Petticoats and White Feathers: Gender Conformity, Race, the Progressive Peace Movement, and the Debate over War, 1895-1919

Kuhlman explores the reasons so many antiwar progressive reformers ended up forming the most vocal faction favoring U.S. intervention in World War I. U.S. intervention in World War I occurred in an historical context of widespread anxiety about masculine identity produced by the suffrage movement. Kuhlman explores the reasons so many progressive lawmakers and pacifists ended up forming the most vocal faction in favor of war. Concepts of femininity and masculinity and their relations to militarism, democracy, and citizenship were central to creating support for war. Initially opposed to military intervention, most male progressive pacifists came to view war as an opportunity to reinvigorate the nation's sagging manhood and nationhood. Some suffragists supported war because they saw war relief work as a way to prove themselves manly enough to withstand the rigors of citizenship during war, and therefore worthy of the vote.