Editing Victoria Woodhull (section)

=== Free love ===
Woodhull's support of [[free love]] may have started after she discovered the [[infidelity]] of her first husband, Canning.{{cn|date=January 2025}} Women who married in the [[United States]] during the 19th century were bound into the unions, even if loveless, with few options to escape. [[Divorce in the United States|Divorce]] was limited by law and considered socially scandalous. Women who divorced were stigmatized and often ostracized by society. Victoria Woodhull concluded that women should have the choice to leave unbearable marriages.{{sfn|Dubois|Dumenil|2012|}}{{Page needed|date=February 2021}}

Woodhull believed in monogamous relationships, although she also said she had the right to change her mind. The choice to have sex or not was, in every case, the woman's choice, since this would place her in an equal status to the man, who had the capability to physically overcome and rape a woman, whereas a woman did not have that capability with respect to a man.<ref>{{cite web |last=Dworkin |first=Andrea |date=1987 |title=Intercourse |at=Chapter 7: "Occupation/Collaboration |url=http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/IntercourseII.html }}</ref>
Woodhull said:

{{blockquote|To woman, by nature, belongs the right of sexual determination. When the instinct is aroused in her, then and then only should commerce follow. When woman rises from sexual slavery to sexual freedom, into the [[self-ownership|ownership and control of her sexual organs]], and man is obliged to respect this freedom, then will this instinct become pure and holy; then will woman be raised from the iniquity and morbidness in which she now wallows for existence, and the intensity and glory of her creative functions be increased a hundred-fold … .<ref>"And the truth shall make you free". [http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20160709212238/http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=rbnawsa&fileName=n8216//rbnawsan8216.db&recNum=0&itemLink=r?ammem/nawbib:@field(NUMBER+@od1(rbnawsa+n8216))&linkText=0&presId=nawbib A speech on the principles of social freedom], delivered in Steinway hall, Nov. 20, 1871, by Victoria C. Woodhull, pub. Woodhull & Claflin, New York, 1871.</ref>}}

In this same speech, which became known as the "Steinway speech," delivered on Monday, November 20, 1871, in [[Steinway Hall]], New York City, Woodhull said of free love:

<blockquote>Yes, I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.victoria-woodhull.com/prostitute.htm|title=Victoria Woodhull, Abandoned Woman?|website=www.victoria-woodhull.com|access-date=2019-11-06}}</ref></blockquote>

Woodhull railed against the hypocrisy of society's tolerating married men who had [[mistress (lover)|mistresses]] and engaged in other sexual dalliances. In 1872, Woodhull publicly criticized well-known clergyman [[Henry Ward Beecher]] for adultery. Beecher was known to have had an affair with his parishioner Elizabeth Tilton, who had confessed to it, and the scandal was covered nationally. Woodhull was prosecuted on obscenity charges for sending accounts of the affair through the federal mails, and she was briefly jailed. This added to sensational coverage during her campaign that autumn for the United States presidency.{{sfn|Dubois|Dumenil|2012|}}{{Page needed|date=February 2021}}