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. 2022 Oct;58(4):459-466.
doi: 10.1002/jhbs.22224. Epub 2022 Sep 2.

Out of the closet? Reconstructing the personal life of pioneering sex researcher Katharine Bement Davis

Anya Jabour  1
Affiliations

Out of the closet? Reconstructing the personal life of pioneering sex researcher Katharine Bement Davis

Anya Jabour. J Hist Behav Sci. 2022 Oct.

Abstract

Katharine B. Davis was an important progressive-era figure, a pioneering professional, an innovative penologist, and an iconoclastic sexologist. Although scholars have long been aware of Davis's tolerant attitude toward same-sex relationships at the New York State Female Reformatory at Bedford Hills, where she was Superintendent from 1901 to 1913, and her open discussion of same-sex attraction in her study of "normal" women's sexuality, published in 1929, little has been known about Davis's personal life. Thus, it was a feminist biographer's dream come true to gain access to what Davis called her "autobiographical biography," the never-finished, never-published, story of her life. Or so I thought. As it turns out, my quest to understand Davis's personal life and how it informed her professional trajectory has been a bit more complicated.

Keywords: Katharine Bement Davis; New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills; biography; homosexuality; lesbianism; prostitution; same-sex relationships; sex work; sexology; sexuality.

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References

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