Damned Whores and God's Police is a 1975 feminist history of Australia by Anne Summers. The book combines historical, sociological, and literary analysis, as well as radical feminist theory. It compares Australian women to a "colonised people" who have been subjugated since the early colonial era by being cast as either "damned whores" or as "God's police". Summers argues that women's liberation relies on women casting off these dual archetypes of whore or mother.
While the book received a somewhat mixed reception upon its release, it is now widely regarded as a landmark text in Australian feminist history. New editions of the book were released in 1994, 2002, and 2015, and more than 100,000 copies have been sold. The work is seen as having contributed to the development of a new wave of revisionist feminist histories of Australia in the years following its release.
Summary
Damned Whores and God's Police is divided into two parts.[1]:107 The first opens with an analysis of the role that women play within contemporary Australian culture.[2] Summers analyses women's writing and distinguishes "sexism by neglect" from "sexism by repression", arguing that women's writing has been trivialised and ignored within Australian culture.[1]:107 She also argues that many of the core elements of Australian recreational culture, from sport to gambling, structurally exclude women.[2][3] She then analyses how traditional family structures subjugate women, drawing on the theoretical frameworks developed by Frantz Fanon, in a chapter titled "A Colonised Sex".[2][1]:108 Summers compares women to a colonised people and argues that they must be given self-determination in order to liberate themselves.[1]:108
The second part of the book contains a historical analysis of women's role in colonial Australia, emphasising the development of their role as "moral guardians".[2] Summers argues that in the early days of convict transportation to Australia, convict women were cast as "damned whores", and were raped and forced into prostitution by men.[3][4]:141 But in the early nineteenth century, as Australia attempted to evolve from a convict settlement into a civilised society, newly arrived settler women were placed in the role of "God's police" as respectable wives and mothers.[3][4]:141 Summers concludes that women are a "colonised sex", with both archetypes—an Australian manifestation of the Madonna-whore dichotomy—serving to keep women subordinate to men. She argues that women will not be liberated until they escape from these dual roles as whores or mothers.[4][5][6]
Background and publication history
Anne Summers, the author of Damned Whores and God's Police
Damned Whores and God's Police was written in the 1970s amidst the growing strength of the women's liberation movement. At the time she wrote the book, Anne Summers was a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney and a member of the women's rights movement, having helped to found both the feminist journal Refractory Girl and Australia's first women's refuge.[7] The book was published by Penguin Books in 1975.[2]
New editions of the book were published in 1994, 2002, and 2015.[5] The 1994 edition added a new introduction and a "letter to the next generation", while the 2002 edition added an author's note and an overview and timeline of achievements by Australian women. The 2015 edition added a new introduction and a longer version of the timeline from the 2002 edition.[7][5] By the 2016 edition, the book's length had grown by roughly 250 pages through the addition of these various new introductions and author's notes.[5] More than 100,000 copies of the book have been sold.[7]
Reception
Contemporary reception
Damned Whores and God's Police received both positive and negative reviews upon its release. Reviewers praised the way in which Summers had combined literary, sociological and historical analysis with radical feminist theory, as well as the deep range of textual evidence that she had drawn on.[2][1]:106 Ann-Marie Jordens described the book as a "landmark" for Australian feminist literature in a review in the journal Labour History.[3] In a review in The Sydney Morning Herald, John Douglas Pringle concluded that the work was ultimately a "remarkable book" and a "striking achievement".[8] However, the book was also criticised by some feminists and activists.[7] The feminist academic Elizabeth Anne Reid described it as "devastatingly bad", criticising it for its limited analysis of class and for playing into women's self-perception as victims.[9]Jill Roe felt that the book relied on "intellectually indulgent assumptions".[9]
Some reviewers were particularly critical of Summers' analogy between women's oppression and colonisation. Jill Ker Conway wrote in a review in the journal Signs that the book's application of post-colonial theory was flawed, and that Summers had an obsession with women's role as victims.[2] In an analysis of the book published in History Workshop, Martha Macintyre likewise argued that the comparison of women to a colonised people was a flawed and poorly argued metaphor, concluding that the book trivialises colonialism and neglects the racial and class dimensions of women's oppression.[1]:108–110
Macintyre also argued that the book makes an overly simplistic assumption that Australian culture can be straightforwardly traced back to its early convict days, characterising Summers' argument as assuming "a sort of Australian Original Sin".[1]:107 She argued that while the whore/mother dichotomy may be a useful historical framework for understanding the earliest years of the Australian colony, it quickly breaks down and fails to acknowledge the diverse ways in which Australian society developed in the years that followed.[1]:109
Later reception
Damned Whores and God's Police has come to be widely regarded as a landmark text in Australian feminist history. Rosemary Hunter has described the book as one of the three "founding texts" of Australian feminist history, alongside Miriam Dixson's The Real Matilda and Kerreen Reiger's The Disenchantment of the Home.[10]:37Ann Curthoys suggested in 1995 that Damned Whores and God's Police was one of four books published in 1975 and 1976 that had sparked a new wave of research into Australian women's history.[11] Reviewing the book's second edition in 1997, Ann McGrath described it as a canonical text in the field.[12] In 2015, marking the 40th year since its publication, Michelle Arrow described the book as second only to Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch in the canon of Australian feminism. She suggested that the book laid the foundations for more detailed studies of convict women, and that it had helped to drive the development of revisionist feminist histories of Australia.[7]
Reviews of later editions of the book have noted the text's enduring historical relevance and readability, while also suggesting that it remains a product of the era in which it was written. In 1997, Ann McGrath wrote that the book was "punchy, witty, provocative, highly readable, often brilliant, and above all, accessible." She suggested that the book served to paint a useful picture of the ideas present at the height of the women's liberation movement in the 1970s.[12] The historian Marian Quartly echoed these sentiments in a review of the book's 2016 edition, describing it as an accessible text that had an enduring relevance to historians due to its deep impact on the feminist movement, but as "a monument to a mighty historical achievement" rather than as something that would inspire ongoing activism.[5]
1 2 3 4 Jordens, Ann-Mari (1975). "Review of Damned Whores and God's Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia". Labour History (29): 154. JSTOR27508207.
1 2 3 4 5 Quartly, Marian (2017). "Review of Damned Whores and God's Police: The Colonisation of Women in Australia". Journal of Australian Studies. 41 (3): 399–400. doi:10.1080/14443058.2017.1349254.
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