver, Salt Lake City, to Hot Indiana and a
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: few others. Women were detained and examined for STIs under
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: Plan laws well into the seventies. And the fact that
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: this program lasted so long it shows it was never
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: really about controlling sdis because here's the thing. During the
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: First World War, the only thing that actually worked to
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: reduce sdis among soldiers were chemical profile axis like condoms,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: which they happily gave to the soldiers but not to
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: the sex workers. But also, condoms like condoms are valuable asset.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: Here just putting out there, which shows it wasn't really
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: about controlling STIs as it was about controlling women's sexuality,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: because when penicillin comes out in what the nineteen forties,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: a lot of supporters of the American Plan were just
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: like really upset about it. Like Walter Clark in nineteen
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: forty four said that venarial problem cannot be solved by
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: the find them and trade them with it alone. I
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: think it can, sir, I think it can. And the
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: American Plan it just over the years kind of run
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: out of steam, you know, it just didn't have the
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: momentum to keep going because from a social perspective, like
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: attitudes towards sex STIs, civil rights, women rights, they were
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: all evolving. And then the last nail in the coffin
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: were all of these high profile cases, including feminist writer
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: Andrea Dwarkin, who was arrested at eighteen when she attended
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: an anti war demonstration outside the UN building in New
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: York City. I know this is serious, but I can't.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: I can never not say it like that now. And
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: so she was strip searched and forcibly examined by two
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: male doctors and she bled for days afterwards. Again this
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: is sexual violence. And around about the same time, civil
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: rights activist in Birmingham and on top of that, in Sacramento,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: Black Panther's risk to forced VD examinations is part of
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: a police harassment campaign, and so Dwarkin she had actually
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: highlighted and brought media attention to the fact that this
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: was still a practice that was being enacted. And in
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, the American Civil Liberties Union the ACLU,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: began working in tandem with the sex workers rights organization COYOTE,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: and it felt it against the city of San Francisco
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: for their practice of holding women arrested for prostitution or
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: related offenses for seventy two hours and forcibly examining them
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: for SAIS. They also felt a similar account in Alameda County,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: which halted this practice, and this led to the director
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: of the California State Health Department to come out and
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: say that the Department of Health cannot support actions disguised
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: as preventive health measures that are actually intended to achieve
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: law enforcement objectives, particularly when they appeared to constitute a
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: denial of basic rights. And this was agreed by the
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: California Court of Appeal, which said that these practices were
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: discriminatory because like women who were arrested for sex work
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: they were detained and forcibly examined, but men were not.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: They didn't have a similar procedure. The American Plan was
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: one of the largest but least remembered violations of women's
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: rights in US history. Women were arrested, forcibly examined, detained,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: and even subjected to dangerous medical treatments. Some were even
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: sterilized without their consent. And this was all without due process.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: And the majority of women who suffered this we will
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: never know their names. And at the end of the day,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: if the government actually wanted to control sdis there was
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: a whole smrga's board of other options that did not
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: involve having to imprison women without due process. But then again,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: none of these options would have allowed officials to police
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: women's bodies and behavior like the American planted, And this
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: just helped perpetuate the fallacy that women were promiscuous and
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: are dangerous and morally inferior, and that they need to
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: be stopped, locked up, reformed to fit into other moral standards.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: For decades, women were silenced, their experiences dismissed as necessary
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: sacrifices for public health. Now that's not to say that
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: other health initiatives aren't necessary. Many of them are like
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: we need heard immunity, Like there were so many things
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: that are relevant, And I know that people will use
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: cases like this to justify their biggered opinions and to
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: try and avoid and detract from safety, which is what
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: this did. But yeah, the truth is the American Plan
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: was a widespread violation of civil rights, one that targeted
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: women simply for existing outside that narrow definitions of respectability.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: And even today we can see echoes of these policies
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: and debates over government control, sex work laws, and reproductive rights.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: The American Plan might be a forgotten chapter in history,
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: but as it affects still linger, and there are statutes,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: and these laws or the options for these laws still
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: exist in many states even today. And that is the
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: story of the American Plan. If you liked my retelling
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: of this story, feel free to come see me live
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: by your fucking tickets written review of five stars. If
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: you can't written, you view five stars, just say something nice, pals, thanks,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: and what else? It is recommendation time. Actually, you can
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: follow me on socials because let people know that I'm
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: cool and share this fucking episode. Actually, it's women's history,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: International Women's history. Nope, I'm very tired. This is wrong.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: Share this episode again, tell your friends, tell your enemies,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: and it is recommendation time. So for listening, I'm gonna
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: recommend a women's podcast. My I love them so much,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: Murder Most Irish. They are so sensitive, like they care
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: about victims and they are just fabulous women. Go listen
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: to Murder Most Irish. It's a wonderful podcast if you're
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: into true crime and they actually give a shit for reading.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: For reading, I am going to suggest Captive Queen, the
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: Decrypted History of Mary, Queen of Scot's by Jade Scott
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: and watching it is this year, I believe the twenty
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: fifth anniversary of the movie Bring It On, which is
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: a great movie and probably I think the first teen
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: movie to ever deal with appropriation, that cultural appropriation, and
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: it is so many strong female characters, like go watch
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: that that is. That's less of a request or more
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: of a demand. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed my
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: informing you of this piece of history, and with that
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: I shall bid you goodnight, adios au revoir ivaitasn my friends,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: bye bye,