Swearing Allegiance: Street Language, U.S. War Propaganda, and the Declining Status of Women in Northeastern Nightlife, 1900-1920

Abstract

This article juxtaposes the strikingly different pre-World War I and wartime descriptions of sexually active women. It does not, however, primarily examine the language of reform. The wartime characterization of prostitutes as vipers, vultures, and disease-spreading votaries was a sharp shift from the white slaves, innocent country girls, and prodigal daughters of the Progressive-era white slavery scare, but it also corresponded with a marked difference in the way men talked about women when the two sexes met in the very vice resorts that reformers condemned. The influence of wartime programs and propaganda went well beyond the realm of official discourse and influenced, to the detriment of working-class women’s status, the street vernacular that men and women used in saloons, dance halls, nightclubs, and other ambiguously reputable entertainment establishments.  More women could participate in the new commercial popular culture without irrevocably damaging their individual reputations, but the virulence of the wartime campaigns against sexually active women encouraged an extreme misogyny that reduced aggressive sporting women to exploited charity girls.