Victorian attitudes Masturbation fears Homosexuality Sexology Conclusion Approaches Increasingly informed by queer theory a theoretical approach which emanates from literary and critical studies ID: 719338
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Slide1
SexualitySlide2
Overview
Approaches
Victorian
attitudes
Masturbation fears
Homosexuality
Sexology
ConclusionSlide3
Approaches
Increasingly informed
by ‘queer theory’ , a theoretical approach which emanates from literary and critical studies
Move
away from the reclamation school which sought to recover the stories of (usually) male homosexuals for the historical
record
Queer theorists
argue that
sexual
identity constructions
are arbitrary
Other
markers of identity such as race and class should be used
Emerged from radical
AIDS activism in the US in the
1980sSlide4
Nameless Offences
Harry
Cocks
uses
theory as an analytical framework for mapping homosexual desire in the period.
Argues cultural
oppression
fostered a language of the ‘closet’. In law homosexuality was often nameless and this created a space of impunity He argues this existed long before the so called watershed of the 1880s and 1890sSlide5
Victorian attitudes
Many attitudes emerged in 18
th
century:
Fears
of the dire effects of
masturbation
Hospitals for sufferers of sexual transmitted diseasesCampaigns against prostitution ‘Vice’ societiesIdeologies of male and female behaviourSlide6
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 1860sSlide7
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)Slide8
Changing attitudes
Shift
in
attitudes and behaviour from
around
1870
Population
began to declineOpposition to Contagious Diseases Acts led to movement for repealRise of feminism and focus on women’s rightsApplication of science to study of sexSlide9Slide10
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
doubtSlide11
Anti-masturbation devicesSlide12
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-abuseBut was considered assault on British womanhood to argue that they practised
self-abuse
Was distaste at ‘mutilation’Slide13
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 menSlide14
Anne Lister,
Shibden
Hall, Halifax wrote her diary in code to keep her affections for other women secretSlide15
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.Slide16
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 movementExposure of male brothel in the Cleveland Street scandal in 1889 Trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895Slide17
Aubrey Beardsley
(1872-98) Slide18
Sketch of Charles Hammond operator of male brothel in
Clevland
St
. He escaped
prosecution Slide19
Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred DouglasSlide20
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 GreeksHavelock 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
relationshipsSlide21
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