{"id":1242,"date":"2022-12-21T11:45:05","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T16:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/?p=1242"},"modified":"2022-12-21T11:45:05","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T16:45:05","slug":"the-anti-flirt-club-of-the-1920s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/2022\/12\/21\/the-anti-flirt-club-of-the-1920s\/","title":{"rendered":"The Anti-Flirt Club of the 1920s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nobody likes being confronted on the street, catcalled, or corralled into paying attention to someone that they have no interest in. Sadly, street harassment<\/a>, which disproportionately affects women, is nothing new. It also doesn\u2019t appear to be vanishing anytime soon.\u00a0But, for a brief moment in history, Anti-Flirt Club<\/a> led an effort to criminalize this behavior in an attempt to protect women and girls in cities like Washington, D.C., Chicago and New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Anti-Flirt Club<\/a> led the charge to inform women of an increasingly annoying, if not downright dangerous, problem of men relentlessly hitting on women. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer? Don\u2019t Flirt.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"10
The Washington-based chapter of the Anti-Flirt club (Library of Congress). Image Source: The Atlantic<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Drive-by Flirting <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Anti-Flirt Club was formed<\/a> in the 1920s in Washington, D.C. Women were sick and tired of being rolled up on by strange men when they were just trying to walk down the street. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Anti-Flirt Club\u2019s mission centered around a specific type of harassment<\/a> born out of the automobile boom<\/a> of the 1920s: Drive-by flirting.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to an article published in the Washington Post<\/em><\/a> on February 28, 1923, titled: \u201c10 Girls Start War on Auto Invitation,\u201d the heart of the problem was that \u201ctoo many motorists are taking advantage of the precedent established during the war by offering to take young lady pedestrians in their cars, Miss Helen Brown […] declared yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Brown<\/a>, who was the secretary of the Anti-Flirt Club, these motorists were responsible for the bulk of the harassment because they were mobile, empowered and pretty much everywhere. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Comic
With automobiles widely available, creepy men took \u201cflirting\u201d on the road, the central concern of the Anti-Flirt Club in DC. Image Source: Ebay<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The Anti-Flirt Club Rules<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As with any movement that hopes to make an impact, you need rules. The Anti-Flirt Club\u2019s philosophy was that \u201cflirting\u201d should essentially be criminalized. The rules were as follows<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Don’t flirt; those who flirt in haste oft repent in leisure. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Don’t accept rides from flirting motorists\u2014they don’t all invite you in to save you a walk.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Don’t use your eyes for ogling\u2014they were made for worthier purposes.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Don’t go out with men you don’t know\u2014they may be married, and you may be in for a hair-pulling match.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Don’t wink\u2014a flutter of one eye may cause a tear in the other.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. Don’t smile at flirtatious strangers\u2014save them for people you know. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  7. Don’t annex all the men you can get\u2014by flirting with many you may lose out on the one. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  8. Don’t fall for the slick, dandified cake eater\u2014the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  9. Don’t let elderly men with an eye to a flirtation pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you. Those are usually the kind who want to forget they are fathers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  10. Don’t ignore the man you are sure of while you flirt with another. When you return to the first one you may find him gone.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
    \n
    \"\"\/
    President Alice Reighly led the first ever Anti-Flirt Club in 1920\u2019s Washington D.C. Image Source: Wikipedia<\/a> <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

    With the Club\u2019s orders public, President Alice Reighly and co. organized the first (and last) Anti-Flirt Week. This movement was far from revolutionary, but there were other Anti-Flirt Clubs that sprouted up in Chicago and New York. These groups tended to focus on \u201cmashers\u201d<\/a> \u2013 or aggressive male flirts \u2013 who approached women on the street. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cJail the Flirt\u201d <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Surprisingly, the New York iteration of the Anti-Flirt Club was formed by men<\/a>, including George Carroll, a \u201ctheatrical man\u201d and James Madison, a \u201cbroker.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Their slogan: \u201cJail the Flirt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This attempt to incarcerate<\/a> mashers and \u201clounge lizards<\/a>,\u201d (well-dressed men who troll bars and clubs), didn\u2019t exactly materialize. While some flirters were arrested, it\u2019s unclear how long they were detained or what specific law they were actually breaking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    By the 1930s, the \u201cAnti-Flirt\u201d movement faded away. Unfortunately, the mashers, lounge lizards, and all-around creeps, are still going strong. <\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"\"
    Image Source: Ebay<\/strong><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Nobody likes being confronted on the street, catcalled, or corralled into paying attention to someone that they have no interest in. Sadly, street harassment, which disproportionately affects women, is nothing new. It also doesn\u2019t appear to be vanishing anytime soon.\u00a0But, for a brief moment in history, Anti-Flirt Club led an effort to criminalize this behavior […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":1247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[70,294,295],"class_list":["post-1242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-1920s","tag-anti-flirt-club","tag-womens-rights"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/21aCF8QuxBlP6MbRS0_MT2uDXD2v2vJ6b6_j8TGuz5WNIhPrxPwRMvloaiZw650GIn5XYmxbBpOYNWSznBZZQBtxhHMADTYMQpJCvP2j1jWxdjdEsnjIrz62arLC-e1671638860823.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1252,"href":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions\/1252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historyinmemes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}