Word, The.
“Plain English”:
Angela Heywood, Sexual Nomenclature, and The Word
[Angela Fiducia Tilton Heywood]. Heywood, Ezra & Benjamin Tucker (eds). The Word. A Monthly Journal of Reform. Vol. 1, no. 2 – vol. 5, no. 12; vol. 7, no. 6 – vol. 20, no. 9 (June 1872 – April 1877; October 1878 – March 1893). 194 (of 214) issues.
183 vols.; Folio; 11 vols.; 4to.; each number bifolium, 4 pp.; light wear. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
A nearly complete run of The Word, one of the most radical journals devoted to women’s rights published in the 19th century, incorporating at its center the writings of one of the most outspoken and underrepresented figures in American feminism, Angela Fiducia Tilton Heywood. One of the first women to advocate for compensation to women for domestic work, Heywood was also one of the foremost proponents of Individualist Feminism and of the Free Love movement, which stringently opposed the interference of the State into matters of marriage and sexuality, and which sought to initiate a public discourse on sexuality and sexual physiology. Largely at Heywood’s insistence, The Word adopted a “plain-language” policy which insisted on calling sexual organs by their proper name rather than by euphemism, and in her articles Heywood maintained this policy unapologetically. In “The Woman’s View of It – No. 3,” she writes, “Why blush or be shamefaced in Stirpiculture more than in Agriculture, Horticulture, Floriculture or amid iron-clad, steel bright golden-pure wonders of Mechanics? Are not the Penis & Womb as native, handsome & worthy in use as pivot & socket, pistil & stamen, pollen & ovule?” (March 1883). Far from seeking merely to ruffle the feathers of prudish moralists, Heywood believed that a candid discourse on sexuality was of the utmost consequence to the rights of women:
Not the voting question merely but the Sex Question, calls for discovery and Conversation; in dark, hidden ways men legislate on the use & destiny of women’s bodies,– when we may or may not conceive; whether we shall have syringes to take an injection, enema, or for other cleansing purposes, & Citizens are imprisoned for daring to ask the reason why! Not I merely, but women everywhere, by dumb suffering if not in worded protest, resent rude perversion of Natural Law in Physiological Morals & Associative Destiny. (ibid)
Heywood constantly defended her position against charges of obscenity, as for example in an article titled “Personal Health – Social Propriety”:
It is senseless frivolity to be afraid of Facts. Are the brain and tongue more worthy factors of man’s body-life? His penis, its doings and not-doings, its use and responsibility, as much need to be felt, thought, talked, written and printed about as his eye, face or hand, and must be so dealt with in the future. If the words harlot and prostitute, syphilis, clap or the names of other diseases do not trouble us in literature, why cringe and blush at penis? ... This rude cry of “obscenity” bespeaks latent disease, mental syphilis. (September 1887)
Again addressing the issue of indecency, Heywood writes, in “Sex Nomenclature – Plain English”:
Indigent sentiment concerning woman’s generative nature plucks out the very eye-sight of Knowledge, by falsifying words; secrecy rather than sacredness is o’er prevailing habit; shamefaced pretense which dares not put the sex organs in marble or on canvass, masquerades as would be culture and good sense. The question is whether girls and boys of the street, who speak strait to the fact, as sun-light shineth, are truer and purer than “ladies” in parlors who call man’s penis his “teapot,” his “thing.” (April 1887)
Heywood was the object of intense backlash for her “plain language” articles. An excerpt from a letter by one Laura C. Eldridge of Boston, published in The Word for September of 1892, is typical of the kind of excoriation Heywood regularly received:
Angela, Angeline – or whatever your name
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