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Victoria Woodhull, Conservatives, and Sex
The Daily Shot here on Ricochet informed anyone who didn’t already know that Hillary Clinton isn’t making history. Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to be nominated for the presidency, albeit not by a major party. What caught my attention was the reminder of her platform back in 1872, which included the radical suggestion that women should have freedom from governmental interference in their choices on marriage, divorce, and bearing children. It is more than a little depressing to think that these matters are not necessarily settled to this day, given the partisan fascination with forcing governmental involvement in at least two out of three of those matters.
In my generally non-partisan neck of the woods, my general goal is to extricate the personal lives of individuals from the mire of governmental regulation. In other words, I am generally opposed to any laws which happen to invade anyone’s bedroom, and in that sense, Woodhull and I probably would have quite a bit in common. She is remembered today in the form of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting sexual freedom. That organization may or may not be appreciated by many readers here, since its work includes encouraging comprehensive sex education in public schools, promoting rights of LGBT persons, and protecting the rights of sex workers. It also makes me odd person out around here, since I support the Woodhull Foundation’s work, and have been known to speak out in support of legalizing prostitution as well as radically increasing sex education in public schools.
That latter issue is one that has been bothering me more than a little lately, particularly in context with conservatives. Currently, I am working on a couple larger projects that involve sex education, and have been running a survey on the topic of what should be included in curricula for children from K-12. I’ve had no major problems getting people from the left side of the aisle to take a few moments to answer my handful of multiple answer checkbox questions. The right side of the aisle has been less than willing.
This is not surprising, and I’d been warned about it by many people who have been involved in research on sexual behavior. I was also warned about the apparently inevitable backlash I should get when I actually start compiling data, and writing on it. Yes, I should be prepared for complaints about the bias of my results, that will undoubtedly reflect only the thoughts and feelings of individuals from the left side of the aisle. Apparently it won’t matter if I humbly point out that I can’t include results from people who refuse to take the survey in the first place.
I know that the immediate response for many conservatives when they are asked to take a survey on what should be included in sex education in public schools is that schools should not be providing this education. Thanks to the ongoing research that I’ve been doing, I also know that as a general rule, people who did not have meaningful sex education in school (or anywhere) seem to be for children today getting what they didn’t. The handful of people so far who reported that they received no sex education at all make it difficult for me to maintain a purely unemotional distance from what I am trying to do. They make me sad, because even though I do not know who they are, I know that they undoubtedly feel that they have missed some important things in their personal lives simply from lack of education.
As for how I know which side of the aisle these people may be from, that is simply a matter of keeping track of where the survey has recently been shared. Most of the people who follow me on social media are generally conservative, so the initial results I received were from them. Then the survey was shared by some friends with more left-leaning followers. The latter group was much larger, of course. Researchers who warned me about the troubles they’ve had with getting data from the right side of the aisle predicted that, saying that even though I interact with many conservatives, it’s not likely that will help in balancing results. They further predicted that I would likely lose followers over the survey and my current work in general. Of course, that has proven to be true as well.
However, I am not willing to give up entirely, so I will request it here. My current sex education survey is here, and I would appreciate it if at least some of you would consider balancing the data at least a little bit. I can’t promise that the questions would not shock you, but I will say it is important to remember one thing. This is about education for K-12, which means that age appropriate content is what is being suggested. The vast majority of content that has anything to do with various sex acts would not be taught to elementary school children. It would be reserved for when students approach and reach the age of consent for sex in their given states.
I can empathize with Woodhull, and her fight for freedom for women. Obviously, she was opposed by most men, but also by women who were content with the status quo. Right now, I end up in the middle between conservatives who are opposed to various issues I believe in, and leftists who want far too radical changes. In any given day, I may be called perverse, a harlot, and a prude, depending on the source. But, what I do is still worth it, since it is working toward a point where we will hopefully see radical reductions in the number of rapes, less child sexual abuse, less domestic violence, and fewer people victimized by sex trafficking. I can take a little name-calling for that.
Published in General
We had one of those in Tulsa.
One year, I went to a high school academic competition and during the awards ceremony at the end, my group was a bit weirded out by the way each award recipient would run down front on the stage and scream the name of their high school to elicit cheers from their contingent. (Dudes, it’s not a pep rally, for Pete’s sake!) The next girl who won something on our team went on stage, accepted the award, then ran down front, pumped her fist and screamed, “LET’S HEAR IT FOR MARGARET HUDSON!!!!!” (yeah — that would be the “Margaret Hudson Home for Unwed Mothers”).
We gave her a standing ovation.
Offered without further comment:
Forgive me, I don’t see how the two are related. Like at all.
Maybe I’m missing something. You’re invited to explain it to me.
Right. Wonder if Rob & James have considered “Only people with nothing better to do with their time spend it posting on Ricochet” as a sales pitch?
It would work for me.
I enjoyed the survey and based on my answers I suspect people would think I’m on the left. My socialist friends would disagree I’m sure. I suppose my time in the libertarian party didn’t hurt. I’m surprised by the aggravated comments here. If the left has done anything good it’s ease some of the hang ups America has with sexuality.
You and we have different definitions of “good.”
We’re only upset when it has to do with children, I think.
For me, the frustration with the survey started with private schooling not being an option for sex-ed instruction, and private schooling is very much a libertarian issue.
I suspect many of the complaints about the survey here weren’t that it was offensive, but that it didn’t know how to ask conservatives – or libertarians, for that matter – questions that would get very informative answers. “I can’t choose an answer that reflects what I honestly think about this” is very frustrating, and if @lizharrison does want to make sure our demographic is fairly represented in her surveys, it is better for her to know about this problem sooner rather than later.
Survey design is tough – no question. I don’t blame people for struggling to put together well-designed surveys. It doesn’t make me think any less of them. But not thinking less of them still can’t make me think well of a frustrating survey. For when flaws in a survey become apparent, that
In this case, one simple test might be, give this survey to a subsample of the demographic group you wish to target, and find out whether they believed they could choose answers accurately reflecting what they believed – and if not, why not. That may not have been the intent behind posting the survey here, but something like that result did happen, scattered throughout all the comments here.
I find some of these surveys to be designed to get a certain result. I got a phone call from a political survey, and the girl (she sounded like she was in her 20s) asked me about my religion. One of the choices was Christian, and I said yes to that. She then asked, “Which kind? Fundamentalist or Evangelical?” No option for a denomination or just for mainline Protestant. The only choices were two variations of “Bible Thumper.” I laughed and said, “Who’s paying for this? The Democrats?” She gasped audibly and said, “How did you know that?”