More lurid than lucid: The spiritualist invention of the world Sexism

Abstract

Nineteenth-century American spiritualists coined the word sexism long before its modern incarnation in order to refer to a complex of ideas about human sexuality and reproduction that were consonant with the general advancement of women's rights. Among these ideas was the belief that spirit and mind were ascendant over matter and could act directly on it. In their view, a woman's sensitive spiritual nature gave her the power to join spirit and matter. She could provide a way for exalted spirits to enter the world through her, in the mental character and even the physical form of her offspring, by focusing her own and others' spirits into the embryo growing within her, as if she were making a photograph. The goal of enhancing this ability would justify changing law and custom to ensure women's autonomy and freedom, especially to protect their decisions about sexual relations in order to regulate favorable and unfavorable impressions on the embryo. Emphasizing the embryo's sensitivity to spiritual impressions, however, also led some progressives to the conclusion that women's autonomy should be restricted. Women had to be kept away from even immaterial influences that would adversely affect them during pregnancy. © 2002 The American Academy of Religion.