“He decided that anything to do with sex or reproduction was obscene,” Wagner said. As a result, hundreds of people were arrested and imprisoned under the Comstock Act for distributing or possessing contraception, or publishing information about it. She took her own life shortly before her sentencing, which she believed would be life imprisonment. The New York Post ran with the story anyway — and the myth has been used to vilify and pigeonhole feminists ever since, Wagner said. She’ll be in conversation with Gloria Steinem, the Mohawk Bear clan mother Louise Herne and the New York Times gender editor Jessica Bennett in New York on International Women’s Day, March 8.

Source: New York Times March 01, 2019 15:00 UTC