Sexual Immorality Research Articles

Ethical Issues of Divine Love in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism

The extreme form of aesthetico-erotic emotionalism of prema-bhakti or prīti, divine love of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism has serious ethical implications. This paper touching upon the following perspectives has argued that, in the ultimate analysis, the issue of sexual immorality involved in the erotic imageries etc. of the nitya-līlā—the play of divine amour can only be settled by referring to its underlying metaphysical and theological postulations. The ethical issues of divine love being examined are with reference to (1) sexual immorality as a Medieval syndrome; (2) Kāma in Caturvarga-Trivarga discourse; (3) religious language, symbolic and nonsymbolic discourse; (4) amorality or supra-morality of divine amour; (5) Prema is the sublimation of desire and attachment etc.; and (6) divine amour, body and embodiment-theology. That is, the ethical implications of the divine amour do not lie in sex itself or in its being a constitutive element of religious language but in its larger religio-metaphysical context. In terms of the formal theory of language, the sensuous elements of divine amour involved in the concept of parakīyā-rasa are the self-expressions of the creative freedom of the Divine. But the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas are caught in the dilemma of their insistence on the nonsymbolic connotations of the concept of parakīyā-rasa—the extra-marital nature of Rādhā or Gopīs of the nitya-līlā and their fixation with the medieval sexual morality. Their metaphysical justifications do not satisfy the contemporary scholars who are still under the tight grip of the syndrome of Victorian era or the moorings of medieval sexual ethics.

Embroidering the Scarlet A: Unwed Mothers and Illegitimate Children in American Fiction and Film by Janet Mason Ellerby (review)

Reviewed by: Embroidering the Scarlet A: Unwed Mothers and Illegitimate Children in American Fiction and Film by Janet Mason Ellerby Desiree Henderson ELLERBY, JANET MASON. Embroidering the Scarlet A: Unwed Mothers and Illegitimate Children in American Fiction and Film. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015. 290 pp. $85.00 hardcover; $34.50 paperback and e-book. Janet Mason Ellerby’s Embroidering the Scarlet A traces the narrative of the “fallen woman” across American literature from the eighteenth century to the present, including its appearance in recent mainstream movies. Of particular importance is Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, which, though hardly the first iteration of the trope, exercises a substantial influence over later representations of unwed mothers and illegitimate children, as Ellerby demonstrates through her impressively large archive of novels, short stories, and films. Ellerby’s core claim is that the basic structure of the fallen woman narrative has remarkable durability despite the diversity of literary movements and styles in which it appears, despite switching media from fiction to film, and despite changing social mores regarding female sexuality and out-of-wedlock childbirth. [End Page 573] Instead of evolving, representations of fallen women persist in casting judgment against women who have sex outside of marriage, rendering them social outcasts and emblems of sexual immorality. Such texts also visit judgment on the children who are the product of unauthorized sexual encounters, making literary texts about orphans, illegitimate children, and adoption a significant subset of this literary motif. Ellerby’s approach to this broad swath of literary history takes an unusual form. She interweaves standard close readings of literary texts with a personal narrative recounting her experiences as an unwed mother who was forced to hide her pregnancy and to give up her daughter for adoption, and who struggled over the course of her life with intense feelings of guilt, shame, and remorse, even after she was reunited with her daughter years later—experiences she previously depicted in her memoir, Following the Tambourine Man: A Birthmother’s Memoir (Syracuse UP, 2007). Ellerby states that her use of autobiographical or confessional criticism reflects the inadequacy of the standard impersonal style of academic criticism; she is simply too close to the unwed mother narrative to employ a detached stance. Instead, she brings her experiences and their emotional legacy to bear upon her reading of fallen woman narratives through recurring memoir-like passages. Many readers will find Ellerby’s approach innovative and appealing. Although feminist literary critics often call for a more autobiographical and self-reflective style of analysis, such approaches remain rare. Yet, there is something to be said for breaking away from the pretense of objective analysis to acknowledge how deeply emotional our responses to texts may be. In particular, I think that students will find Ellerby’s method a refreshing change from the impersonal voice of academic writing that many consider artificial and alienating. Other readers will not be so open-minded. There are undoubtedly some who will find Ellerby’s recourse to personal experience a poor substitute for rigorous literary analysis. There are moments when Ellerby’s goal of establishing parallels between herself and literary characters results in imprecise and unpersuasive claims. For instance, in her analysis of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Ellerby writes, “Celie’s babies were stolen from her, and I understand how that feels. Although the morning my daughter was taken away from me was much different, I too can use the word ‘stolen’….My experience and Celie’s are like other birthmothers who stress that they did not willingly ‘give away’ their babies. Our relinquishments were involuntary” (112). The comparison is intended to convey the depth of Celie’s loss but it results in a troubling erasure of the considerable race, class, and historical differences that exist between the literary critic and the character. Moreover, Ellerby turns from this claim of commonality to evaluate another of Walker’s novels, Meridian, in which the title character gives up her son without apparent emotional distress; Ellerby uses her own experience as the measure against which to judge Meridian’s response as unbelievable: “she is not representing the experience of real birthmothers” (112). This moment is one of...

DISORDERLY DOCTRINES: RELIGION, RACE, AND THE FOUNTAINGROVE SEX SCANDAL OF 1891–1892

In 1891, a moral reformer named Alzire Chevaillier launched an aggressive crusade to destroy Fountaingrove, a spiritualist utopian colony in Northern California with white and Japanese members. Chevaillier accused the colony's leader, Thomas Lake Harris, of promoting “disorderly doctrines” with sexual practices “worse than those of Mormonism.” This essay uses the little-known Fountaingrove scandal to examine the interrelationship of religion, race, and sexuality in California. As a mixed-race new religious movement accused of sexual immorality, Fountaingrove transgressed prevailing norms in multiple ways. The colony became Orientalized in the public imagination, showing how new religions and non-normative sexual practices were coded as racially other. Yet media representations of Fountaingrove reflected more than straightforward “yellow peril.” The Japanese members of Fountaingrove inhabited several unstable categories at once, viewed as neither “heathen” nor Christian, neither adults nor children, neither white nor Chinese, shedding light on the uncertain religio-racial status of early Japanese immigrants to the United States. The scandal also reveals the racist dimensions of white female reformers' attacks on male dominance. The wide range of public response to Chevaillier's campaign, from moral disgust to amusement to apathy, gives evidence of the cultural fissures beginning to break open in fin de siècle America.

The trouble with Nigerian universities: bogus policy and speculative ideology

There is no gainsaying the fact that Nigerian public universities and no less privately owned universities are facing a lot of challenges. Such problems that now characterise our universities include indiscipline, poor funding and inadequate facilities, examination malpractices, demonstration and rioting, secret cult activities, drug addiction, sexual immorality, theft, corruption and maladministration to mention just a few. Added to this is the problem of policy inconsistencies, mis-match and lack of a well articulated ideology that will underpin Nigerian educational system and ultimately stimulate national development and growth. The paper attempts to show, among others, that the challenges confronting contemporary Nigerian Public Universities do not lie on the alleged abdication of functions by lecturers. Rather the problem lies squarely on government’s insensitivity in terms of proper funding and provision of facilities, coupled with policy mis-match and ideology are responsible for the problems in the University sub-system and education in general. An unwavering commitment by the government and all the stakeholders to the goal of education and the deployment of moral education provide the best option for the resolution of the myriad of challenges facing Nigerian public universities.

Satan as Adversary and Ally in the Process of Ecclesial Discipline: The Use of the Prologue to Job in 1 Corinthians 5:5 and 1 Timothy 1:20

Twice in the NT Paul refers to delivering someone to Satan. In 1 Corinthians 5:5, the apostle tells the Corinthian believers to hand a man living in sexual immorality over to Satan (παραδοῦναι τὸν τοιοῦτον τῷ σατανᾷ). In 1 Timothy 1:20, Paul tells Timothy that he handed Hymenaeus and Alexander over to Satan (παρέδωκα τῷ σατανᾷ). Paul’s language is strikingly similar to language contained in the prologue to Job. In Job 1:6-12, Satan disputes the blamelessness of Job and seeks Yahweh’s permission to test Job’s integrity. First, Yahweh allows Satan to attack Job’s most prized possessions (Job 1:12). After the first attack fails, Satan asks for Yahweh’s permission to assault Job physically. Then in Job 2:6 LXX, the LORD says to Satan, ‘Behold, I deliver him to you’ (Ἰδοὺ παραδίδωμί σοι αὐτόν). In this paper, I argue that in both 1 Corinthians 5:5 and 1 Timothy 1:20 Paul draws from the prologue to Job, and he portrays Satan as an enemy of God who nevertheless can play the part of an ally in the process of church discipline.

Psychosis and societal prescriptions of gender; a study of 174 inpatients

This study aims to confirm and explore the clinical observation that homosexuality is a male, whereas sexual immorality a female theme of psychosis. The case histories of 174 psychotic inpatients of both sexes were examined in a retrospective cross-sectional study. Using the Fisher exact test for the analysis, it was found that significantly more men (18.3%) than women (1.4%) exhibited symptoms whose theme was being accused of/ forced to homosexuality, and significantly more women (15.7%) than men (0%) exhibited symptoms whose theme was being accused of/forced to sexual immorality. Among all demographic characteristics, only patient’s sex predicted the occurrence of the above themes. In total, 17.8% of the patients in this study exhibited positive psychotic symptoms with themes relevant to the societal prescriptions of gender, homosexuality (also perceived as calling masculinity into question) being a male and sexual immorality a female theme of psychosis. The findings of this study are in agreement with the anthropological and psychological literature on gender issues and should be considered in the psychotherapeutic approach of psychotic patients. They also contribute to the understanding and more accurate description of psychotic symptoms.

From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity. By Kyle Harper. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. iv + 304 pp. $39.95 hardcover.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity . By Kyle Harper . Cambridge : Harvard University Press , 2013. iv + 304 pp. $39.95 hardcover.Book Reviews and NotesFrom the sex trade as an essential element of the Roman economy in the second century to the tale of the penitent who takes up desert asceticism in the fifth, this work traces the transformation of Roman society into Christian by paying particular attention to sexual morality. As indicated by the title, the thesis is that sin, a theological concept, replaces shame, a social one, as the driving force of sexual ethics and legislation in the Christian period. Harper argues that the Greco-Roman of the imperial period embedded eros within the social structures of honor and shame. While sexual behavior was driven by both individual desire and social expectation, the logic of its inhered in the social order, with moral categories associated with social status. An aristocratic male, a female slave, and a prostitute each had different social expectations regarding both sexual behavior and its morality. However, following the transformation occasioned by the rise and success of Christianity, which Harper dates to Justinian, the moral logic became different--it was severed from social status and tied to the theological concept of sin, in which, he says, the cosmos replaced the city as the framework of morality (8). Harper also aims to pay special attention to the relatively unexplored categories of same-sex behavior and prostitution in this period. While this characterization of the shift between Roman and Christian sexual might not surprise historians of this period, Harper's assembling and placing in conversation a wide and deep range of ancient sources provides a significant contribution.For his assessment of Greco-Roman sexual morality, Harper argues that the Greek novels provide a window into the relationship between erotic ideologies and social structure. Focusing on Achilles Tatius's Leucippe and Clitophon , Harper argues that it both celebrates the eros of the free and noble lovers, and instantiates the social values of its age. The adventures required by the genre threaten, but never violate, the honor of the maiden Leucippe, whose destiny, the novel makes clear, is to be chastely married to Clitophon. Represented here is the honor of the book's title--for the Romans, sexual immorality consisted of sexual violation of socially inappropriate persons, such as the wives of peers or same-sex partners of the same age and social status. For aristocratic men, sexual excess with slaves or prostitutes was unwise, but not immoral. Harper takes the novels to be accepting and even celebrating sexual desire, but this desire is only respectably resolved in honorable marriage. While the gloomy Stoics (11) might argue otherwise, sexual desire was embraced by Roman culture, as long as it was appropriately embedded in the social structure.Harper sees the seeds of change in two significant elements of the rising Christian ideology. Focusing primarily on Clement of Alexandria, he identifies the first as the rejection of desire. The purpose of sexuality, Harper argues, comes to be procreation, and, for Clement, desire needs to be moderated, and ultimately conquered by the intellect. …

CLASS AND GENDER DYNAMICS OF THE PORNOGRAPHY TRADE IN LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN

ABSTRACTDuring the second half of the nineteenth century, British social purity campaigners framed the pornography trade as a major source of cultural and moral pollution. As in their anti-prostitution efforts, purity campaigners presented the abolition of pornography as an attempt to protect women, children, and impressionable members of the lower classes from sexual immorality. Their rhetoric and policy efforts, however, reveal deeply entrenched fears of middle-class vulnerability to the negative effects of pornographic literature and images. Building on existing obscenity studies scholarship, this article explores the role of class and gender tension in nineteenth-century pornography regulation. In contrast to the majority of work on Victorian pornography, this article focuses on the British lower classes as producers and distributors rather than consumers of pornography. In addition, this article argues for a higher level of female participation in the pornography trade than has been previously recognized. By focusing on the contradictions and biases at the heart of campaigns against pornography, this article explores the ways in which regulation efforts and discourses of obscenity were shaped by the class and gender dynamics of the pornography trade.

Harmful or Benign? Transnational Medical Networks and the Celibacy of Priests

This article investigates the nineteenth‐century debate within transnational medical networks about the physiological effects of celibacy for priests. Many doctors, motivated in part by their animosity towards the Catholic Church, argued that the vow of celibacy was not only futile, but responsible for sexual immorality in the church. However, medical opinion was never uniform, and other doctors rallied to the church, defending the celibate vow as largely benign. Both sides shared a willingness to look abroad for support and inspiration. This article investigates this debate as a transnational phenomenon, as key texts were translated and published across Europe and North America, and as several notorious case‐studies emerged to form the focus of international controversy.

Maternalism and the Mayor: Dottie Do-Good’s War on Sin in Postwar Portland

Dorothy McCullough Lee, the first female mayor of Portland, Oregon, was elected to office in the midst of a post-World War II crime panic. Her career illuminates a key ideological shift that would later ground the rise of New Right women’s politics. During the Progressive Era, women activists had advocated for social maternalism, which asserted that the state must care for its most vulnerable citizens materially as well as morally. In the postwar era, republican women would increasingly shift toward a new moral maternalism. Moral maternalism abandoned social welfare issues and focused instead on protecting America’s most vulnerable citizens—women and children—from unsavory moral influences like communism and sexual immorality.

Discourse analysis of sex stories in a pornographic site in Iran

Internet pornography As A controversial issue and important problem on Different communities particularly on the value-based community and Muslim countries were introduced. And behavioral science experts with extensive research in this field are looking for emotional - social and psychological impact of this phenomenon and demand to impose legal restrictions on providing pornography product and context. Among these The Erotic stories due to making the condition of same-essence identifying and choice of sexual partners in the reader's mind, by its own discretion create Ability to create deviation and incidence of anomaly among individuals that with its reviewing a scientific understanding of the dominant discourse can be found in it. To conduct this research, critical discourse analysis is used. Discourse analysis is a qualitative method that aims to fill the gap between micro and macro analysis of social phenomena. Hence analysis and critical readout of 75 stories with sexual content as a random sample from a pornographic website has been explained in two levels. Based on Findings of this study what can be seen in the discussion on this story is a purposeful narrative, professional expertise that Start From an obscene and provocative space and addict readers to itself. In these stories, Master narrative do not impinge of the Design Principles of sites operator for stories feature and all are looking to convert human subjects to non-human objects that are Discharged from any human feelings And have no purpose other than sex. What on This relationship can be seen are the narrators and their sexual partner’s unusual sexual immorality and the visualization of people who like professional porn movies stars act.

The Influence of Social Media on the Prevalence of Sexual Harassment among Teenagers: A Case Study of Secondary Schools in Kandara Sub-County, Kenya

Social media use by teenagers in secondary schools is on the increase with more and more students accessing face book, twitter, You-tube, email and other social sites. Whereas students use such social networking positively, the amount of time spent on the sites that consume academic time has resulted to alarming poor performance which research has associated with lack of adequate revision time, inadequate sleep amounting to poor concentration, and truancy in schools. Sexual harassment is on the increase, defiant sexual behaviors which include: lesbianism, homosexuality, multiple sexual partners and rapes amongst the students are on the increase due to sharing of pornographic images. Research has reported online sex where teenagers engage in sex with their partners on the screens through fantasy. Descriptive case study design was used to investigate from the respondents how their social media use has led to sexual harassment and consequently poor grades. This lowers a country’s production due to under skilled workers and unemployment heightening insecurity. The study was to establish how the respondents’ engagement in sexual immorality had been modeled by social media by their being primary or secondary consumers of the various sites. Simple random sampling was used in selection of 13 schools and a sample size of 320 respondents based on the school population. Social Norms Theory was used as the theoretical framework to explain the variables used in the research. Recommendations to parents, teachers and the Ministry of Education were provided as a call to all to reinforce useful utilization of social media by the teenagers and appropriate measures to curb sexual harassment in schools.

Ethical Awareness and Issues Among Secondary Schools in Maguindanao Division Philippines

The study tried to investigate the ethical awareness and issues among secondary school educators and students in Maguindanao Division of the Department of Education in the Philippines. Findings revealed low agreement of respondents to moral issues such as sexual immorality, environmental destruction, war and violence, human rights violations, materialism/consumerism, drug addiction/alcoholism, vandalism and gambling. However, graft and corruption is a serious moral problem in the Philippines according to them. Educators strongly agreed to more items than the students indicating a higher level of awareness on ethical issues. The solution to moral problems indicated by the educators as their top three priorities are: spiritual renewal led by church or Ulama, moral recovery program of the government, and making people realize their rights and duties through education. For the students, the top three solutions should be: education, moral recovery program of the government and school programs. Preventive measure for moral problems according to the educators are: religious education program, program against drug addiction/alcoholism, sports/recreation program, environmental care, advocacy against graft and corruption, and values education. For the students, the preventive measures includes: program on drug addiction and alcoholism, religious education, values education, environmental care, and peace education.

Understanding the causes and management of problem behaviour in Zimbabwean schools: teacher perceptions

Problem behaviour continues to present a challenge for school-teachers worldwide. Since school-teachers around the globe have different conceptualisations of what constitutes problem behaviour, the purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of Zimbabwean school-teachers about their perceived causes of problem behaviour among students in school, and how they usually deal with the problem behaviours. A Problem Behaviour Survey developed specifically for this study was administered to a convenience sample of 62 teachers enrolled in a part-time postgraduate diploma at a local university in Zimbabwe. Participants identified bullying, fighting, violence, fighting, truancy, drug/alcohol abuse and sexual immorality as the most prevalent problem behaviours in their schools. Results of this study also demonstrated that few teachers thought that physical punishment was an effective way to manage problem behaviour and that school-teachers should be allowed to use it. These findings were important in helping school-teachers and administrators to develop a better understanding of problem behaviour in their schools as a pre-requisite to the development of more effective behaviour management practices.

The beliefs of African university men and women on HIV/AIDS being Gods indignation

The purpose of this study was to investigate the tenet that HIV/AIDS is God’s indignation for those who engage in sexual intercourse outside the institution of marriage. Moreover, this study aimed at identifying gender differences that HIV/AIDS is God’s indignation against sexual immorality. Descriptive statistics comprising frequency, percentage, chi-square and probability was used for data analysis. The sample comprised a diverse sample of 366 men and women university students drawn from Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania. Statistically, majority of the participants did not subscribe to the tenet that HIV/AIDS is God’s indignation directed at those who engage in sexual behaviour outside of holy matrimony. In the Kenyan sample, more women than men respondents rejected the notion that HIV/AIDS was God’s indignation against sin. As for both the South African and Tanzanian samples, there were more men than women rejecting that God uses HIV/AIDS to inflict punishment on sinners. It was concluded that such tenet must be rejected and combated through public education. Key words: HIV/AIDS, transmission, God’s indignation, gender difference, impact of belief, university students, misconception.

Sexual health: the Cinderella of reproductive health services

Twenty-five years ago, articles in this Journal highlighted the lack of resources allocated for family planning services in Britain and also major concerns regarding policies on induced abortion, sexuality and...

The Profligate Son: Or, A True Story of Family Conflict, Fashionable Vice and Financial Ruin in Regency Britain by Nicola Phillips (review)

The narrative of “the rake’s progress” was all too familiar to Georgian Britons. Today, we would probably think of William Hogarth’s famous series of eight images, which depict Tom Rakewell’s “progress” from newfound wealth to poverty and insanity, via sexual immorality, social pretension, drink, gaming, debt, and criminality. At the time, this was a stock cautionary tale, which was reiterated in sermons, novels, and advice literature. It was the product of a society where social standing was, for the first time, up for grabs to those who could present themselves in a certain way and negotiate the complex rules of polite society—but where, at the same time, reputation was fragile and fortunes could quickly be dashed. The rake’s progress therefore functioned as a warning, steering Georgians away from vice and keeping them on the straight path to the good life. If ever there was a real-life embodiment of the rake’s progress, it would appear to be William Jackson. He is the subject of Nicola Phillips’s superb new book, which takes the form of a biography but also uses the life of Jackson—and also those around him—to explore various aspects of late-Georgian social, criminal, imperial, and sexual history. William was the son of a colonial administrator who had worked for the East India Company in Madras. His family were therefore new money, and his father combined the stern morality of the middle classes with a burning ambition to become accepted by the establishment. (As Phillips points out, Jackson senior’s high opinion of himself is ironically in stark contrast to his reputation in Indian historiography, where he is demonized as “an archetypical arrogant British official” [276]). As is often the way with the newly wealthy, his plans for respectability focused on his son. William, however, was unpromising material for such a scheme, and The Profligate Son tells the story of the terrible consequences that it would have for father and son alike. Without wishing to spoil Phillips’s story, it is useful briefly to relate Jackson’s life story, as he was not a well-known figure. William Collins Burke Jackson was born in India in 1791. He was a slight boy with a weak constitution, which would be severely tested by some of the predicaments in which he was to find himself. On the family’s return to England, his father set about trying to place William in a school, with a view to easing his entry into elite society but also where he would receive instruction in suitable moral discipline. Brief spells followed at a succession of establishments, where he rebelled against his tutors, acquired enemies and unsuitable friends, and began a lifetime’s habit of running up debts. Where school failed, his father hoped that a commission in the army might succeed, but the outcome was similar: instead of discipline and responsibility, Jackson took full advantage of the army’s opportunities for fashionable high living, and of the further credit that he could acquire on the strength of his uniform. Phillips describes how Jackson’s schooling and military career ironically exposed him to an aristocratic lifestyle and morality that was in direct opposition to the bourgeois values of his father. Eventually, Jackson’s debts caught up with him and he served spells in debtors’ prisons. Phillips offers a vivid account of life in these quintessentially Georgian institutions, where those with money could buy a higher standard of living: even at his lowest ebb, Jackson refused to relinquish his pretensions to gentility. Of course, his financial situation could always have been solved at a stroke by the intercession of his wealthy father, but Jackson senior was adamant that William was the author of his own misfortune and should learn his lesson. This did not happen, however, and he resorted to fraud and forgery as his situation became more desperate. Remarkably, his father even refused him assistance when he was up for a potentially capital charge at the assizes. When he was sentenced to transportation—which was in effect a civil death, as the prisoner was removed both legally and physically from society— his father could wash his hands...

O07.3 A Psychological Experiment to Examine the Global Impact of Stigma on Individuals Diagnosed with Type 1 Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV-1)

BackgroundHSV-1 causes at least 50% of primary genital herpes infections in Europe, Canada, Australia and the USA. In the UK, rates may be even higher, as the level 3 STI...

Physical and/or Spiritual Exclusion? Ecclesial Discipline in 1 Corinthians 5

When Paul asks for the incestuous man at Corinth to be handed over to Satan is he calling for mere physical expulsion from the community or is he calling for something more? We argue in this paper that the nature of the man's offense—i.e., an ostentatious display of sexual immorality that also receives theological justification from the perpetrator—demanded a harsher sentence beyond mere physical exclusion. Drawing on the book of Job, we show that the disciplinary practice Paul advocates in 1 Corinthians 5 is a spiritual practice that aims to remove the spiritual protection enjoyed by the incestuous man while he remained in the body of Christ, thereby exposing him to Satan's attacks. Paul's hope was that the affliction suffered by the man at the hands of Satan as a result of this exposure would lead to his repentance and ultimate salvation.

Toward the “Higher Type of Womanhood”: The Gendered Contours of Garveyism and the Making of Redemptive Geographies in Costa Rica, 1922–1941

Toward the “Higher Type of Womanhood”The Gendered Contours of Garveyism and the Making of Redemptive Geographies in Costa Rica, 1922–1941 Asia Leeds (bio) In her 1922 “Message for the Negro Women of the World” that appeared in Marcus Garvey’s Negro World newspaper, the Lady President of the Philadelphia Division of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)1 declared, “[T]he redemption of Africa depends on the motherhood of black women.”2Redemption, a term central to and often invoked in UNIA rhetoric, functioned as a double critique to black powerlessness in the early twentieth century. For Garveyites, the liberation of both continental Africans from European colonization and persons of African descent in the Americas from disenfranchisement, marginalization, and dehumanization were joint and entangled struggles highly dependent on a particular type of black womanhood. From Harlem to Cuba to Costa Rica, Garveyites located women’s race work both inside and outside of the home. While seemingly transgressing the Victorian model of womanhood and the cult of domesticity, the political philosophy of Garveyism held women’s bodies and behavior under heavy surveillance, and in many ways affirmed dominant framings of black women’s inherent sexual immorality. Garveyite men and women instructed young women to immerse themselves in intellectual pursuits and activities that derailed bodily and sexual deviance, to behave respectably, especially in public spaces, and to mother the race through the biological and cultural reproduction of successful black offspring. As another woman contributor to the Negro World remarked, “To [the black woman] has come the privilege of carving the destiny of a race handicapped and persecuted for generations [and] it is for her to bless or curse the future generations by her conduct.”3 [End Page 1] By examining the ways that West Indians in the Atlantic coastal region of Limón, Costa Rica, engaged with and contributed to the transnational mediascape4 shaped in the circulation of Garveyite newspapers, this essay interrogates the making of redemptive womanhood in both local and transnational context. I use the term West Indians to refer to English-speaking immigrants of African decent from the British West Indies, primarily Jamaica, and their offspring. In the late nineteenth century, West Indians migrated to varying locations along the Atlantic coast of Central America in response to the labor demand created by railroad and port construction projects. By the turn of the twentieth century, the development of the United Fruit Company (UFCO) and its multinational banana plantation export system in countries such as Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Cuba, and Costa Rica stimulated even more West Indian movement and relocation in the region. By 1910, the banana business boomed and around twenty thousand West Indians had made their way to Costa Rica. By the late 1920s, however, the population declined as the banana business suffered in the midst of plant disease and economic depression. Those West Indians who stayed in Costa Rica after the collapse of the banana industry desired permanence, but would not obtain citizenship rights until 1949.5 This research, therefore, chronicles a period in flux; when West Indians no longer self-identified fully as subjects of the British crown yet were not legally Costa Rican citizens. Conditions in Costa Rica made the Garveyite call for unification an appealing one. The UNIA language of racial solidarity and gendered redemption made sense in a hostile atmosphere in which the purported innate immorality of blacks marked all people of African descent as unfit for Costa Rican citizenship. Since West Indians were the face of U.S. imperialism in the banana enclave and the most visible reminders of the dominance of United Fruit, both anti-imperialism and racism underpinned Costa Rican nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s.6 Based on a narrative of history that heralds the Spanish ancestry of Costa Ricans, the idea that white purity and homogeneity existed and should be protected in the nation justified the denial of West Indian citizenship and the enactment of laws of racial segregation.7 Discourses of black savagery and sexual immorality held black women and mothers culpable for the deviance of the race, and this was the trend in Costa Rica and the Americas at...