'Paleontological Institute at The University of Kansas'
Abstract
In 1917, the state of Kansas passed a state quarantine law, Chapter 205, which allowed authorities to detain people with venereal disease. The law was enforced along lines of gender, race, and class, with poor women being imprisoned at the Women’s Industrial Farm (WIF) in Lansing, Kansas throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The WIF thus served as an institution of social control, imprisoning women whose sexual behaviors violated social norms. This research examines three groups of women’s involvement with this institution: the elite activist women who lobbied to create the Farm, the professional women who ran the institution, and the inmates detained under Chapter 205. By comparing these groups of women’s relationship to the Farm, this research explores the intersection of class, sexuality, gender, race, and respectability in their respective social positions. Contributing to the literature on the intersection of class and sexuality, this research highlights the importance of respectability for all three groups of women and the barriers between each group of women and a respectable status. Social inequalities and privileges informed how respectability functioned at the Farm, allowing the activist and professional women to construct themselves as being respectable through their involvement with the WIF at the same time that they constructed the imprisoned women as being disreputable. These different groups of women’s involvement with the Farm deepened social boundaries between groups along existing social hierarchies. This attention to the role of respectability in constructing boundaries is key to understanding inequality and a reminder of the larger cultural work that is accomplished through institutions of social control and discussions of the criminality of groups of people
