Culture, Difference, and Sexual Progress in fin-de-siècle Europe: Cultural Othering and the German League for the Protection of Mothers and Sexual Reform, 1905-1914

This article examines how and why early twentieth century German sex reformers discursively mobilized appeals to cultural difference and cultural Others. It focuses on texts produced by the German League for the Protection of Mothers and Sexual Reform in the years before the First World War. The League offers an intriguing case through which to examine how practices of cultural Othering shaped early twentieth century “progressive” sexual politics, namely those that sought greater sexual freedom and self-determination—goals that many still hold as desirable and “progressive” today. Through its discursive analysis of the varied, at times seemingly contradictory, deployments of cultural difference in texts produced by League members, this article shows that sex reformers’ Othering practices were complex and reveal the ambivalences inherent in their understandings of sexuality at the turn of the century. By situating the League’s discursive politics within the broader context of German imperialism and geopolitics, this article aims to contribute to the ongoing effort to “transnationalize” the history of sexuality, and specifically to render the history of European sexuality “less self-referential,” to use Ann Laura Stoler’s phrase. Moreover, by focusing on the discursive practices of a particular sex reform organization, this article follows Caren Kaplan and Inderpal Grewal’s insight that “the complex terrain of sexual politics…is at once national, regional, local, even ‘cross cultural’ and hybrid.”