Women's S#xual hygiene in Europe in the 1800s

Women's bodies were increasingly medicalized and scrutinized by the medical establishment in the 18th and 19th centuries. Doctors advised women to maintain cleanliness and purity through hygienic practices like bathing and avoiding strong scents.

There was a growing emphasis on "hygiene" as the new fashionable means of achieving health and beauty, replacing the complex grooming rituals of the aristocracy. Doctors encouraged women to bathe more frequently and use water instead of oils. Public baths became more common, though private bathtubs remained infrequent.

However, this medicalization of women's bodies was not a one-sided story of oppression. Women actively shaped the definition of medical bodies and discredited certain theories, though male doctors still carved out a professional niche for themselves.

More broadly, Victorian society had very strict sexual double standards. Women were expected to be sexually chaste and monogamous, while men's extramarital affairs were more socially acceptable. Women who engaged in premarital or extramarital sex were seen as "ruined" or "fallen". This was reinforced through literature, art, and laws that punished women for sexual transgressions.

Sex work was heavily

Women's S#xual hygiene in Europe in the 1800s During World War ll, the Nazi regime implemented policies that legalized and organized prostitution in military brothels as a means to control soldiers' sexual behavior and prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STDS).

 This territorial conquest policy had harrowing consequences for the Women coerced into sex work. This note focuses on the aspects of sexual iolence perpetrated in the name of war crimes and the resentnment and persecution faced by prostitutes in Nazi Germany in the aftermath of World War I. In the occupied territories, women were forced into sexual slavery to wr ve in military brothels, which were labeled as "treatment centers." 

The Nazi regime considered these women racially inferior, exploiting them to further Nazi ideological goals. A prisoner-of-war manual issued by the OKW in 1940 explicitly condoned rape and sexual violence against civilian women in the Occupied territories. The exploitation of these women constitutes a War crime, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Article 7 of the Rome Statute, on Crimes Against Humanity, outlines that sexual enslavement isa punishable offense and that the use of civilian vvumen for sexual purpOses is encompassed within its definition.

The Nazi actions clearly violate modern international law and standards. The post-war period in Germany brought about intense scrutiny and silencing mechanisms concerning sexual violence and the role of Nazi brothels. Women forced into sexual labor and rape survivors faced lingering shame, stigma, and psychological suffering.

Additionally, women who worked in these brothels were denied reparations for the traumatic experiences they endured and were mired in stigma and embarrassment. Prostitutes in Nazi Germany were seen by society not as victinms but as collaborators who deserved punishment. Even though they were compelled into this work, they faced severe legal repercussions and exclusion from social safety nets after the war.

For instance, the 1953 German Law on Prostitution criminalized those who engaged in sex work, aiming to reduce the spread of STDS while simultaneously ignoring the broader systemic issues that initially enforced such sexual exploitation.

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