Journal of the History of Sexuality Vol. 12 (January 2003)1:110-121.

Excerpt The problem of dealing with Prostitution and Venereal Disease should be approached with science and sympathy and not with moral disapproval. —Resolution of the Third Congress of the WLSR, 1929 1 Prostitution is above all the daughter of poverty and cannot be cured with a cup of tea, a piece of cake, and some moral statements. —Federica Montseny, 1927 2

TO MANY CONTEMPORARIES, the resolutions on prostitution and other matters associated with sexuality adopted by the World League for Sexual Reform (WLSR) seemed bold, but some political radicals—Marxists and anarchists alike—criticized the WLSR for what they saw as a timorous approach and an inability to effect real change in the sphere of sexual relations. These radicals, including some who were actually involved in the WLSR, believed that sexual change could occur only as part of a broader endeavor to alter the social and political conditions in which the general population lived. The involvement of the revolutionary Left in the various national chapters of the WLSR is an ongoing subject for research. Some work has been done on the Communist Party’s possible connections to the German chapter but almost none on the involvement of the radical Left in the WLSR in Spain; indeed, all research on the Spanish chapter of the WLSR is very much in its early stages. 3 In this essay I explore the extent to which Spanish anarchists were engaged with both the international body and the Spanish chapter of the WLSR. My chief sources are anarchist periodicals published in eastern Spain, in Catalonia and Valencia, where the "cultural" expression of anarchism was most advanced.