The Changing Face of Sex. Wayne P. Anderson PhD
our society was amazingly anti-sexual with the anti-sexual faction of society enforcing their beliefs with strict laws against anything related to sex.
Sexual information taboos
In the late 1800s women lived in a world where even for someone to give them information about sex was a dangerous endeavor. Sharing sex information about birth control, sexual pleasure and sexual anatomy could result in jail time. This was partly a result of the Comstock laws that were in force at the time, which in some states remained on the books as late as the 1960s. This possibility of arrest for sharing information about sex increased both the fear and ignorance of the public about sex (D’Emilio, & Freedman, 1988).
The freedom for women to explore their own sexual responses and become orgasmic was a process that involved overcoming fear, ignorance, strictly defined social roles, and legal barriers.
Another source of fear about sex was unwanted pregnancies.The provision of birth control information, even by doctors, was illegal, but even more damaging, some doctors saw such information as dangerous because they believed that anything that interfered with pregnancy was dangerous for the woman.
Advice about sexual behavior was heavily loaded with moral admonitions. For example, William H. Walling, M.D. in his book Sexology (1904) in reacting to birth control says,“The most judicious method of avoiding offspring is entire continence during the time it is desirable or necessary to remain exempt. All other methods of prevention of offspring are disgusting, beastly, positively wrongful, as well as unnatural, and physically injurious. Some of them are so revolting that it is impossible to imagine how persons with the least pretensions to decency can adopt them. Any deliberate preparations with such an object savor too much of cold blooded calculation to be even possible with pure-minded people.”
Another more famous writer of the period, John Harvey Kellogg in his book, Plain Facts for Young and Old (1881) gave similar advice.
With this background of what we now see as misinformation and laws against freedom of information, the United States entered the 20th century with the realm of sexual behavior filled with fear, ignorance, stupid laws, multitudes of non-orgasmic women and a double standard of frightening proportions.
A Madonna-whore dichotomy existed in which only sinful women enjoyed sex and decent women did it only as a marital duty. Sex was a man’s right and a woman’s burden. Today we Americans are shocked at the treatment of Muslim women in such countries as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, but American women into the early 20th century were in many ways treated in a similar fashion.
To be realistic, these strictures obviously did not limit all women’s sexual responsiveness. Even given the restrictions, many couples found each other sexually responsive and both partners enjoyed sex.
However, evidence from modern sex researchers, such as Helen Singer Kaplan in her 1979 Disorders of Sexual Desire on women’s lack of sex desire, indicates that when faced with repression women will often respond with a lack of sex desire or have an aversion to sex.
Other evidence, such as Becoming Orgasmic: A Sexual and Personal Growth Program for Women (1976) by Julia Heiman and Joe LoPiccolo, indicates that sex education about their bodies and permission to explore their responses is very important in helping women discover their sexual responsiveness. The Victorian era offered neither permission to enjoy sex or information about their bodies that would help women achieve satisfactory sex.
The power of social expectations
Women’s sexual responsiveness was tightly restricted by the social norms and expectations of the time. A married woman had few legal rights, and an unmarried woman had few options for supporting herself, teaching being one of the few occupations open to her. Once married, her property became her husband’s, and she could not vote or sue. The woman’s role was to have and care for the children and tend the house. She could not sue for divorce; and if her husband divorced her, all property and custody of the children belonged to him.
At this point in time I’m sure it is almost impossible for a modern woman to understand how restrictive roles were and how these limitations could exist without being questioned by most women. But most people have trouble thinking outside the box society places them in, and those that did like Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger were roundly condemned in their time. Another social expectation was that a “decent woman” would not want to interact freely in the sex act.
A number of people with extreme views, even for their own times,became the arbiters of the country’s sexual standards in several fields. Anthony Comstock help set the legal standards, Richard von Krafft-Ebing the psychiatric standards, and John Harvey Kellogg the health and medical standards.
Comstock and sex information
Comstock believed that strong legal controls should be placed on the distribution of any material that was obscene, lewd or lascivious. This included any written material or pictorial about sex including information on birth control. In 1873 he created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice with the goal of controlling the public’s morals.
This would not have been such a powerful influence if he had not later that year somehow influenced the U.S. Congress to pass the Comstock Laws that put into place his broad view of what was indecent and pornography. The statutes defined contraceptives as obscene and illicit, and it was a federal offense to disseminate birth control information through the mail or across state lines.Even medical textbooks that contained anatomy drawings could be censured.In 1890 the tariff act prohibiting importation of anything obscene was passed, and Comstock had the right to open mail for inspection.
The laws he influenced continued to prevent the distribution of information on birth control years after his death. As late as the 1960s, thirty states had statutes on the books that prohibited and restricted the sale and advertisements of contraceptives. Even doctors in some states could not prescribe or discuss contraception. Samuel G. Kling gives a summary of laws as they existed in 1960s in his book Sexual Behavior and the Law.
Not content with getting the laws passed, Comstock then obtained extraordinary powers as a special agent for the U.S. Postal Service to personally take legal action against anyone he considered to have been guilty of breaking those laws. Later Margaret Sanger was to flee the country under threat of imprisonment, and she was to spend time in jail for giving out birth control information.
Comstock comes across as a fanatic, and in today’s culture it is difficult for my students to imagine a society in which a man with such extreme views could become such a powerful influence. He bragged that he had been responsible for 4,000 arrests and 15 suicides. As an aside, it is reported that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the FBI, learned much from Comstock’s methods.
State laws restrictive of sexual activity
Besides the Comstock laws, each state had it own laws as to the legality of certain sex acts. Adultery was illegal in all but five states, but the penalties were markedly different. West Virginia had a $20 fine, whereas in most New England states, it was a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Fortunately, these laws were seldom enforced even when they were called to the attention of the court. For example,in New York,adultery was the only grounds for divorce; and when admitted for the purpose of getting a divorce, the offender was not fined $250 or given the six months in jail the law stipulated.
Fornication or sex between unmarried people was not a crime in 13 states, but the other states treated it as a misdemeanor with punishments of three months to a year in jail. The fact these laws were seldom enforced still indicates that personal sexual behavior was seen as being under the control of the state. Some states even had laws intended to control what a married couple did in private— there was to be no oral, anal or manual touching of sex organs under the laws on sodomy. Again these laws were seldom enforced except in the case of homosexuals.
Medical men like Kellogg supporting these laws
Comstock’s