Ideas concerning “proper” womanhood and manhood helped to shape public health policies on venereal disease control during and immediately following World War I. Analyzing public health officials and social hygiene reformers as agents of the state leads to new historical understandings of the central role women’s sexuality played in American society, as it waged a “war” on two fronts. The first battle was the international struggle against the Central Powers, and the second, a domestic assault against the venereal disease menace. The sources reveal more than policy concerns of the U.S. Public Health Service and social hygienists. They offer insight into how anxieties related to changing gender and sex norms influenced the medical, political, and social discourse surrounding sexuality as it related to the spread of gonorrhea and syphilis. Placing the sources within the context of the First World War brings forth larger historical questions about women’s experiences on the home front during military conflict and how the state sought to maintain firm gender boundaries in times of military upheaval.