Overview Victorian attitudes Masturbation fears Homosexuality Sexology Conclusion Victorian attitudes Many attitudes emerged in 18 th century Fears of the dire effects of masturbation ID: 524896
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Slide1
SexualitySlide2
Overview
Victorian attitudes
Masturbation fears
Homosexuality
Sexology
ConclusionSlide3
Victorian attitudes
Many attitudes emerged in 18
th
century:
Fears
of the dire effects of
masturbation
Hospitals for sufferers of sexual transmitted diseases
Campaigns against prostitution
‘Vice’ societies
Ideologies of male and female behaviourSlide4
Symptoms of the tertiary phase of
syphillis
,
19th
century. A patient afflicted with sores and ulcers to the neck and face, including one which has destroyed part of the nasal cartilage.
Estimated that 10% of population had syphilis by 1860sSlide5
Sex and identity
Victorians embraced view that an individual's
sex and sexuality form the most basic core of their
identity
Towards
the beginning of the eighteenth century, there emerged a political, economic, and technical incitement to talk about
sex (Foucault)Slide6
Changing attitudes
Shift
in
attitudes and behaviour from
around
1870
Population
began to
decline
Opposition
to
Contagious
Diseases Acts
led to movement for repeal
Rise of feminism and focus on women’s rights
Application of science to study of sexSlide7
Individual StoriesSlide8
Control of male ‘urges’
Victorian
social moralists proposed
socio-medical
discourse based on masculine self-control in support of the bourgeois ideal of domestic life.
Idea
of the body as a closed system of
energy so
male sexual 'expenditure' and especially 'excess' (
spermatorrhea
) were said to cause enfeeblement.
Men counselled
to conserve vital health by avoiding fornication, masturbation and nocturnal emissions
and
by rationing sex within marriage.
That
insanity arises from masturbation is now beyond a
doubtSlide9
Anti-masturbation devicesSlide10
Control of female sexual behaviour
Ailments afflicting adolescent girls
said
to signify abnormal sexual excitation.
Some
doctors
used
clitoridectomy
to prevent sexual pleasure
Dr
Isaac Baker
Brown advocated
clitoridectomy
to eradicate female
self-abuse
But was considered assault on British
womanhood to
argue that
they practised
self-abuse
Was distaste at ‘mutilation’Slide11
Homosexuality
L
ater nineteenth century witnessed visible
increase in
homosexuality
Term
‘homosexual’ was invented in 1869, becoming part of normal usage by the
1880s
Lesbian was
a term largely unknown until the 1890s.
Sodomy
was a capital offence until 1861 and between 1800 and 1835 80 men were hanged for this crime against nature.
Women
were exempted from the legal sanctions that applied to
menSlide12
Queer Theory/History
A field of critical theory that emerged in1990s
Roots in LGBT studies and feminist studies
Influenced
by
work of Foucault
Challenges idea that gender is part of the essential self
Examines socially constructed nature of sexualitySlide13
Anne Lister,
Shibden
Hall, Halifax wrote her diary in code to keep her affections for other women secretSlide14
Vera
Holme’s
diaries
, photographs and papers
document her
bohemian life - as a cross-dressing actress, suffragette chauffeur to the
Pankhursts
and servicewoman overseas during the First World War – and her romantic relationships with women.Slide15
Emergence of gay subculture
Decadence
movement include the promotion of 'Greek' or Platonic relationships by some university
dons
Allure
to the forbidden and
deviant
Rise of aesthetic movement
Exposure
of
male
brothel in the Cleveland Street scandal in 1889
Trials
of Oscar Wilde in
1895Slide16
Aubrey Beardsley
(1872-98) Slide17
Sketch of Charles Hammond operator of male brothel in
Clevland
St
. He escaped
prosecution Slide18
Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred DouglasSlide19
Sexology
Questions
of sexual identity
subject
to speculative and would-be scientific investigation, dubbed sexology (1902).
In
A Problem in Greek Ethics
and
A Problem in Modern Ethics
John
Addington
Symonds suggested that man-boy love had been encouraged by the ancient
Greeks
Havelock
Ellis
attempted
a detailed classification of 'normal' and 'perverse' sexual practices.
Identified 'third
' or 'intermediate' sex, for which Ellis used the term 'sexual inversion'.
Edward
Carpenter
in,
The Intermediate Sex
challenged
Victorian sexual ideology and viewed comradeship between men as an essential ingredient of socialist
society
Lesbian
and Sapphic came into use as terms for female
relationshipsSlide20
Conclusion
Sex and sexuality in Victorian period in state of transition and flux
Changing attitudes to ‘sexual deviance’
Application of ‘science’ to study of sexuality
Stereotypical views of attitudes to sex need to be challenged