Taming Passion for the Public Good: Policing Sex in the Early Republic Mark E.Kann. New York: New York University Press, 2013.

Abstract

Taming Passion for the Public Good: Policing Sex in the Early Republic Mark E. Kann. New York: New York University Press, 2013.During the first decades of the nineteenth century, large numbers of unmarried young women and men left their family households to pursue new opportunities for sexual experimentation in urban centers with their vice-driven cultures of gambling, drinking, and prostitution. Civic leaders feared that this licentiousness would undermine moral decency, social order, and political stability in the newly independent United States. In response, these public officials sought to curb the excesses of liberty and extend patriarchal authority beyond the household in order to police the moral lives of Americans. As many scholars have identified the American Revolution as a deathblow to patriarchy, such an attempt at restoring it would seem futile. In Taming Passion for the Public Good, however, Mark E. Kann effectively demonstrates that officials successfully portrayed themselves as caring paternalists whose authority was necessary to achieve and secure the perpetuation of (17).But how could patriarchal authority and emerging liberalism coexist? Would not Americans refuse to consent to this impediment on their expression of individual liberties? Kann argues that remarkably few people questioned policing's legitimacy (51) because authorities were able to align their policing power with the idea of clean sex (monogamous sex between a married man and woman) and middle-class values, to convince citizens that the policing was done with their consent, and to use discretion in the enforcement of patriarchal authority. Paternalism not patriarchy, persuasion not coercion. Additionally, even while preaching the language of individual liberty, upper- and middle-class Americans did not trust the average citizen to wield liberty responsibly (163). The excessive passions of young men and fallen women threatened to undermine liberalism and spark social and political disorder. The only solution was to protect liberties with patriarchal authority.After extending his previous work on policing men and women in penitentiaries, Punishment, Prisons, and Patriarchy (2005), Kann turns to the example of prostitution as one of the most visible manifestations of illicit sexuality in the early nineteenth century. Although public officials possessed the authority to police prostitution, they only used this authority sparingly. Patriarchal authority may have been extensive, but it was also fraught with contradictions and limitations. …