Sex in the Heartland. (Reviews).

Sex in the Heartland. By Beth Bailey (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. vii 265 pp. $27.00).

Beth Bailey provides a close examination of the emergence and impact of the sexual revolution in the heartland of America. Rather than exploring the East or West coasts, Bailey turns instead to the university-dominated town of Lawrence, Kansas to examine the on-the-ground dynamics of sexual and social change. While the patterns she finds might not be as radical as those that developed in the centers of the feminist and gay liberation movements, her findings might ultimately prove more important for considering the impact of the sexual revolution across American society. If there was a sexual revolution, and Bailey argues that there was, then assessing the process of change and the impact of a revolution of cultural norms in places such as Kansas remains necessary to understanding what that revolution meant for the majority of Americans.

In some ways, Bailey's book seems to document a story of growing sexual opportunities, particularly given the shift from dorm curfew policies and panty raids to coed dorms and widely-available birth control. However, as Bailey makes clear, the linear narrative is both true and untrue; while opportunities for sexual experimentation increased, this development took place within larger public arguments that presented no single over-riding pattern. For example, models for interpreting male/male desire based consecutively on morality, psychiatry, Kinsey Report-inspired pragmatism, and gay rights allowed for the emergence of gay sexuality as a legitimate form of desire. However, the shift in models created as many problems as it solved. The shift to a psychiatric model, for example, created a coercive mental health regime that stigmatized and penalized, rather than treated. Kinsey-inspired pragmatism allowed for a wider variation in sexual practice but did little to transform public space or rhetoric. Even the gay rights movement condoned certain forms of desire and condemned others. Bailey documents similar tensions around emergence of the Pill as a system of birth control. The struggles between feminists who were concerned with women's health and a local doctor who was concerned with population growth make it clear that while opportunities increased for women to control their own fertility, this shift served purposes unrelated to sexual liberation. Bailey's concern with the many positions, arguments, and individuals involved in changing sexual norms nuance any simple linear process that posit a shift from repression to liberation. Her treatment of these complicated issues makes fascinating reading.

Bailey sets up the emergence of the sexual revolution with discussions of town and gown politics before World War II, the growth of the University during the war, and the establishment of gender and sexual norms in the post-war years. She then explores the sexual revolution in a series of chapters on the 1960s and 1970s that look at sexual rhetoric in student protests, the emergence of a gay liberation movement in Lawrence, and the rise of feminism in the local context. Finally, Bailey assesses student challenges to sexual and gendered inequality through a discussion of co-educational student housing. While co-ed dorms sound like a dated issue with limited relevance to current concerns about sexuality, Bailey uses the issue to demonstrate the emergence of a commonplace language and ethos of sexual change. Its limits as a continuing issue demonstrates the depth to which these concerns have reached a resolution.

Bailey does a particularly good job of weaving together general trends and specific examples. Her sources include personal letters from civic leaders and college administrators, policies and cases from various university deans, local and national newspapers, journals geared for colleges, Health Department Records, social services records, and interviews. From this diverse collection of sources, Bailey creates order by focusing on cases of high visibility for the KU population. In the process, she explores the motivations of a various individuals, the ways they chose to proceed, and the impact on Lawrence. Doctors, school administrators, community leaders, students, teachers, local crackpots, and drifters changed patterns of sexual behavior even as these individuals interacted with the ideas emerging from activists and the mass media. Thus, while we're still in Kansas, Kansas becomes a staging ground for assessing larger trends. As she puts it, "these writings tell us less about Lawrence, less about 'authentic ' or autochthonous local movements, than about the ways in which ideas circulated through American communities." (page 177.)

While the relationship between the local and the national provides the backbone for Bailey's work, the impact of such a method comes from the individuals caught in these issues in a variety of ways. Bailey allows the people she writes about to exhibit all of their complexities. For example, readers can get a sense of Marge Stockton, a civic leader who provided servicemen with wholesome entertainment during the war. While Stockton shows herself as bordering on bigotry, jealous of her turf; and full of noblesse oblige, she also articulates real concerns for the future of her community in ways that sound remarkably enduring. Bailey allows Stockton to speak for herself and treats her so well that the reader can assess her as an individual even while recognizing the ways that Stockton stamped her personality on the sexual mores of Lawrence. Bailey shows this level of even-handedness throughout her book. By providing this degree of detail throughout her account, Bailey allows readers to see that the individuals str uggled with their beliefs even as they contributed to emerging policies.

What Bailey does in Sex in The Heartland, she does very well. However, the history of sexuality often slides into the history of sexual policing and Bailey's work edges toward this position as well. The book does not explore what type of sexual acts individuals engaged in and what they made of the acts they did. In part, this problem comes from the dearth of good sources describing sexual acts and sexual meanings and Bailey cannot be held accountable for this gap. Still, these nuts and bolts issues of intercourse haunt the work. The story of social control--told so well and from so many different angles--remains chimerical because ultimately the issue under such intense pressure is almost entirely absent. The reader is left with the sense that while sex happened in Kansas, sex left lasting legacy in terms of policy rather than as practice. Bailey's strengths as a researcher and writer more than compensate for this weakness, however. Given the importance of the shifts Bailey documents and the sophistication wi th which Bailey treats them, this work will be useful to scholars and students in the areas of sexuality, gender, twentieth-century America, social policy, and social protest.