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Full-Text Articles in Women's History
'A Deadly Menace To All Young Womankind': Seduction And Protective Legislation In America, 1850-1923, Elissa Michelle Isenberg
'A Deadly Menace To All Young Womankind': Seduction And Protective Legislation In America, 1850-1923, Elissa Michelle Isenberg
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"A Deadly Menace to All Young Womankind": Seduction and Protective Legislation in America, 1850-1923 looks at sexual harassment before it was an actionable offense. Although female domestic servants have endured unwanted sexual attention for most of American history, the entry of women into wage labor in factories and offices during the late nineteenth century dramatically increased the number of girls and women that were subjected to what we today call harassment. Careful examination of American newspaper archives, court records, and reformers' personal papers have uncovered cases of unsolicited sexual advances toward women, and have demonstrated that sexual harassment was considered …