Industrial capitalism erased female wantonness into hygienic respectability

Evidence

This escape, this sadomasochism in which woman persists against both objects and self, is often precisely sexual. “The kind of housecleaning that calls for bodily gymnastics amounts to a bordello for women,” says Violette Leduc. It is striking that the taste for cleanliness is of utmost importance in Holland where women are cold, and in puritanical civilizations that juxtapose the joys of the flesh with an ideal of order and purity. If the Mediterranean Midi lives in joyous filth, it is not only because water is scarce there: love of the flesh and its animality is conducive to tolerating human odor, squalor, and even vermin. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1239 (#expands, via linked claim)

For example, the concept of the ‘purity’ of women is one of the invariables of popular culture. In the earlier phase this concept is treated in terms of an inner conflict between concupiscence and the internalized Christian ideal of chastity, whereas in today’s popular culture it is dogmatically posited as a value per se. Again, even the rudiments of this pattern are visible in productions such as Pamela. There, however, it seems a by-product; whereas in today’s popular culture the idea that only the ‘nice girl’ gets married and that she must get married at any price has come to be accepted before Richardson’s conflicts even start. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 220 (#expands, via linked claim)

These beliefs have been vigorously perpetuated right up to today. In 1878, a member of the British Medical Association wrote in the British Medical Journal: “It is an indisputable fact that meat goes bad when touched by menstruating women.” He said that he personally knew of two cases of hams spoiling in such circumstances. In the refineries of the North at the beginning of this century, women were prohibited by law from going into the factory when they were afflicted by what the Anglo-Saxons call the “curse” because the sugar turned black. And in Saigon, women are not employed in opium factories: because of their periods, the opium goes bad and becomes bitter. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 336 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Menstrual contamination beliefs survived into modern industrial practice and law — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 336; Female purity shifted from inner moral conflict to a dogmatic value per se — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 220; Culturally puritanical societies develop obsessive cleanliness as displaced sexuality — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1239 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Culturally puritanical societies develop obsessive cleanliness as displaced sexuality #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1239
• Female purity shifted from inner moral conflict to a dogmatic value per se #expands (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 220
• Menstrual contamination beliefs survived into modern industrial practice and law #corroborates (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 336