The Changing Face of Sex. Wayne P. Anderson PhD
bodies that were drenched in sweat, due to fashion’s finery, lace, corsets, underclothes, padding.”
Clothes in the 19th century were very restraining, not only covering women’s total body, but including a corset that squeezed their inner organs. Women frequently fainted during that period, probably related to the confinement, and they experienced many health problems, e.g., indigestion and childbirth. The times were ripe for changes in how women dressed, and women took to her innovations as they entered into the flapper period.
Hendrik van de Velde gives instructions on how to do sex.
Real advances in availability of information about sex came in the 1920s. A major contributor was a Dutch gynecologist, Theodor Hendrik van de Velde, who published in 1926 his book Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique. It quickly became a best seller, went into 46 printings in the original edition,and was translated into many languages. It continued to sell after WW II. The copy I own was revised in 1965, and it was revised again in 2000, a remarkable life for a book written that long ago. It was the kind of book that people were often given as a wedding present.
The book wasn’t without problems from the legal and moral authorities of the day. The first printing had an insert: “The sale of this book is strictly limited to members of the medical profession, Psychoanalysts, Scholars, and to such adults as may have a definite position in the field of Physiological, Psychological, or Social Research.”Later in 1931 the Catholic Church placed Ideal Marriage on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
As Van de Velde knew that writing a book of this nature would cause problems that might have interfered with his medical practice, he waited until he retired to write the book. As he says in his introduction, “There is need for this knowledge: there is too much suffering endured which might well be avoided, too much joy untasted which could enhance life’s worth.”
Ideal Marriage is a textbook about sex written for the general reader and covers in detail the anatomy and physiology of sex and then goes into detail about the physiology and technique of sexual intercourse. He goes into great detail on sexual techniques, including such acts as cunnilingus, which he stresses should be part of the lovemaking. Where he really cuts away from the previous era is his insistence that the woman is a full partner in the act and not a passive receiver.
His philosophy of mutual sexual pleasure is summed up in the introduction to chapter IX, Sexual Union. “For sexual union only takes place physiologically (i.e. according to the laws of Nature), rightly and suitably, if and when both partners fully participate and feel supreme sexual pleasure and complete relaxation or relief. If, anywhere and in any circumstances, the demand for equal rights for both sexes is incontestable, it is so in regard to equal consent and equal pleasure in sexual union, and in the interests of both.”
Even with the wide acceptance of Ideal Marriage, resistance to women learning about their own physiology and sex in general was still strong, but a beginning had been made. At the University of Missouri, the chair of the Psychology Department, Max Friedrich Meyer, was threatened with firing when it was discovered in 1929 he had taught a sex class for women.
He was later fired when a student, O. Hobart Mowrer, did a survey of sex in marriage. Mowrer was discharged from the university without a degree, earned his degrees at Johns Hopkins. Mowrer became a major figure in psychology and was later given a degree by the University of Missouri.
Van de Velde’s was the major work breaking down the Victorian attitude that sex was for the man only, and not until Kinsey’s work 20 years later was there a more influential work on sex.
The next major change in sexual behavior and attitudes would wait until the upheaval that occurred between 1968 and 1972, the topic in the next chapter.
For those readers interested in the lives and work of the sex researchers, a good source is Edward Brecher’s The Sex Researchers, 1969.
CHAPTER THREE
THE ’60s REVOLUTION IN SEXUAL STANDARDS
The premarital sexual standards took the biggest hit in the sexual revolution. In particular women’s sexual behavior changed the most. The four premarital sexual standards commonly recognized are (Reiss, 1960):
Abstinence
Double-Standard
Sex within an ongoing relationship
Sex without an ongoing relationship
Abstinence—our formal single standard for both sexes
Our laws until recently were built on the standard of abstinence for both sexes before marriage. It is the Christian Church standard and to an even greater degree the Muslim standard. In some Muslim countries I have visited, a women can be killed for even a suggestion of a loss of virtue because of the disgrace this brings upon the family. To insure abstinence before marriage, some cultures go so far as to use an extreme form of clitorectomy that sews up the entrance to the vagina, preventing penetration.
In the abstinence standard, sexual intercourse is seen as too important an act, too valuable and intimate to be performed with anyone but one’s marriage partner. Sexual intercourse must be saved for marriage. Kinsey’s reports of the number of people having sex before and outside of marriage were very shocking to a culture where this was forbidden.
Strictly observed, the limit of intimacy was kissing, but over time the rules changed and the standard took different forms. It reached a point where some of my students felt that as long as vaginal sexual intercourse was avoided anything else was allowed.Therefore people such as Clinton could say, “I did not have sex with that woman,” when oral sex was involved.
Petting in an ongoing relationship is widely practiced, but not acceptable to many religious groups.I had one client whom I mention in another chapter who was pregnant, but still technically a virgin since there had been no penetration. Her boyfriend had ejaculated on her upper thigh and gotten sperm into her vagina with his hands.
At the time I am writing this in 2011, the U.S. Congress still wants everyone to be abstinent before marriage, and provides money to schools for programs that limit their teaching to abstinence as being the only appropriate sexual standard for the unmarried.
The ancient double standard
This was probably the most dominate informal standard in the U.S. until 1968. This assumes that man’s nature is such that he must have sexual outlets. Boys will be boys. Men were often encouraged to lose their virginity while girls were expected to be virgins until they married. In some states a women not being a virgin could be grounds for the annulment of the marriage.
We also had double standards in employment and legal rights with the core idea being female inferiority. The extreme of this was early laws that treated women as their husband’s property.
Men in the 1960s who practiced the double standard tended to group women into five different levels based on their sexual availability.
1.Prostitutes
2.Party girls who would have sex with any man who took them out
3.Those who were known to have sex with other men, but were highly selective
4.Those who would have sex if they were engaged to be married
5.Those who wouldn’t have sex until marriage vows had been taken
In the 1960s I had reports that some fraternities kept a list of girls known to be easily available sexually. I had an incident in one of my classes in the mid ’60s of one of the women in class standing up and accusing one of the men of putting her name on such a list because he was angry with her.The class gave her a round of applause.
Even those engaged to be married could have problems with the virginity issue. One of my clients in the ’60s, who was pregnant after having had sexual intercourse after much pressure from her boyfriend, had been told by him