Pacifist Brawn and Silk‐Stocking Militarism: Labor, Gender, and Antiwar Politics, 1914–1918

Abstract

Historians have recently devoted significant attention to exploring the ways in which gendered imagery and assumptions were used to mobilize popular support for U.S. foreign and military policies during World War I. Preparedness and government propagandists routinely conflated manliness with military service and attempted to discredit male opponents of war by casting aspersions on their masculinity. The female Red Cross worker was upheld as the ideal model citizen for American women. But a diverse array of antiwar groups hotly contested the notions of gendered citizenship duties promoted by pro‐war activists. This article explores the responses of the Socialist Party, Industrial Workers of the World, and American Federation of Labor to the gendered propaganda of preparedness advocates and the Wilson administration between 1914 and 1918.