World War II U.S. Military Sex Education
The outbreaks of sexually transmitted infections in World War II brought interest in sex education to the public and the government.
This drop in numbers was partly because of the Army's effort to raise awareness about the dangers faced by servicemen through poor sexual hygiene, and also because of the important developments in medicine.
[dead link] [1] Soldiers and sailors were taught to either abstain from sex or commit to a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who had tested negative for venereal disease.
[1] To raise awareness about practicing safe sex amongst its recruits, the U.S. Government produced a series of posters which were displayed in Army barracks, hospitals, and railway stations.
Red-light districts were shut down, and American cities sought new laws which would criminalize prostitution to protect young men from contracting a venereal infection.
The Army and Navy wanted to make a dramatic statement to scare lower ranking personnel by saying: "Between people who aren't married they often lead to shame, sorrow and diseases.
Many medical officers taught their personnel that a wet dream is normal for men and that they needed to take extra precautions against doctors that may try to mislead them into buying their fake cures.
The painless syphilis sore that the soldier or sailor would get after they were first infected can be confused for an ingrown hair, zipper cut, or other seemingly harmless bump.
[6] During the war, medics were generally supplied with prophylactic kits in bulk, designed to allow a man to perform treatment on himself if he feared he had sex with an infected woman.
[2] The U.S. Military highly encouraged the men to use condoms during sexual intercourse, concerned that servicemen would bring home diseases and infect their wives.
Women serving in the Armed Forces, however, were absent from venereal disease poster artwork during the World War II era.
[7] The first American Forces stationed in Northern Ireland (USANIF) and in the British Isles (USAFBI) received special attention from the Medical Department.
The units were directed, in cooperation with local authorities, to establish the first off-base Prophylactic Stations and trace the contacts of servicemen who became infected.
spread among the troops, and even with rapid and effective treatment, including the use of sulfa drugs and penicillin, the cost to the Army was heavy due to lost time from duty, diversion of medical resources, and political and social tensions between American Forces and their British hosts.
[citation needed] In 1940, the military, the Public Health Service, and the American Social Hygiene Association, a private organization, agreed to cooperate in creating a plan "to defend the armed and industrial forces from venereal disease".
[4] The May Act, which was passed in 1941, enables the Justice department to override local authorities and directly police areas that presented a threat to the safety of either military or industrial workers.
[4] The Comstock laws effectively made any form of contraception illegal in the United States, punishable as a misdemeanor with a six-month minimum prison sentence.
This gave the Army, Navy, Public Health Service, and ASHA developed and implemented aggressive measures to track the spread of venereal disease, to encourage the infected to seek medical care, to provide treatment to those who were infected, to repress prostitution, and finally, to promote sex education to arrest the further spread of disease.
Because of women's marginal status in the military before World War II, neither the Army nor the Navy had developed policies or procedures concerning lesbian enrollment in the armed services[11] (p. 28).
At the onset of the war, psychiatrists and military officers reflected this history of invisibility and issued no policies or procedures for screening out lesbians[11] (p. 28).
The pressure to meet unfilled personnel quotas was also a significant force in keeping recruiting officers and examiners from prying into the sexual lives of women volunteers[11] (p. 29).
The general public expressed fear that, in forming the WAC, the military was trying to create an organized coalition of prostitutes to service male GIs.
The response of Women's Army Corps Director Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby was to challenge this by characterizing female soldiers as chaste and asexual[12] (p. 66).
[14] In the United States, World War II-era venereal disease posters depicting women were created for an overwhelmingly male, military audience.
