Home > Gender and Sexuality

Gender and Sexuality Collections

The Canaday Center began collecting published and manuscript materials documenting the social history of American women in the early 1980s. The published works in this collection focus mainly on the period of 1840-1920, and concern the nature of domestic life and the struggle of women for equality. During this era, women were seen as the repository of American ideals and virtue, and worshipped as the creators and protectors of future generations.

To support and guide women in this endeavor, popular books and magazines of the period covered all aspects of domesticity such as etiquette, beauty, marriage, and health. The Canaday Center’s collection includes hundreds of titles which today provide a glimpse into the lives of women of the period and the cultural values of Victorian America.

Despite this overriding belief in domesticity, society did allow women to be involved in a few pursuits outside of the home. Such activities included social reform movements that strove to improve the lives of the poor, sick, and undereducated. Eventually, these movements led to the movement advocating for women to have the right to vote. The Center’s collections document this as well, and include the records of the Toledo Woman’s Suffrage Association, and rare issues of a Toledo suffragette newspaper The Ballot Box. The latter was edited by Sarah R.L. Williams, one of the members of the Board of Directors of the Toledo University of Arts and Trades.

More recently, the Center has branched out from documenting the lives of women to also document the lives of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in Toledo. Collections in this area include the papers of former University of Toledo professor Jan Waggoner Suter, an early gay activist, whose collection includes documentation of LGBT groups in the 1960s and 1970s when most were still underground. Recently, the Center collected materials from Caesar’s Showbar, an iconic entertainment spot for drag queen performers that closed in 2010 after three decades in downtown Toledo.

Together, the Canaday Center’s collections provide rich documentation of many aspects of gender and sexuality in our society.

Featured collections

"Gender and Sexuality" exhibits

This is an exhibit featuring the Canaday Center's collection on gender and sexuality

 

 

 

Gender and Sexuality


 

Gender and Sexuality:

“Women are taxed without representation; governed without their consent; treated as perpetual minors and their most sacred rights ignored.”

 

Gender and Sexuality


The Ballot Box. Toledo, OH: Vol. 1, No. 10, January 1877

Sarah R. L. Williams was a member of the Toledo Woman’s Suffrage Association and was also on the board of directors of the Toledo University of Arts and Trades. She edited this nationally distributed paper that sought to bring attention to the fact that “women are taxed without representation; governed without their consent; treated as perpetual minors and their most sacred rights ignored.”

The Ballot Box


"Gender and Sexuality" exhibit cabinet, top shelf

Top shelf

Commercialized Prostitution Survey, 1934

Small Manuscripts Collection, MSS-23s. Commercialized Prostitution Survey, 1934

In 1934, the Toledo Sanitation Commission and the mayor’s office hired an anonymous man to investigate the problem of prostitution in Toledo. The survey describes 81 encounters with prostitutes, pimps, and madams in bars, burlesques, and “social” clubs. Because the survey was conducted during the Depression, it exposed the difficulties that some women faced in their efforts to support themselves during a period of economic hardship.

  • Full image
The Ladies' New Medical Guide

Pancoast, S. (Seth), M.D. The Ladies' New Medical Guide: An Instructor, Counsellor and Friend in all the Delicate and Wonderful Matters Peculiar to Women, Fully Explaining the Nature and Mystery of the Reproductive Organs in Both Sexes—Love, Courtship, Marriage, Pregnancy, Labor and Childbirth. Philadelphia: J.E. Potter & Co., 1880

  • Full image
Illustration from The Ladies' New Medical Guide

Illustration from The Ladies' New Medical Guide

One of the early guides for women that dealt with all aspects of marriage and sex. Dr. Pancoast stressed the importance of good health and physical exercise for women so that they would be able to fulfill their roles as wives and mothers. The book included a frank discussion of medical concerns affecting women and detailed anatomical drawings printed in color.

  • Full image
The Question of Rest for Women during Menstruation

Jacobi, Mary Putnam, M.D., The Question of Rest for Women during Menstruation: The Boylston Prize Essay of Harvard University for 1876. New York: Putnam, ca. 1877

Victorian-era medical texts, often written by male physicians, warned that too much activity would harm a woman’s reproductive organs and result in birth defects in children. Dr. Jacobi argued against the traditional recommendation that women be confined during menstruation and advised that they continue to go about their daily lives.

  • Full image
The Yellow Wallpaper

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” New England Magazine, January 1892

Based on her own experiences with the “rest cure,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote about a new mother suffering from depression. Instructed to abandon her intellectual life and avoid stimulating company, she sinks into a still deeper depression invisible to her husband. Alone in the wallpapered nursery of a rented house, she descends into madness.

  • Full image
Equal Rights

Equal Rights: Official Weekly of the National Woman’s Party. Vol. 1, No. 23, July 21, 1923

After women received the right to vote, the National Woman’s Party continued its advocacy in many areas, but especially supported the passage of an equal rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This issue of their newspaper summarized their legislative successes of the previous two years. The Canaday Center preserves a nearly complete run of Equal Rights, from 1923 to 1954.

  • Full image
Winsome Womanhood: Familiar Talks on Life and Conduct

Sangster, Margaret E. Winsome Womanhood: Familiar Talks on Life and Conduct. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1900

Margaret Sangster was a poet, editor, journalist, and a novelist. Despite her active life, she was opposed to the women’s rights movement. Winsome Womanhood provides guidance for women of all age groups and, like most women’s manuals of the time period, extolled the virtues of the “the ideal Christian woman” who is “serene, tender, and full of charm.”

  • Full image
Equal Rights for Women: A Speech

Curtis, George William, Equal Rights for Women: A Speech. Boston: C.K. Whipple, 1870

This speech was published as one of a series dealing with issues of women’s rights between 1850 and 1914. Curtis, a writer, public speaker, and a leader of the Republican Party, delivered the speech at the Constitutional Convention of New York on July 19, 1867.

  • Full image
Woman’s Work and Worth in Girlhood, Maidenhood and Wifehood

Adams, W.H. Davenport, Woman’s Work and Worth in Girlhood, Maidenhood and Wifehood. Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co., 1884

The cult of true womanhood that defined the ideal American woman in the nineteenth century was built on four characteristics: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. While men ventured out to earn money, women stayed at home, raising the children. Davenport’s work perpetuated these ideas by encouraging women to be dutiful wives and mothers, and it included stories of women such as Florence Nightingale as exemplars of self-sacrificing ideals.

  • Full image


Middle Shelf

Middle Shelf

Toledo Woman’s Suffrage Association Minute Book, 1903-1927

Toledo Woman’s Suffrage Association Records, MSS-091. Minute Book, 1903-1927

The Toledo Woman's Suffrage Association was founded in 1869, one of the earliest chapters of the national organization. Sarah Bissell, one of its founders, was an associate of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The organization was active until 1915, when it merged with the Political Equality League. The last meeting of the group occurred in the home of Pauline Steinem, grandmother of feminist Gloria Steinem.

  • Full image
Minutes of the Trustees of the Luella Cummings Home for Girls

Cummings-Zucker Center Records, MSS-130. Minutes of the Trustees of the Luella Cummings Home for Girls, 1914-1922

Originally founded in 1913, the Girls Protection Agency was renamed The Luella Cummings Home for Girls in 1914 following the death of Luella Cummings, one of its chief advocates. The home provided academic schooling, vocational training, and socialization instruction to troubled girls between the ages of 14 and 18. In 1981, the organization merged with the Ralph L. Zucker Center, a comprehensive service for children with emotional and behavioral problems.

  • Full image
First Sunset House Annual Report, 1873

Sunset House Records, MSS-125. First Annual Report, 1873

A home for elderly and retired women in Toledo, the Sunset House began as the Home for Friendless Women in 1872. Its founding mission was to improve the welfare of "friendless women:" widowed women, “deserted wives,” and the “sick and broken down.” Sunset House became a retirement home in 1889.

  • Full image
Women at the Sunset House

Photograph of women at the Sunset House

  • Full image
Sunset House Building

Sunset House Building

  • Full image


Bottom Shelf

Bottom shelf

Murphy’s Manor Cartoon Strip

Kurt Erichsen Papers, MSS-293. Murphy’s Manor Cartoon Strip, 1982-1992

Freelance cartoonist Kurt Erichsen moved to Toledo in 1979. Most of Erichsen’s professional cartooning has been for the gay press, including stories and illustrations for Gay Comix, Meatmen, Instinct Magazine, and Fairy Flicks. His most memorable and lengthy work is the Murphy’s Manor series in which he developed numerous characters from the city of Black Swamp, Ohio. The stories about Murphy date back to 1982 and are noted for their gay themes and protagonists.

  • Full image
Publications of Toledo LGBT Organizations

Jan Waggoner Suter Papers, MSS-059. Publications of Toledo LGBT Organizations, 1975-1986

Jan Waggoner Suter taught mathematics at UT’s Community and Technical College for 17 years. Suter was active in the Toledo gay community and collected documents from gay organizations in the city – primarily, the Personal Rights Organization. Other materials relate to Dignity Toledo, a Catholic organization; Toledo Gay Community Center; Ohio Gay Rights Coalition; and the UT Gay Student Association, in which Suter played an instrumental role.

  • Full image
Eberly Center for Women Publications

Catharine S. Eberly Center for Women, Administrative Files, UR 87/70. Publications, 1970s-1990s

The Eberly Center began in 1977 as the Women’s Advisory Committee, which had concerns about the status and treatment of women in the UT and Toledo communities. It was renamed in 1980 as the Catharine S. Eberly Center for Women after one of its first advisory board members and a member of the UT Board of Trustees, who was tragically killed in a car accident. The center offers services and programs including counseling, refresher courses, and scholarships.

  • Full image
Signed photograph of Jeanne and Ryan White

David’s House Compassion Records, MSS-188. Signed photograph of Jeanne and Ryan White

Ryan White became the face of HIV/AIDS discrimination in the mid-1980s due to his expulsion from middle school following his diagnosis and a lengthy legal battle that ensued over the action. After his death in 1990, Congress passed the Ryan White Care Act. Between 1989 and 2009, David’s House Compassion was the only residential treatment facility for persons living with HIV/AIDS in Northwest Ohio with educational and counseling services.

  • Full image
Caesar’s Showbar Collection

Caesar’s Showbar Collection, MSS-317. Photographs of Entertainers, ca. 1980s-2010

Caesar's Showbar – famous for its drag shows popular with a wide audience – was owned and operated by Toledoan Joe Wicks for over three decades. The bar's charity drag shows also supported local organizations such as David's House Compassion. Caesar's Showbar was an iconic bar in Toledo's LGBTQ community until its closing in 2010.

  • Full image
Caesar's Showbar Drag Performer: 'Desiree'

Caesar's Showbar Drag Performer: 'Desiree'

  • Full image
Caesar's Showbar Drag Performer 'CoCo Vega'

Caesar's Showbar Drag Performer: "CoCo Vega"

  • Full image
Brochures and Awards of the Planned Parenthood of Northwest Ohio

Betty Morais Papers, MSS-183. Brochures and Awards, Planned Parenthood of Northwest Ohio, 1989-1993

During Betty Morais's tenure as Executive Director (1976-1993), Planned Parenthood of Northwest Ohio began offering clinical care to outlying areas and expanded services to include diagnosis and treatment of STDs, HIV-AIDS testing and counseling, and prenatal and post-partum care. Morais continued working as an activist after retiring and won numerous awards for her service, including recognitions from the ACLU and YWCA.

  • Full image

←  History of Medicine                         Home                         Creative Expression  →