HISTSEX ARCHIVES: May 2001
© Lesley Hall and list contributors
From: "theo van der meer" <1vandermeer@planet.nl>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 10:26:02 +0200
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Greenberg" <david.greenberg@nyu.edu>
To: "Histsex:For historians of sexuality" <histsex@listbot.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2001 2:37 AM
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
> Histsex:For historians of sexuality -
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> There are ancient Roman sources referring to fellatio, but it was
> considered defiling to the mouth of the fellator. I think it is a
> reasonable inference from the limited historical record that the
> practice has become more popular in the last century or so, and this may
> reflect improved hygiene. David Greenberg, Sociology Department, New
> York University.
It is of course very plausible that hygiene got to do with it. I think on
the other hand that one should not overlook an issue like class. It is only
an anecdote, yet I was reminded about several men I used to know who were
born around 1920 and who have told me independantly from one another that
until the late sixty's they would only engage in mutual masturbation, and
that in the circles they moved around in that was the norm. In the gay scene
they moved around in people who fucked and fellated were the subject of
gossip. These men were both middle class and so were their circles. These
men also claimed that in the late sixty's they began to change their sexual
habits under the influenece of American gay porn that became (more) widely
available at the time. There is also a gap of course between actual
practice and representations or norms: I am reminded of the early safe sex
campaigns here in the eighty's which not only were explicitly based on the
assumption that gay men in Holland had less anal intercourse than their
American counter parts, but also gave the clear message that anal
intercourse was morally bad, e.g. with posters of pictures by Maplethorpe of
a butt with the text "Exit Only".
To return to the 18th century, in the few cases I have found of oral
intercourse, class was obviously an issue, both in men's confessions and in
writings. Oral intercourse was thought to be an aristocratic vice. To give a
few examples of what showed up in my material: during a first major wave of
prosecutions in 1730 several house servants who had been arrested told about
a very wealthy patrician who not only used to fellate them, but was also
into the kinky habit of spitting their sperm in a glass of wine and drink
it. In a pub in Utrecht at that time, where many sodomites used to come, the
pubowner would recommand two men to his well off customers, because they
"sucked out the nature". Obviously this is speculation but since these men
served rather well to do customers, would it not be likely that they had
learned these practices from their social "superiors'? In 1765 a common
peddler stood on trial in Amsterdam who had fellated a friend, yet he had
learned it from a doctor who according to the sources "practiced [medicine]
among many of the first in the city." Tax records show that the doctor owned
considerable property. The doctor had fellated the peddler when the latter
had consulted him for his heart condition and the doctor had said on the
occasion, "oh boy, I swallowed it." (The fact that he said something like
that seems to indicate something in itself.)
Most of the men arrested in Holland between 1675 and 1811 (when same-sex
behavior was officially decriminalized) - of course most of them belonging
to the lower and often lowest classes - had engaged in mutual masturbation
and anal intercourse, indeed often reversing active and passive roles. When
and how behaviors began to change remains to be seen. In my current research
on sex crimes after 1811 I have found lower class men from the late 19th and
early 20th century who had been caught in (what was deemed to be) public
space while engaging in fellatio. At the present state of my research it is
difficult though to say whether that behavior was wide spread or not. It is
also questionable whether the sources I am using right now are able to tell
us about that at all, since obviously by that time interrogations and
trials focused on the public indecency rather than on the specifics of
sexual behavior or on networks of like minded culprits.
Cheers,
Theo van der Meer
___________________________________________________________________Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 00:41:59 -0500
From: Steven Reschly <sdr@truman.edu>
Subject: [histsex] Feet
Sometimes a foot is just a foot.
Actually, in the Hebrew Scriptures, the euphemism of choice is "feet"
plural. It is used in some interesting idioms. When King Saul went into a
cave to relieve himself, literally he "covered his feet" (I Samuel 24.3,
similar phrase in Judges 3.24). Cutting off the hands and feet (2 Samuel
4.12) or the "hair of the feet" (Isaiah 7.20) was an extremely shameful
punishment, sometimes done to captured soldiers, as a sign of destroyed
masculinity. People in a city under siege might have to drink the "water
of their feet," meaning their own urine (2 Kings 18.27 = Isaiah 36.12).
The noun is female and is used at least once to mean specifically female
genitalia, referring to "her afterbirth that comes out from between her
feet" (Deuteronomy 28.57).
References to "feet" in Ruth 3, as in Ruth uncovered the feet of Boaz on
the threshing floor (a place associated with fertility), are at least
puns. He sure woke up happy the next morning!
However, all those references to washing feet as a sign of hospitality mean
real feet. Unless you wish to believe the ancient Hebrews were really kinky!
Best,
Steven Reschly
Truman State University
___________________________________________________________________From: "Bent Flyvbjerg" <bf@i4.auc.dk>
Subject: [histsex] MAKING SOCIAL SCIENCE MATTER
Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 10:40:34 +0200
Dear colleagues,=20
With this note I would like to let you know that my new book MAKING =
SOCIAL SCIENCE MATTER: WHY SOCIAL INQUIRY FAILS AND HOW IT CAN SUCCEED =
AGAIN has just been published by Cambridge University Press. The book is =
being published as a CUP textbook. I include the following for your =
information:=20
- The Table of Contents=20
- The book's back cover text.=20
I hope this is useful. Please feel free to forward this message to any =
relevant person or listserv.=20
If this mail is of no interest to you, I am sorry and apologize for the =
inconvenience. Also apologies for any cross posting.=20
Best wishes,=20
Bent Flyvbjerg, Professor=20
Aalborg University, Dept. of Development and Planning=20
9220 Aalborg, Denmark=20
email: flyvbjerg@i4.auc.dk=20
=20
CONTENTS: MAKING SOCIAL SCIENCE MATTER=20
Acknowledgments=20
1. The Science Wars: A Way Out=20
PART ONE: WHY SOCIAL SCIENCE HAS FAILED AS SCIENCE=20
2. Rationality, Body, and Intuition in Human Learning=20
3. Is Theory Possible in Social Science?=20
4. Context Counts=20
PART TWO: HOW SOCIAL SCIENCE CAN MATTER AGAIN=20
5. Values in Social and Political Inquiry=20
6. The Power of Example=20
7. The Significance of Conflict and Power to Social Science=20
8. Empowering Aristotle=20
9. Methodological Guidelines for a Reformed Social Science=20
10. Examples and Illustrations: Narratives of Value and Power=20
11. Social Science That Matters=20
Notes=20
Index=20
=20
FROM THE BACK COVER OF MAKING SOCIAL SCIENCE MATTER=20
MAKING SOCIAL SCIENCE MATTER presents an exciting new approach to the =
social and behavioral sciences. Instead of trying to emulate the natural =
sciences and create a kind of general theory, Bent Flyvbjerg argues that =
the strength of the social sciences lies in their rich, reflexive =
analysis of values and power--so essential to the social and economic =
development of society. Moving beyond the purely analytic or technical, =
Flyvbjerg compares the theoretical study of human activity with =
real-world situations and demonstrates how the social sciences can =
become relevant again in the modern world. Powerfully argued, with clear =
methodological guidelines and practical examples, MAKING SOCIAL SCIENCE =
MATTER opens up a new future for the social sciences, freed from an =
inappropriate and misleading comparison with the natural sciences. Its =
empowering message will make it required reading for students and =
academics across the social and behavioral sciences.=20
PIERRE BOURDIEU, COLLEGE DE FRANCE: "This is social science that =
matters."=20
ROBERT N. BELLAH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY: "This is a book =
I have been waiting for for a long time. It opens up entirely new =
perspectives for social science by showing us that abandoning the =
aspiration to be like natural science is the beginning of wisdom about =
what we can and ought to be doing instead. It is a landmark book that =
deserves the widest possible reading and discussion."=20
ED SOJA, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH, UCLA: "This =
brilliant contextualization of social inquiry, hinging on both Aristotle =
and Foucault, gives new meaning to the concept of praxis. It will be of =
interest to everyone concerned with making democracy work."=20
STEVEN LUKES, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY: "Flyvbjerg, author of RATIONALITY AND =
POWER: DEMOCRACY IN PRACTICE, an innovative, fine-grained and =
civically-engaged study of local power in Denmark, here reflects, in =
accessible and pleasurable prose, on large, challenging questions: What, =
fundamentally, makes social science different from natural science? Why =
is it relatively so poor in producing cumulative and predictive =
theories? What kinds of knowledge should it seek and with what methods? =
His answers, drawing on Nietzsche, Foucault, Bourdieu and others, are =
worth the close attention of those predisposed to reject them out of =
hand."=20
There's more information about the book at www.us.cambridge.org and =
www.uk.cambridge.org.=20
___________________________________________________________________Date: 1 May 2001 08:58:21 -0000
From: "Histsex:For historians of sexuality" <histsex-owner@listbot.com>
Subject: [histsex] Introductions, etiquette, etc
Welcome to new subscribers. Some of you have already introduced
yourselves, but I do invite those who have not to do so (and this includes
list-members of longer standing who have not yet formally introduced
themselves) by saying a little about themselves and their interests in the
history of sexuality.
PLEASE could list-members, when responding to a previous posting, try to
snip the text down to whatever is relevant, rather than reposting what is
sometimes a whole string of earlier messages? (This is something that
comes up as a source of irritation every time I start editing another
archive file to go on the website.)
And also, when changing the subject of discussion, please think, and
change the subject-line to something which actually reflects the content
(we are all sinners on this one...)
I also draw list-members' attention to the history of sexuality research
register on my website
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah/hofsresr.htm - if you are
interested in adding your name and information please contact me at
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
Lesley
histsex-owner@listbot.com
___________________________________________________________________Date: 1 May
2001 09:07:41 -0000
From: "Histsex:For historians of sexuality" <histsex-owner@listbot.com>
Subject: [histsex] Reviews
The idea has recently been suggested to me of having reviews on Histsex.
At the moment attention is drawn to reviews on H-Net and elsewhere, but
although I think I did mention the possibility of original reviews in the
mission statement for Histsex, so far these have not been a feature. I
think this is an excellent idea, and reviews posted to the list could
subsequently be added to the Histsex area of my website.
As a preliminary to more specific thinking how this might be practicable
(probably a designated reviews editor(s) would need to be appointed),
perhaps list-members could indicate a)whether they would like the list to
include reviews b)whether they would be interested in reviewing themselves
and in what sort of area c)any other thoughts on this subject. Obviously
if there's no interest, or not enough to sustain this initiative, it will
not be worthwhile working out practicalities.
Thanks in anticipation for your thoughts and comments
Lesley
histsex-owner@listbot.com
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 1 May 2001 03:48:25 +0100
From: Jens =?iso-8859-1?Q?Rydstr=F6m?= <jens.rydstrom@historia.su.se>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
In a court case from 1913 in the little town of Oskarshamn, Sweden, a
cinema-owner stood trial for anal, oral and masturbatory sex with a
barber-shop assistant. According to the police interrogation, the two men
had experimented with many different kinds of sexual intercourse, and the
cinema owner "had said on one occasion that it was common in America that
intercourse was performed in the mouth."
In Gothenburg, in the 1930s, dozens of men were prosecuted for "unnatural
fornication", many of whom worked on the Swedish America Liners. They
testified about many sexual encounters in New York, almost always involving
oral sex, whereas this was unusual between the men in Gothenburg.
One should of course not jump to conclusions from that kind of testimonies,
especially if they are formulated in a context which wants to place the
roots of perversion with "the others" - but after having studied 2,300
court cases I think I can say that the focus of attention in Sweden passed
from anal penetration (most often connected with bestiality) to mutual
masturbation and oral sex, the latter often being associated with
influences coming from America, either by returning emigrants or by sailors.
Jens
Jens Rydstr÷m tel: +46-8-84 50 60 (h)
Dept of History tel: +46-8-674 71 05 (w)
Stockholm University fax: +46-8-16 75 48 (w)
S-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden
jens.rydstrom@historia.su.se
http://www.historia.su.se/safari/artiklar/rydstrom.htm
___________________________________________________________________Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 13:00:53 +0100
From: Paula <fa1912@wlv.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Reviews
Dear Lesley
I think the idea is a great one - the Institute of Historical Research's
one is excellent and perhaps the review section you envisage could be along
those lines.
Paula Bartley
At 09:08 01/05/01 -0000, you wrote:
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 13:25:40 +0100
It's surprisingly difficult to determine exactly how clean our ancestors =
were. Speaking mainly about the middle and artisan classes during the =
early modern period, a slight misapprehension about personal hygiene has =
arisen because the British hated taking *baths* (and didn't regularly =
immerse their bodies until after World War II), but in fact they did =
*wash* themselves every day, using a handbasin and water jug and wash =
cloth and soap. They did not regularly change their underclothes, =
however. During the 17th century they regularly used alum as a =
deoderant, but during the 18th cent. there are hardly any references to =
this, which may mean the practice died out or may mean it was so =
ubiquitous that it isn't mentioned. The main source of body-stench =
during the 18th cent. came from the mouth. People did brush their teeth =
but the available pastes etc. were wholly inadequate, and everyone's =
mouth was full of rotten teeth. Oddly enough, this does not seem to have =
discouraged a widespread practice of kissing.
=20
--
Rictor Norton, London
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/eighteen.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: Swamp1800@aol.com
Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 11:37:06 EDT
Subject: Re: [histsex] anonymous sex in late 18th century
In a message dated 4/30/01 1:47:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
Gail.Bederman.1@nd.edu writes:
<< There's no reason to think Jefferson
was more scrupulous than other sexually-active slave-owners, when it
came to sexual relations with slaves. >>
Of course, the history of sex can be summed up in three words: "Everybody did
it." But where's that leave historians of sex?
Like the Nazis, slave owners, now have the reputation as the consummate
sexual predators. So let us leave Jefferson in hell.
Let me rephrase my question: the modern age is quite kiss-and-tell. The 18th
century leaves us little to go on. Even though it was an age obsessed with
name and fame, and lusty, much of the history of its sex involves parsing
court cases. So I'm asking, and Leporello's "Madamina!" is echoing in my ears
as I write this, was sex outside of marriage largely an anonymous affair? I
just read about Boswell and I've already forgotten if he assumed an alias
when he went for a walk in the park.
Mille e tre!,
Bob Arnebeck
Wellesley Island, NY
___________________________________________________________________Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 12:19:33 -0500
From: Gail Bederman <Gail.Bederman.1@nd.edu>
Subject: Re: [histsex] anonymous sex in late 18th century
RE: demonizing poor, misunderstood slave owners and the angelic
Jefferson: There is actually quite a bit of information and a
large scholarly literature about the history of sexual relations that
occurred between white men and enslaved women in early American (and
an excellent book by Martha Hodes about sexual relations between
white women and black men in the antebellum south.) So we don't have
to demonize slave owners in our imaginations. It's been studied
nearly to death, already using the normal scholarly sources, which
are not nearly as scarce as you might think.
But let me be more specific in regards to your question:
Anonymous sex became a possibility only when cities became large
enough to allow anonymity in the first place--esp. London. London
was not the typical case even in England.
In the Early American context--where life was overwhelmingly rural
and there was no London--, there were only a handful of cities large
enough to allow anonymous relations prior to about 1840.
In the slave south--almost entirely rural outside Charleston and New
Orleans, which were themselves comparatively small--the kind of
anonymity you envision is impossible to imagine. Anonymity in
Monticello or anyplace in 18th century Virginia just doesn't fit in
with the typical available living arrangements.
Regarding the question of whether sex between slaves and masters was
well-known, let me paraphrase Mary Chestnutt's diary, written about
the time of the civil war: (I don't have the phrase in front of me.)
She wrote: Any woman can tell you the identities of the the father of
all the mixed-race slave children on all the neighboring plantations.
But when it comes to the mulatto children on her own, she professes
entire ignorance. These, she seems to think, fall from heaven.
Anonymity is only possible in large cities, or in frontier situations
when visiting between households is impossible. Jefferson didn't live
in that kind of situation in Virginia, as I understand it. And even
there, the others living in the households--slave and free--certainly
knew what was going on, which is not really what I would call
anonymity.
Gail
___________________________________________________________________Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 13:24:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: Michael Sibalis <msibalis@wlu.ca>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
Mine own research focuses on male homosexual activity in France since the
eighteenth century. The evidence is rather tenuous, but there is very
little mention of oral sex between men in the 18th century -- the police
records mention (with some exceptions) only anal intercourse and mutual
masturbation. Oral sex does appear to have become more prevalent in
France from the early 19th century and to have been fairly common by the
end of the century. I cannot say whether this reflects reality or is
simply because of the nature of the evidence.
Certainly, many female prostitutes in France specialized in fellatio by
the latter part of the century -- according to one source, they even hired
young men on whom they could practice to perfect their skills. (According
to one doctor, these young men were so "drained" of their vital fluids
that they sickened and died within a short time!) Scattered evidence
suggests that the practice of fellatio was spread to North and South
America by French prostitutes (or prostitutes who advertised them as
French). I have also heard the suggestion that American GI's picked up a
taste for fellatio from prostitutes they visited in World War I and
brought it back to America.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Michael D. Sibalis
Associate Professor
Department of History
Wilfrid Laurier University
Waterloo, Ontario
CANADA N2L 3C5
(519)-884-0710 ext. 3141
msibalis@wlu.ca
___________________________________________________________________From: David Greenberg <david.greenberg@nyu.edu>
Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 14:26:13 -0400
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
These remarks of Theo are very interesting. I will have to check to see
whether Kinsey found similar class differences. Theo, I wonder whether
you have any ideas as to why these class differences should have
existed? Could it be that hygiene was better in the aristocracy? David
Greenberg
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 21:23:14 -0700
From: Jack Kolb <kolb@ucla.edu>
Subject: [histsex] "The priesthood is becoming a 'gay profession' like
hairdressing"
Forwarded by Paul Moor
The Telegraph, London
30 April 2001
'Cliques of gay priests are dividing Church'
By Victoria Combe, Religion Correspondent
The growing number of homosexual men training for the Roman Catholic
priesthood is creating "divisive cliques" of gay and straight students,
the rector of a leading English seminary says.
Fr Kevin Haggerty, rector of St John's seminary in Wonersh, Surrey, says:
"It would seem to me that sub-cultures are a danger. They are
inappropriate for the priesthood and contrary to the openness required for
a priest."
Fr Haggerty raises the issue in a Channel 4 documentary, Queer and
Catholic, to be broadcast next Saturday. The presenter, Mark Dowd, a
former Dominican friar who is gay, claims that the priesthood is becoming
a "gay profession" like hairdressing.
Speaking to The Telegraph yesterday, Fr Haggerty said: "I don't think we
can avoid the issue any more. A lot of people's gut reactions to this
issue are not rational. They immediately think of the risk of abuse of
children. The problem for the Church is one of perception.
Homosexuality is not a problem in itself; the important point is the
sexual maturity of the priests."
He said the Church had introduced psychological assessments for all
candidates in which they were asked about their sexuality. "What we want
to find out is whether they are able to make free, moral decisions about
their lifestyle."
The programme claims that there are many practising homosexuals in
seminaries who conceal their sexuality. It includes interviews with
ex-students of the English College in Rome, where the Archbishop of
Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, was rector in the 1970s.
Chris Higgins and Dr Dennis Caulfield, who were seminarians there between
1996 and 1999, claim that students were reprimanded for calling each other
by girls' names. Mr Higgins, now a probation officer, was ordained a
priest despite his relationship with Dr Caulfield, who had left the
seminary to become a doctor.
Mr Dowd, 41, was a friar at Blackfriars in Oxford from 1981 to 1983 when
Fr Timothy Radcliffe, now Master of the Dominicans, was prior. He left
after falling in love with an ex-friar who visited the priory for supper.
Dowd says: "It was love at first sight across the refectory table."
The Catholic Media Office questioned whether the programme was helpful,
adding: "It is an issue which seminary rectors are talking about."
___________________________________________________________________Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 22:03:55 -0700
From: Jack Kolb <kolb@ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
>It's surprisingly difficult to determine exactly how clean our ancestors
>were. Speaking mainly about the middle and artisan classes during the
>early modern period, a slight misapprehension about personal hygiene has
>arisen because the British hated taking *baths* (and didn't regularly
>immerse their bodies until after World War II), but in fact they did
>*wash* themselves every day, using a handbasin and water jug and wash
>cloth and soap. They did not regularly change their underclothes, however.
>During the 17th century they regularly used alum as a deoderant, but
>during the 18th cent. there are hardly any references to this, which may
>mean the practice died out or may mean it was so ubiquitous that it isn't
>mentioned. The main source of body-stench during the 18th cent. came from
>the mouth. People did brush their teeth but the available pastes etc. were
>wholly inadequate, and everyone's mouth was full of rotten teeth. Oddly
>enough, this does not seem to have discouraged a widespread practice of
>kissing.
>>--
>Rictor Norton, London
><mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
>http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/eighteen.htm
Nonsense, Rictor. Men and women regularly immersed themselves--in rivers,
streams, and other bodies of water. This is what "bathing" meant, well
into the 19th century.
Jack Kolb
Dept of English, UCLA
kolb@ucla.edu
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 16:38:07 -0500
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
>I am reminded of the early safe sex
>campaigns here in the eighty's which not only were explicitly based on the
>assumption that gay men in Holland had less anal intercourse than their
>American counter parts, but also gave the clear message that anal
>intercourse was morally bad, e.g. with posters of pictures by Maplethorpe of
>a butt with the text "Exit Only".
Have you any idea where illustrations of these safer sex posters
using Mapplethorpe's imagery might be viewed/examined?
With thanks, Bob
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 08:42:20 +0100
Theo observes that "Most of the men arrested in Holland between 1675 and =
1811 ... - of course most of them belonging to the lower and often =
lowest classes".
=20
It is interesting how the criminal justice systems of different =
countries, and indeed different cities, produce different sets of data. =
It was my impression that most of the men implicated during the =
homosexual persecution in the Netherlands in the early 1730s were =
middle-class and artisans, though a lot of servants and some soldiers =
were also involved: decorator, embroiderer of coats, grain carrier, =
tavern keeper, candle maker, distiller, and that most of the men who =
fled were middle class and even upper middle class. But perhaps this was =
not the pattern over the whole period.
(Incidentally, as Gert Hekma mentioned earlier on the list, this Dutch =
pogram made quite a stir in the English newspapers, and I have published =
some of these reports on my website at =
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/1730news.htm ).
In 18th cent. England, most of the criminals *in general* did indeed =
belong to the lower and often lowest classes, but most of the men =
mentioned in the homosexual records belonged to the middling and mainly =
artisan classes (or lower middle class in modern parlance), many of whom =
owned their own places of work: shopkeepers, butchers, cabinet makers, =
carpenters, lots of clergymen and some schoolteachers, wig maker, =
innkeepers and publicans, and lots of soldiers and "errand boys" (but =
officially employed by, e.g., the post office, and not merely =
vagabonds).
This also seems to be the case in the northern German areas reviewed by =
Hergemoeller in _Sodom and Gomorrah_, and Hergemoeller also investigated =
the occupational data in the Venetian sodomite records and concludes =
that the dominant class of those arrested was the City middle class, =
handicraft workers, craftsmen etc., and especially proprietors of =
apothecaries' shops including surgeons. Hergemoeller says that "the =
lower classes, the day labourers, port workers, beggars, thieves, =
vagabonds, paupers, ... hardly come to light at all in the records" =
except for prostitutes. It's difficult to speculate on the reasons for =
this, but it does seem that in Italy and northern Germany the =
authorities did not regard the homosexual behaviour of the lower classes =
as a danger to society. In England all of the rhetoric of reformers is =
about reforming the loose morals of the lower classes, but the real aim =
seems to have been to regulate bourgeois sexuality (which I suppose is =
one of the basic meanings of puritanism).
--
Rictor Norton, London
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/eighteen.htm
=20
___________________________________________________________________Date: Wed, 02 May 2001 09:53:27 +0100
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: [histsex] boundaries/hygiene/oral sex
Hi,
Though improving hygiene is a literal fact, I was suggesting _symbolic_ boundaries when I
posted on this. Sex was dirty and unclean in late 19th and 20th century Britain (and other
European Christian societies?) regardless of the state of the body.
Here is a 20th century example re masturabtion -
( Jonathon Gathorne-Hardy. The rise and fall of the British nanny, London:Hodder and
Stoughton, 1972.)
'Alexander Weymouth ....can remember he and his brother Christopher Thynne fiddling with each
other's penises in the bath, perhaps the 'cleanest' place to do it. Nanny Marks said sharply,
"You're not being dirty are you?" '
Sex is dirty whether the boys are physically clean or not. Rictor's comment about kissing and
dirty mouths supports this. In that instance something we see as unclean was acceptable.
Ackerly found this a problem with his early 20thC working class lovers which suggests his
improved middle class dental health had altered his standards. The m-class perception of the
British working classes as dirty in the late 19th/early 20th century is probably a result of
changed middle class standards.
Gay sex is transgressive which raises the question of what gay men transgressed. The
passive/active argument is about gender roles and as I understand it the argument is that the
early to mid-20th century sees a switch away from seeing gayness as inverted gender roles to
object choice. ie a gay man ceases to be a man who takes on a sissy identity and becomes a
man who chooses to have sexual contact with another man. With inverted gender roles the
active man may not see himself as different to a man having active sex with a woman. So the
argument is that gender roles were being
transgressed I believe.
This issue of cleanliness raises another area with which sexual practice is intimately
connected but with which it is not fully over-lapping - treatment and perception of the body
(a la Norbert Elias).
My evidence suggests Rictor is not completely right about the daily baths - there is advice
in the 1920s about the need for routine washing of the genitals re hetero sex and
contraception from doctors. This is to both men and women. The doctors suggest those
routinely washing their bodies still do not wash their genitals. Still this may be the
product of late Victorian masturbation fears and not have been the case earlier.
Women were told they should not bath or during menstruation but this is rejected by advice
manuals in the early 20th century. As far as I know - which is only an impression - couples
did not like to have intercourse during menstruation. I believe this is a very old attitude
but again that is only an impression and don't know the rationale for it. In the 20th century
British women often dislike the 'messiness', of anything to do with their genitals.
Again - one way of seeing this menstruation practice is as boundaries - many many cultures
place boundaries around the polluting menstruating woman. People did not know that the
menstruating woman could not conceive so this is not a prohibtion that relates to
reproduction. As with fellatio it may be that a prohibition about the body influences sexual
practice.
Hera
p.s. Kinsey's working class is very interesting - do look it up David.
___________________________________________________________________
From: Lesley Hall <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] boundaries/hygiene/oral sex
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 09:06:08 GMT
A couple of comments on Hera's good points on
cleanliness and boundaries:
>there is advice
> in the 1920s about the need for routine washing of
the genitals re hetero sex and
> contraception from doctors. This is to both men and
women. The doctors suggest those
> routinely washing their bodies still do not wash
Yes- the formula of 'up as far as possible, and down
as far as possible' - but 'the possible' itself gets
left out. I think this phrase specifically refers to
people washing themselves at the kitchen sink while
still more or less fully clothed.
> British women often dislike the 'messiness', of
anything to do with their genitals.
Yes - often cited as one reason why women did not like
using the cap - plus, the belief that the cap would
'get lost' - idea that the vagina was the entrance to
a tunnel into the entire inner regions of the body,
rather than finite.
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
___________________________________________________________________From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 09:21:25 +0100
Jack Kolb writes:
"Nonsense, Rictor. Men and women regularly immersed themselves--in =
rivers, streams, and other bodies of water. This is what "bathing" =
meant, well into the 19th century."
Yes, Jack, you're right about "bathing", but Samuel Pepys and Dr Johnson =
did NOT run down to the Fleet ditch every morning with soap and towel in =
hand!
On mature reflection I realize that London had its "bath houses" and =
"hot houses" (sort of saunas, often "stews" of ill repute). Elizabeth =
Pepys once went to one and felt so virtuously clean that that night she =
wouldn't let Samuel get into bed with her until he "cleaned himself with =
warm water". Information courtesy of Liza Picard's amusing books on =
_Restoration London_ and _Dr Johnson's London_.
--
Rictor Norton, London
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/eighteen.htm
=20
___________________________________________________________________Date: Wed, 02 May 2001 13:03:56 +0200
From: Gert Hekma <hekma@pscw.uva.nl>
Subject: Re: [histsex] oral sex and hygiene
Dear friends,
there is a strange presupposition in the discussion on oral sex and
hygiene. It is as if unhygienic sex is repulsive to all people, but as we
know from contemporary sexual specialisations, and also from Sade's 18th-C
works, the most repulsive may be the most exciting. So the hygienic
argument (as to why people would not suck dick) is not very convincing.
Nonetheless, oral sex is also much rarer in Sade's work than anal sex
(sodomy is for him the exemplary sin).
The hygienic argument is neither convincing because anal sex could for
similar reasons (mostly for the 'active' partner) also have been considered
to be filthy and unhygienic.
Gert Hekma
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Gert Hekma
Gay and Lesbian Studies
Dpt of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Amsterdam
Oudezijds Achterburgwal 185
1012 DK Amsterdam
Phone: * 31 20 525 2226 or 6278877
Fax: * 31 20 525 3010
Email: hekma@pscw.uva.nl
Website: http://www.pscw.uva.nl/gl
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 13:33:04 -0700
From: IIRE <peter.iire@antenna.nl>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European anal sex
The Amsterdam Municipal Archive had an excellent exhibit until a few
weeks ago called "From the Plague to AIDS" that included the
Mapplethorpe poster among various safer-sex posters on display and
discussed the issue of moralism in Dutch safer-sex education.
Unfortunately their website, which does show a couple of posters from
the exhibit, doesn't seem to show the Mapplethorpe one. You could go
make sure for yourself:
www.gemeentearchief.amsterdam.nl/schatkamer/educatie/aids/.
Footnote: a French friend of mine who was living in Holland at the
time thought that Dutch gay men were much more ready to give up anal
sex than French gay men would have been.
Peter Drucker
PS I suppose I should introduce myself, since this is my first post.
I'm a political scientist by training, from the US, now working at a
small progressive international research and education center in
Amsterdam, where among other things I lecture on sexual politics. I
recently edited an anthology called Different Rainbows: Same-Sex
Sexualities and Popular Movements in the Third World (there's more
information about it for anyone who's interested of course).
> > I am reminded of the early safe sex
> > campaigns here in the eighty's which not only were explicitly based on the
> > assumption that gay men in Holland had less anal intercourse than their
> > American counter parts, but also gave the clear message that anal
> > intercourse was morally bad, e.g. with posters of pictures by
>Maplethorpe of
> > a butt with the text "Exit Only".
>> Have you any idea where illustrations of these safer sex posters
> using Mapplethorpe's imagery might be viewed/examined?
>> With thanks, Bob
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 02 May 2001 08:02:19 -0400
From: Cristina Nelson <crn@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: [histsex] cunnilingus
I have been following the oral sex thread with great interest, and have
learned a great deal. However, were I the proverbial Martian observing the
human race through this discourse, I would be under the impression that
oral sex is solely a male-male practice...which is my way of saying that
this discussion of oral sex has been limited to men. Although the original
post on this issue was, in fact, about male-male oral sex, I, for one,
would welcome a thread discussing male-female and female-female oral sex.
This is not at all my area of expertise (my work is on US women's
undergarments 1940-70) but I seem to recall from my readings that while
some authorities argued that female-female or male-to-female cunnilingus
did not enter sexual practice till the early 20th C, one authority
documented female-female oral sex in a (Dutch?) convent in the 15th C.
Since I have recently moved, I doubt I can easily get my hands on the last
source.
Just adding to the stew,
Cristina Nelson
___________________________________________________________________Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 08:24:43 -0500
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [histsex] anonymous sex in late 18th century
>Anonymous sex became a possibility only when cities became large enough ....
>>In the Early American context--where life was overwhelmingly rural
>.... there were only a handful of cities large enough to allow
>anonymous relations prior to about 1840.
>>Anonymity is only possible in large cities .... in Virginia ... the
>others living in the households ... certainly knew what was going
>on, which is not really what I would call anonymity.
According to the scenario sketched, I'm wondering what constitutes
anonymity ....
I'm reminded of the celebrated story of an earlier age ... the story
of Hester Prynne ... a story ... a fiction ... who *knows* ... I
wonder ....
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 08:28:34 -0500
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Abortion, homosex and Foot and Mouth
Have you the specific URL for this handy?
With thanks, Bob
>At last someone is prepared to speak the truth about abortion,
>homosex and Foot and Mouth disease. We await earthquakes with some
>trepidation.
>>Brian
>>>>Pastor Blames Gays for Foot-and-Mouth
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 08:29:56 -0500
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [histsex] "The priesthood is becoming a 'gay profession' like
hairdressing"
Have you the specific URL for this handy?
With thanks, Bob
>Forwarded by Paul Moor
>>The Telegraph, London
>30 April 2001
>>'Cliques of gay priests are dividing Church'
>>By Victoria Combe, Religion Correspondent
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Hall ,Dr Lesley" <l.hall@wellcome.ac.uk>
Subject: [histsex] Anthropology or pornography?
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 16:02:23 +0100
A colleague of mine is currently cataloguing a collection of photographs
amassed by Edwin Nichol Fallaize (1877-c.1957) in the early C20th. While
this does include pictures of fully-clothed musicians, matadors, and
schoolteachers, human curiosities (e.g. bearded ladies), matadors (including
women matadors), also more scantily-clad Bulgarian gymnasts, Swedish
simple-lifers and Olympic sportspeople, the collection also incorporates
pictures of naked people, more women than men or children by a proportion of
20:1. Many are posed cabinet photographs with elaborate mounts.
Fallaize was Hon Sec of the Royal Anthropological Society for about
a decade, but resigned the post in 1930 in mysterious circumstances, and all
documentation relating to him is missing from the records of the Society,
although he was able to leave his effects in their offices for many years.
However, on his death he was not obituarised in the Society's journal,
unprecedented for someone who had been both Fellow and office-holder. So
there are grounds for wondering whether there was something odd going on
with him.
What my colleague would particularly like to know is whether there
are other similar collections of photographs (blending the curious and the
curiosa) held elsewhere and if anyone has written on them. Any further
information on Fallaize would also be very welcome, and any thoughts
generally on this kind of collection of human images.
Many thanks
Lesley
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________
Date: 2 May 2001 12:54:59 -0400
From: "M.E.Buszek" <buszekme@chickmail.com>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Anthropology or pornography?
Although only the Kinsey Institute's collection of anthropological/pornographic imagery in Indiana is the only one that comes to mind (and much of its present-day collection is the result of donations from private collections other than Dr. Kinsey's), it might not be a bad place to start looking/asking. It's possible that they have or can point you to a similar private collection.
And, although the primary subject isn't necessarily what you're looking for, a significant portion
of my article "Representing Awarishness: Burlesque, Feminist Transgression, and the 19th
century pin-up" (-The Drama Review- 43, no.4, Winter 1999: 141-161) is dedicated to
addressing the popularity and acceptance of collecting quasi-pornographic imagery in the era of
the carte de visite and cabinet card.
Hope this helps...!
Maria Buszek
Maria Elena Buszek
Instructor of Art History
Santa Monica College
http://homepage.smc.edu/buszek_maria
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 02 May 2001 11:14:45 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Anthropology or pornography?
My question would be: why not both? I'm reminded of the
high-art-_versus_-pornography debate among liberals here in the US, for
which the same response has led to useful discussion and theorizing.
Tim Hodgdon
Ph.D. candidate
Department of History
Arizona State University
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Anthropology or pornography?
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 19:50:39 +0100
Tim Hodgdon wrote
'Why not both'
which is a reasonable question. However, since the photos of naked women are
not in the standard anthropological mode of 'savages' but emanate from
commercial photographers' studios, this seems to raise intriguing questions.
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________From: "theo van der meer" <1vandermeer@planet.nl>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 00:20:10 +0200
Hi Bob,
Try the homodok website:
http://www.homodok.nl/
Texts there are also in English, and you can send queries i think.
Theo
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob" <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
To: "Histsex:For historians of sexuality" <histsex@listbot.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2001 11:38 PM
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
> >I am reminded of the early safe sex
> >campaigns here in the eighty's which not only were explicitly based on
the
> >assumption that gay men in Holland had less anal intercourse than their
> >American counter parts, but also gave the clear message that anal
> >intercourse was morally bad, e.g. with posters of pictures by Maplethorpe
of
> >a butt with the text "Exit Only".
>> Have you any idea where illustrations of these safer sex posters
> using Mapplethorpe's imagery might be viewed/examined?
>> With thanks, Bob
___________________________________________________________________From: Swamp1800@aol.com
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 15:44:16 EDT
Subject: Re: [histsex] anonymous sex in late 18th century
In a message dated 5/1/01 1:23:44 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
Gail.Bederman.1@nd.edu writes:
<< In the Early American context--where life was overwhelmingly rural
and there was no London--, there were only a handful of cities large
enough to allow anonymous relations prior to about 1840.
>>
I rummaged through my own web page and came up with something that might
elucidate the point I'm trying to make. Senator Gouveneur Morris wrote in his
diary on January 5, 1801, "Mr. Dayton sits with us and tells some things
which would show the morals of the women of Philadelphia to be very compt.
[compromised]. I doubt and tell him if any foreigner had told me such things
in europe I would not have believed it."
Senator Morris had just come to the City of Washington from a stint as US
minister to France and obviously was catching up on the gossip generated in
the former US capital. Jonathan Dayton represented New Jersey. Both gentlemen
can be listed as "Founding Fathers." Anyway, what is meant by "the women of
Philadelphia"? Did Dayton tell tales on, say, Mrs. Bingham, and Morris cloak
her in anonymity? Or did Dayton relate tales about anonymous women which
shocked Morris as being more immoral than tales told of anonymous women in
London and Paris?
On the other hand, in Philadelphia in the 1790s, Talleyrand visited, walk
about town with, and impregnated a mulatto woman, and evidently supported the
child and mother to his dying day, to the admiration of a Quaker merchant
like Thomas Cope.
Gail also wrote "Anonymity in Monticello or anyplace in 18th century Virginia
just doesn't fit in with the typical available living arrangements."
Chief Justice John Marshall was one elite Virginia politician who was often
not recognized in Virginia. There are stories about him being at a hotel and
summoned by arriving gentlemen and instructed to carry their luggage.
As for Mary Chestnut's diary, it is unfortunate that a woman of such
perspicacity did not live and write in gossip-distance of Monticello. I would
argue that if the offspring of master-slave relationships were so well known
back in antebellum days, we wouldn't be in the midst of these ongoing debates
about Jefferson and Hemings.
Finally, I don't suggest that Jefferson was unknown on his own plantation. I
was wondering if gentlemen of that time compartmentalized sex outside of
marriage as a kind of generic tonic, which would account for why Jefferson
who thought so much of the offsprings of his minds, thought so little of the
offsprings of his loins.
Bob Arnebeck
___________________________________________________________________
From: "theo van der meer" <1vandermeer@planet.nl>
Subject: Re: [histsex] cunnilingus
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 22:42:45 +0200
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cristina Nelson" <crn@alum.mit.edu>
To: <histsex@listbot.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2001 2:02 PM
Subject: [histsex] cunnilingus
> This is not at all my area of expertise (my work is on US women's
> undergarments 1940-70) but I seem to recall from my readings that while
> some authorities argued that female-female or male-to-female cunnilingus
> did not enter sexual practice till the early 20th C, one authority
> documented female-female oral sex in a (Dutch?) convent in the 15th C.
>> Since I have recently moved, I doubt I can easily get my hands on the last
> source.
>> Just adding to the stew,> Cristina Nelson
I would not know about a Dutch 15th C. convent, but in an article I
published in 1991 I did mention a case of two women arrested in 1797 or 98
in Amsterdam who had engaged in cunnilingus. See my "Tribades on Trial.
Female same-sex offenders in late eighteenth century Amsterdam," in Journal
of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, no 3, 1991, pp. 424-445. Repr. in John
Fout (ed.), Forbidden History. The State, Society and the Regulation of
Sexuality in Modern Europe, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press,
1992, pp. 189-210.
It's mind boggling sometimes: unlike their male counterparts they were
definately lower class.
Theo van der Meer
ot.com
___________________________________________________________________Date: Wed, 02 May 2001 14:16:04 -0700
From: Jack Kolb <kolb@ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
>Jack Kolb writes:
>"Nonsense, Rictor. Men and women regularly immersed themselves--in
>rivers, streams, and other bodies of water. This is what "bathing" meant,
>well into the 19th century."
>>Yes, Jack, you're right about "bathing", but Samuel Pepys and Dr Johnson
>did NOT run down to the Fleet ditch every morning with soap and towel in hand!
>>On mature reflection I realize that London had its "bath houses" and "hot
>houses" (sort of saunas, often "stews" of ill repute). Elizabeth Pepys
>once went to one and felt so virtuously clean that that night she wouldn't
>let Samuel get into bed with her until he "cleaned himself with warm
>water". Information courtesy of Liza Picard's amusing books on
>_Restoration London_ and _Dr Johnson's London_.
>>--
>Rictor Norton, London
><mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
>http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/eighteen.htm
I was speaking somewhat tongue in cheek, Rictor; I should have indicated
that more clearly, and certainly added that bathing in some of England's
streams and rivers might make the bather dirtier than he/she had been
before. Cheers, Jack.
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Philip Stokes" <Philip.Stokes@btinternet.com>
Subject: [histsex] Anthropology or pornogaphy?
Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 11:26:19 +0100
Lesley's project is fascinating. Quickly, in passing - as I almost always
seem to be - I'd like to point to the work and collections of Arthur Munby
[associated with Hannah Cullwick] which are conveniently summarised in
Michael Hiley's book "Victorian Working Women: portraits from life" [London:
Gordon Fraser, 1979]. And if you can get it, look at Alain Fleig's "Reves de
Papier: la photographie orientaliste 1860-1914" [Neuchatel: Editions Ides et
Calendes, 1997]. There's a lot on the interface between the erotic & the
anthropological. And perhaps "Nudes of All Nations" Anon? [London: Routledge
& Sons, 1936] with an amusingly straight-faced foreword that seeks to assure
us of the editor's seriousness, and presumably, virtue.
Do keep us in touch Lesley!
Philip Stokes
philip.stokes@btinternet.com
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 08 May 2001 20:25:06 -0700
From: Jack Kolb <kolb@ucla.edu>
Subject: [histsex] Fwd: [OscarWilde] The Observer on unpublished witness
statements
[more on the Wilde court documents, from the Oscar Wilde list. JK]
Subject: [OscarWilde] ARTICLE - The Observer on unpublished witness statements
>Wilde's sex life exposed in explicit court files: Under the hammer:
>unpublished witness statements tell of 'rough' teenage boys and soiled sheets
>VANESSA THORPE AND SIMON DE BURTON
>
>05/06/2001
>The Observer
>Page 12
>EXPLICIT documents prepared for the Oscar Wilde libel case have come to
>light, offering a revealing new glimpse of the double life led by the
>celebrated Irish writer.
>
>The shocking witness statements, previously unseen, were drawn up by
>employees at Day Russell of the Strand, solicitors for the defence in
>Wilde's disastrous 1895 legal action against the Marquis of Queensberry.
>Most of the papers were filed away and never used in court.
>
>While Wilde is remembered today as the dandy-about-town, sporting bespoke
>suits and habitually wearing a green carnation in his buttonhole, these
>statements - from chamber-maids, valets, bell-boys and even a lamp-wick
>seller portray his private life in lurid detail.
>
>Seedy descriptions of Wilde's bedroom are included in the damaging file,
>which was instrumental in Wilde's downfall and formed the background for
>one of the most famous cases in British legal history.
>
>Wilde took legal action against the Marquis, father of his lover, Lord
>Alfred Douglas, after he found a visiting card left by Queensberry at the
>Albermarle club. It was inscribed with the words: 'For Oscar Wilde posing
>Somdomite [ sic ]'.
>
>The 52 pages of statements from 32 witnesses have never been published and
>are hand-written on heavy sheets of paper. They were picked up in a London
>junk shop for a pittance during the Fifties by a private collector whose
>widow is now selling them at Christie's on 6 June. The historic bundle,
>wrapped in pink string, is expected to fetch pounds 12,000.
>
>Among the more sordid details are those revealed by Margaret Cotta, a
>chambermaid at the Savoy Hotel, a favourite rendezvous for Wilde and his
>series of young male 'renters'. Describing a prolonged visit to the hotel
>by Wilde and Alfred Douglas, who was affectionately known as Bosie, Miss
>Cotta said she found a 'common boy, rough looking, about 14 years of age'
>in Wilde's bed, the sheets of which 'were always in a most disgusting
>state. . . [with] traces of vaseline, soil and semen'.
>
>Instructions were given that the linen should be kept apart and washed
>separately. Miss Cotta added that a stream of page boys delivering letters
>were usually kissed by Wilde, who then tipped them two shillings and
>sixpence for their trouble.
>
>Thomas Venning, a manuscripts specialist at Christie's, said the documents
>provided a new account of Wilde's undoing and had 'very detailed sexual
>content which was only mentioned in the trial euphemistically'.
>
>The statements also show Wilde's carefree attitude to discovery. Wallis
>Grainger, an apprentice electrician from Oxford, told how Wilde took him to
>a cottage in nearby Goring-on-Thames which he had rented and where he wrote
>An Ideal Husband
>
>On the second or third night, said Grainger, Wilde 'came into my bedroom
>and woke me up and told me to come into his bedroom which was next door. .
>. he worked me up with his hand and made me spend in his mouth'. The former
>butler of the Marquis of Queensberry was in the next room.
>
>On another occasion, during the Goring regatta, Gertrude Simmons, governess
>to Wilde's two sons, reported seeing him 'holding the arm of a boat boy
>called George Hughes and patting him very familiarly'. During the same
>visit she came across a carelessly discarded letter to Wilde from Bosie
>which was signed 'your own loving darling boy to do what you like with'.
>
>Another statement came from a 20-year-old called Fred Atkins, who Wilde had
>met at the Cafe Royale. Atkins said Wilde 'took me to the hairdresser and
>had my hair curled'. Wilde later took him off to Paris as his secretary,
>Atkins said. The job involved 'writing out only half a page of a manuscript
>which took about 10 minutes' after which Wilde 'made improper proposals'.
>
>Queensberry had used detectives to track down a circle of male prostitutes,
>and some of their statements are among those being sold. Wilde's action
>against Queensberry opened on 3 April 1895 at the Old Bailey but collapsed
>with a not guilty verdict. At noon on 5 April, the evidence gathered by
>solicitor Charles Russell was immediately forwarded to the Director of
>Public Prosecutions and Wilde was arrested on a charge of gross indecency.
>
>On 24 May, after two further trials, he was sentenced to two years'
>imprisonment with hard labour, which broke his health. After his release he
>lived abroad as a bankrupt under the pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth. He died
>in Paris on 30 November 1900.
___________________________________________________________________Subject: Re: [histsex] Anthropology or pornography?
Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 10:30:29 -0500
From: "Michael J. Murphy" <mjmurphy@artsci.wustl.edu>
One intriguing question raised by commercial studio images of naked women
vs. anthropological nudes is why the former is not considered
anthropological? Seems it depends solely on your point of view. Most
commercial images of nude women in the nineteenth century were French
produced porn and are rightly thought of as a stimulus to sexual
pleasure. But that pleasure was intertwined with the 'othering' aspect of
the photograph which silences the subject as it reduces her to a visible
surface; offers her as a physical specimen within the normalizng visual
field of the rectangular photograph with its Cartesian representation of
space; establishes the viewer in the role of voyeur of a subject who
cannot possibly 'discover' the hidden viewer's transgression. I would not
want to argue that every picture of a nude subject functions as
pornography; that's a question which must be decided on the historical
context of the photo. However, photography does represent an enormously
impacted structure of power relations often shot-through with the sexual
even when the sexual is superficially absent. On the commercial
production of female nude photography in the nineteenth century see Lynda
Nead's book on The Female Nude.
Also, we should not forget that the better known anthropological and
anthropometrical images of the colonized 'native' and 'indigene' were
paralleled by photographic studies of physical types in Europe and the
US; a strain of thought put to notorious use in Nazi Germany. Native
Americans and 'street arabs' were frequent subjects of documentary
photography, but more surprising are the studies of the racial types of
the British Isles, for instance. It was VERY common for bourgeois women
in Europe and the US to maintain photographic albums of physical types
with which they would entertain gentlemen callers.
For an excellent introduction to the topic of type and photograph you
should see Alan Sekula's article "The Body and the Archive" originally
published in October but anthologized in a number of volumes. In the same
Foucauldian vein see John Tagg's book "The Burden of Representation."
Also Elizabeth Edwards of the Pitt Rivers Musuem edited a great volume on
anthropology and photography with a number of pertinent essays; see also
the number of journals addressing what has come to be know as visual
anthropology. And see the book "Reading National Geographic" which has a
chapter dedicated to photographs of the non-Western other which reviews
the relevant literature and makes some useful claims. Books are currently
in boxes so I can't proved a full cite.
___________________________________________________________________From: DrkHeavenX@aol.com
Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 12:25:51 EDT
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
Greetings and salutations....
As a 'lurker' on this list, I finally have a question for anyone who can
answer it, regarding this thread on oral sex in Europe. Forgive me if I come
to any ridiculous conclusions....
First off, it seems to me that anyone engaging in the sex act would
eventually figure out that oral sex brings pleasure. Obviously, the church
had a major impact on societal behaviour, but throughout history, people have
always paid a certain amount of lip service to what the church wanted, and
then done as they pleased behind closed doors. It seems a matter of pure
logic that people would engage in 'forbidden' sex acts, when they knew there
was no way they were going to get caught. Perhaps that's why there is scant
mention of it anywhere.
Keeping that in mind, it also seems logical to me that it would be more of a
male supreme situation, too. From the research I have done, most men were not
exactly concerned about giving their partners sexual pleasure (although,
wasn't it mentioned by a doctor in the 18th or 19th century that women who
climaxed conceived more easily?). So, it seems to me that perhaps men were
getting a lot more of the oral sex...but there have to have been exceptions.
Being that there are men now that profess to enjoy giving oral sex, wouldn't
that have been the case then as well?
I also wonder if there was any influence on sexual practices because of the
Asian and Middle Eastern trade situations. In my experience, older eastern
culture was far more open about sexual practices, especially those the
western church deemed as forbidden or 'bad'. Could exposure to those societal
differences have influenced Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries? I am
honestly unaware of how much people intermingled due to trade, so it's merely
a question of conjecture here.
I wonder as well if the fact that men tended to be rather absent creatures
in the household, especially during times of civil unrest and foreign wars
influenced women to start experimenting together, and if perhaps it's just
not recorded because of how 'evil' it would be regarded by both society and
the church.
Wouldn't there have had to be some men that took pride in their sexual
prowess? Men than enjoying pleasuring women? At the risk of sounding coarse
here, many women actually prefer oral sex to intercourse....men had to have
figured that out, it seems to me.
Forgive any overly generalized questions and leaps of faith in this little
question...but I wonder just how much was left unsaid, and unwritten. It
seems to me that there was likely to have been a lot more going on than what
was recorded....any thoughts?
Cheers,
Amy Forsyth
___________________________________________________________________Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 09:38:15 -0700
From: "Dr. David Hersh" <Dr_Sex@netidea.com>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
At 12:25 PM 5/3/2001 -0400, Amy Forsyth wrote:
>First off, it seems to me that anyone engaging in the sex act would
>eventually figure out that oral sex brings pleasure.
True fact, and even from preliterate, time immemorial.
David Hersh
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David S. Hersh, Ed.D., FAACS
Clinical Sexologist
http://Doctor-Sex.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 12:58:33 -0400
From: "Roberto C. Ferrari" <rferrari@fau.edu>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
With the discussion going on regarding oral sex, primarily male-male, I
find it fascinating to hear about not only the different receptions to it
through time and through various cultures. Interestingly, it seems we keep
assuming that "oral sex" refers to oral-genital contact. But is this the
case? It's interesting to note that no one seems to have mentioned rimming
(again, perhaps focusing on male-male sexuality, but maybe not?). Perhaps
this would be another avenue of discussion that might prove
informative. Is rimming considered a 'modern' sex act? Are its
participants mostly American, its influence again coming from the gay porn
industry? Are there any legal treatises that discuss it historically, or
would it too have been considered a form of sodomy? If rimming is a modern
sex act, perhaps it should be examined for its transference through various
cultures, thereby creating an historical and ethno-cultural corollary to
other non-procreative sex acts such as oral-genital sex.
-- Roberto
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 23:07:24 +0100
Jack writes:
"I was speaking somewhat tongue in cheek"
And so was I -- as is appropriate to the subject of this thread . . . .
--
Rictor Norton, London
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Pablo Ben" <benpablo@hotmail.com>
Subject: [histsex] on the personal and the political
Date: Wed, 02 May 2001 21:52:11 -0000
Dear Hera
I am really glad for your response. Respecting the lack of personal
references in academia, I think it is a problem that had to be thought a
little more, as I think with feminism that the personal is political. I
recently was in the States for the first time and I was very surprised to
observe that there is a very strong lesbian and gay liberation movement and
feminism is huge but there is a very conservative culture respecting the
body, affections, and personal contact. I think puritanism has a very strong
legacy in this sense. I am a little afraid about that as in some months I
will be going to further my studies in the University of Chicago. I hope to
find a place in a culture so liberated and so conservative, in some senses
which are very deeply diferent from my own culture.
Thanks a lot.
pablo
___________________________________________________________________
From: "theo van der meer" <1vandermeer@planet.nl>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 23:27:31 +0200
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Greenberg" <david.greenberg@nyu.edu>
To: "Histsex:For historians of sexuality" <histsex@listbot.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2001 8:26 PM
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
> These remarks of Theo are very interesting. I will have to check to see
>> whether Kinsey found similar class differences. Theo, I wonder whether
>> you have any ideas as to why these class differences should have
>> existed? Could it be that hygiene was better in the aristocracy? David
>> Greenberg
I would not have an immediate answer to that David, although I do not think
hygiene had much to do with it, at least not if we assume that upper classes
bathed more than lower classes: it were the upperclass men that sucked
lower class men. I just saw that Gert Hekma made some interesting comments
on the issue of hygiene as well. To understand the class issue it might be
an idea to look at traditions of upperclass libertinism. It somehow seems to
fit in there.
Furtermore on the subject of hygiene: During the time I did research on the
early modern period I began to sense that cleanliness could be or often was
aspired by people at the time, not for the sake of hygiene (per se), but for
the sake of honor. Whether that would or would not involve bathing I don't
know, but to wear a clean shirt was the last boundery between honor and
dishonor: even people who were to be scaffolded in ceremonies that were
meant to strip them of their honor were often granted that last boundery and
got a clean shirt.
Oh by the way, Rictor Norton was right about the variety of people being
prosecuted in 18th C. Holland. I stand corrected. Not surprisingly upper
class and upper middle class men escaped prosecution.
Theo
>
___________________________________________________________________From: "Thomas, Julie Lynn" <julthoma@indiana.edu>
Subject: [histsex] Russian research question
Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 14:05:53 -0500
I know there are at least a handful of you who have conducted research on
sexology in Russia... To that end, I have a logistical question.
I will be in Moscow from September through December 2001. While I intend to
devote a majority of my research time at GA RF (the Health Commissariat
files, 1920 - 1935), I was planning on collecting some material from the
Lenin Library (journals relating to sexuality, specialized texts and
mainstream women's magazines - with the 1920- 1935 timeframe in mind). The
repairs which have closed the Lenin Library will not be completed by
September, as previously announced. It won't reopen before December 2001.
Here's my question: Can anyone recommend libraries / sources in Moscow for
the kind of literature I'm seeking?
Thank you!
Julie L. Thomas
Visiting Lecturer
Gender Studies
Indiana University, Bloomington
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 18:48:28 -0400
From: fxxm <fxxm@aspma.com>
Subject: [histsex] oral sex and the penitentials
Found a comment in Pierre Payer's "Sex And The Penitentials: The
Development Of A Sexual Code, 550-1150" (1984), pertinent to the thread
on oral sex.
--Phil Milstein
Boston
-----------------
There are frequent references in the penitentials to oral sex, most of
them relating to homosexual practices. There is a canon in Theodore
which may refer to heterosexual oral sex, but the reference is certainly
not clear, particularly when one considers that the canon appears under
the heading "On fornication" and not under "On the penances of the
married in particular" or "On questions relating to spouses." Derrick
Bailey in his study of homosexuality understands Theodore's canon to
refer to homosexual fellatio, while Noonan in his study of contraception
seems to understand the same canon in reference to heterosexual oral
intercourse. There is perhaps no way of settling the question, but the
context argues for its homosexual interpretation.*
[*"Qui semen in os miserit VII annos paeniteat. Hoc pessimum malum.
Alias ab eo aliter iudicatum est ut ambo usque in finem vitae peniteant
vel XV annos vel ut superius VII" Canons of Theodore U 1.2.15 (Finst
291). "Whoever emits semen into the mouth shall do penance for seven
years; this is the worst of evils. It has also been judged otherwise by
him, namely, that both shall do penance to the end of their lives, or
for fifteen years, or for seven years as above." See Bailey
"Homosexuality" 105, and Noonan "Contraception" 164.]
This canon, which is repeated with some modification by the Excarpsus of
Cummean, in the edition of Schmitz seems to refer to the homosexual
relations of natural brothers, which is mentioned in the previous canon.
Neither Egbert nor Bede refers to oral sex. The weight of evidence
suggests that reference to heterosexual oral practices is not to be
found in these early penitentials, nor is it found in the later manuals
except for a canon in the Tripartite of St. Gall, which makes the only
unambiguous reference to a heterosexual oral relation in the Latin
penitentials: "He who emits semen into the mouth of a woman shall do
penance for three years; if they are in the habit they shall do penance
for seven years." Anticipating our discussion of homosexuality, we can
say that while homosexual oral practices were of some concern to the
writers of the penitentials from the time of Vinnian, heterosexual oral
practices were not. Certainly, this would not have been because the
practices themselves were considered less grave but probably because
they were not widespread enough to warrant inclusion in the penitentials.
-----------------
P.S. Does anyone know of Payer's current whereabouts? I would like to
ask him a question about another point he raises in the book.
___________________________________________________________________
From: JNKATZ1@aol.com
Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 23:19:11 EDT
Subject: [histsex] oral sex and slang?
Does any list member have evidence of 19th century or earlier uses of the
phrase "to blow," meaning to practice an oral-genital act on someone?
Charley Shively mentions some suggestive evidence in a letter to Whitman, but
he does not document the sexual useage of the term.
Jonathan Ned Katz
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 22:57:43 -0500
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Anthropology or pornography?
> But that [sexual] pleasure [of the commercial female nude
>photograph] was intertwined with the 'othering' aspect of
>the photograph which ... offers her as a physical specimen within
>the normalizng visual
>field of the rectangular photograph with its Cartesian representation of
>space;
Can you explain what you mean by the Cartesian representation of space?
>establishes the viewer in the role of voyeur of a subject who
>cannot possibly 'discover' the hidden viewer's transgression.
Can you explain what you mean by the above? Who is the "hidden
viewer"? The spectator in front of the photograph? Why
transgression? In what sense?
With thanks, Bob
___________________________________________________________________From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 22:27:56 +0100
On the subject of rimming, I think it's mentioned by Martial (who also =
mentions cunnilingus and almost anything else you can think of).
The trials of the Templars do seem to record the practice of oral-anal =
sex, but there are arguments over how much of the evidence was =
fabricated by the prosecutors/persecutors, and there are problems over =
interpreting "the Kiss of Baphomet" as a sexual act rather than a =
religious ritual. I don't think there's much else in the historical =
record of actual sexual behaviour, but there are lots of jokes and =
insults in medieval popular literature turning on the phrase "Come kiss =
my arse!" and some amusing stories about kissing the fundament when =
something else was expected, in Chaucer and Boccaccio. When it is =
treated seriously, it is associated with sodomy (and heresy).
In the first English vernacular mystery play, _The Killing of Abel_ =
(1450), Cain is more or less portrayed as having a homosexual =
relationship with both the Devil and his boy/servant Garcio, and he =
seems to want the same relationship with his brother Abel, to whom he =
says: "Com kis myn ars, me list not ban, / ... / Com nar, and other =
drife or hald, / And kys the dwillis toute! / Go gres thi shepe under =
the toute, / For that is the most lefe" ("Come kiss my arse, I won't =
curse. ... Come near and kiss the devil's buttocks! Go grease your sheep =
under their buttocks, for that is most dear to you.") These lines are =
omitted from most modern editions of the text.
--
Rictor Norton, London
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
___________________________________________________________________Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 17:50:57 +0100
From: "Peter Bartlett" <Peter.Bartlett@nottingham.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] European oral sex
In all the discussion of who was sucking whom, we have lost one of the threads which Theo
introduced - that the conception of active and passive has reversed over time (it would seem not
necessarily at precisely the same time in all places)? It does seem to me that this ought to be
some sort of marker for our understanding of sexuality between men, at least (and interestingly,
we haven't noticed or discussed whether a similar change occurs in heterosexual oral sex), but
I'm not quite sure what the change is.
Does anybody have any thoughts on that? Is it, for example, a marker of a re-articulation of gay
male sex in a heterosexual paradigm, where active equals male and male means penetrating? Are
there other similar markers of changed perception of gay sex in the same sort of way?
Stumped but curious -
peter
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 18:41:59 +0100 (BST)
From: "=?iso-8859-1?q?Michael=20O'Rourke?=" <tranquilised_icon@yahoo.com>
Subject: [histsex] Byron and disability
Dear listmembers,
I have been working on how queerness and disability
converge on the same axis ( particularly in the
letters of Pope and Swift) and it occured to me that
while critics and biographers are quite comfortable
with talking about Lord Byron's sexuality they are
less so when it comes to discussing his club foot. I
wonder could anybody direct me to any recent work that
does address Byron's disabilty (preferably alongside
his sexuality) or perhaps any (recent)
psychopathological studies of Byron.
Many thanks in advance,
Michael O'Rourke, UCD.
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 19:35:12 +0100
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Anthropology or pornography?
Hi,
George Ryley Scott who wrote popular sex books in the 20th century - from birth control
advice to books on flagellation. He was a member of the Royal Anthropological Society. If
anyone doing research related to the society has come across any mentions of him I would be
grateful if they would pass them on to me.
Thanks
Hera
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________From: "Brian Dempsey" <editor@scolag.org.uk>
Subject: RE: [histsex] Royal Society of Anthropology
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 21:21:13 +0100
I quite agree with Hera that those who falsify history by promoting their
arrogant assumptions or their crass ignorance as valid "research" do us all
a disservice.
We all know those who promote their work as "British history" when they
really mean English history, thereby falsifying the historical record and
making invisible certain generally marginalised groups, are amongst the
worst offenders. Most people on this list who are based in England are
intelligent enough to be conscious of the issue.
Hera has highlighted this problem on more than one occasion.
Lesley has pointed to the crass and anti-academic habit of thinking that
"Britain" is a synonym for England and Wales and, I am sure, she would never
refer to flawed research based on such ignorance as, say, "excellent". That
would be backward gibberish.
This English nationalism or Anglo-centrism is just the same as those who
ignore issues of race, class, gender and so on - simple bigotry. It is good
to know that this list is sensitive to the dangers of accepting ignorant
nationalistic prejudice as "history". If it weren't it would be reduced to
people sharing their prejudices with one another: a reasonable enough
pursuit but hardly the discipline of historical research.
Less ignorance and more careful, critical historical research is, in my
view, what we need. I can always delete messages which are clearly ignorant
of basic realities.
Brian
___________________________________________________________________From: "Philip Stokes" <philip.stokes@btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Byron and disability
Date: Sat, 5 May 2001 13:21:44 +0100
Dear Michael,
You may like to look at Benita Eisler's "Byron, Child of Passion, Fool of
Fame." [London: Hamish Hamilton, 1999] While it is a general biog - for my
money the best by some distance in the current crop - Benita has concerned
herself with the issues around Byron's deformity in some detail. However, of
necessity in such a work the writing on these topics is distributed through
the text, and were it not for the quality of the index, it might be too
daunting to attempt to unpick them. But here I recommend it unreservedly,
and admire the quality of the insights made available.
Maybe you should know that I was born with bilateral talipes, eventually
corrected by operation, but with residual disability extending to my early
adulthood. Thus Benita's account of Byron's schooldays, [pp52-3] is like a
replay of my own. It is tempting to associate Byron's and my competitiveness
with our medical histories. Indeed there are some superficial similarities -
Byron's swimming with my extreme walking, mountaineering and survival, for
instance. But there are any number of precedents for the other aspects of my
character in the previous generations of my family, who were thoroughly
robust all their lives, and that makes any attempted close correlation
between myself and Byron via our shared disability look shaky indeed. I
think these things are much too multicausal for simple equivalence; in any
case I have a strong inclination towards seeking answers in inheritance,
before environment, which though it may be close in influence, seems to me
to lie second most of the time.
Regards,
Philip Stokes
philip.stokes@btinternet.com
___________________________________________________________________Date: 5 May 2001 15:33:10 -0000
From: "dick gifford" <dickgifford@2hb.net>
Subject: Re:[histsex] oral sex and slang?
On Thu, 3 May 2001 23:19:11 EDT JNKATZ1@aol.com wrote:
>Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah/listinf.htm
>>--------------------------- ListBot Sponsor --------------------------
>Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>Does any list member have evidence of 19th century or earlier uses of the
>phrase "to blow," meaning to practice an oral-genital act on someone?
>>Charley Shively mentions some suggestive evidence in a letter to Whitman, but
>he does not document the sexual useage of the term.
>>Jonathan Ned Katz
Hi Jonathan,
As early adolescents (c.1960) we got the impression that being offered a blow job was a scam. We were told by an older boy that if we blew air up the channel of our penises we'd get a real good feeling when it came back out. A buddy of mine tried to do this with a straw. This didn't work; and, being a "wise guy", he told this older teen to his face that it didn't work. "Well, actually you've got to get someone else to do it for you," was the response. And, since wise guys are sometimes curious guys in a very mischievous way....
This was next door to Lynn, Massachusetts, a city well-known at that as having a large gay
community.
Regards,
Dick.
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 19:26:56 +0000
From: fxxm <fxxm@aspma.com>
Subject: Re: [histsex] oral sex and slang?
> Does any list member have evidence of 19th century or earlier uses of the
> phrase "to blow," meaning to practice an oral-genital act on someone?
> Charley Shively mentions some suggestive evidence in a letter to Whitman, but
> he does not document the sexual useage of the term.
Perhaps the following will help. It seems to disavow
Shiveley's notion of what "blow" might have meant to Whitman
and his friends, but of course not conclusively so. I found
it in Ken Emerson's biography of Stephen Foster, and Emerson
got it from Justin Kaplan's bio of Whitman.
--Phil Milstein
---------------
Walt Whitman was scarcely more charitable when he
anathematized supporters of James Buchanan (and Millard
Fillmore, the Know-Nothing candidate) as
"... spies, blowers, electioneers, body snatchers, bawlers,
bribers, compromisers, runaways, lobbyers, sponges, ruined
sports, expelled gamblers, policy backers, monte dealers,
duelists, carriers of concealed weapons, blind men, deaf
men, pimpled men, scarred inside with the vile disorder,
gaudy outside with gold chains from the people's money and
harlot's money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men,
the lousy combings and born freedom sellers of the earth."
---------------
___________________________________________________________________From: "Peter Boston" <peterboston@paradise.net.nz>
Subject: Re: [histsex] oral sex and slang?
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 01:04:47 +1200
As an aside, in early twentieth century New Zealand the slang term for a
male performing oral sex on another man was a 'gobbler'. I don't know if
this was specific to this country. Occasionally references also pop up to
'Gam' presumably a contraction of the French.
___________________________________________________________________Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 13:57:37 +0930
From: Rikki Wilde <rikki.wilde@adelaide.edu.au>
Subject: [histsex] 'Grim Reaper'
Dear Historians and Cultural theorists, Would anyone have a video copy
of the 'Grim Reaper' advertising campaign that was aired on Australian
television in April 1987? Or would any one of you know where I could
obtain a copy. I am a higher degree student at Adelaide University in
Australia, particularly interested in queer subjects. Cheers, Rikki
Wilde.
___________________________________________________________________
Subject: Re: [histsex] Anthropology or pornography?
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 00:25:12 -0500
From: "Michael J. Murphy" <mjmurphy@artsci.wustl.edu>
Bob,
Some thoughts:
>>> But that [sexual] pleasure [of the commercial female nude
>>photograph] was intertwined with the 'othering' aspect of
>>the photograph which ... offers her as a physical specimen within
>>the normalizng visual
>>field of the rectangular photograph with its Cartesian representation of
>>space;
>>Can you explain what you mean by the Cartesian representation of space?
Perhaps I should have typed "Cartesian spatial field" not "representation
of space." By this I mean a visual field which appears arranged from a
single viewing position, centering and privileging the viewer. Cubism,
for instance, does not employ a Cartesian visual field. Cartesian space
is coordinate (i.e. a 3D grid), with overlapping objects perveived as a
sign of depth; differences in size of similar objects is perceived as
distance, etc. One might of course assert that the documentary photograph
merely mimics the natural function of the eye, but photoreception might
be natural but visual perception is cultural. We are tutored in Cartesian
viewing.
>>establishes the viewer in the role of voyeur of a subject who
>>cannot possibly 'discover' the hidden viewer's transgression.
>>Can you explain what you mean by the above? Who is the "hidden
>viewer"? The spectator in front of the photograph? Why
>transgression? In what sense?
Especially documentary photography (and by this I mean scientific
photography, not the 30s New Deal kind of documentary photog.) presents
the subject as a visual object of knowledge; a specimen or type for
study. The viewer of such photographs is analogous to a voyeur; one who
derives sexual pleasure from looking without being seen. Film theorists
fond of psychoanalysis have made much of the viewer at the keyhole. The
absence of the speaking subject signified by the presence of the
photograph virtually ensures the scientific 'voyeur' will not be
'discovered', a fact which surely encourages prolonged looking but
lessens its sexual frisson, yes? There's a fine, always-already crossed
line between, for instance, French pornography and anthropological
'types' of topless French Algeriennes.
Hope this helps,
Mike
___________________________________________________________________Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 09:31:50 -0500
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Anthropology or pornography?
> >> But that [sexual] pleasure [of the commercial female nude
> >>photograph] was intertwined with the 'othering' aspect of
> >>the photograph which ... offers her as a physical specimen within
> >>the normalizng visual
> >>field of the rectangular photograph with its Cartesian representation of
> >>space;
> >> >Can you explain what you mean by the Cartesian representation of space?
>Perhaps I should have typed "Cartesian spatial field" not "representation
>of space." By this I mean a visual field which appears arranged from a
>single viewing position, centering and privileging the viewer.....
>Cartesian space
>is coordinate (i.e. a 3D grid), with overlapping objects perveived as a
>sign of depth; differences in size of similar objects is perceived as
>distance, etc. One might of course assert that the documentary photograph
>merely mimics the natural function of the eye,
I always find such assertions confusing ... "the eye" ... how many
human beings have "the eye"? With few exceptions human sight is
binocular in contrast to the monocular camera lens.
>but photoreception might
>be natural but visual perception is cultural. We are tutored in Cartesian
>viewing.
I'm wondering if what you are referring to as Cartesian viewing,
Cartesian space is what I would characterize as Albertian
(Renaissance) space .... Perhaps you could offer some bibliography
to enlighten me?
> >>establishes the viewer in the role of voyeur of a subject who
> >>cannot possibly 'discover' the hidden viewer's transgression.
> >> >Can you explain what you mean by the above? Who is the "hidden
> >viewer"? The spectator in front of the photograph? Why
> >transgression? In what sense?
>Especially documentary photography (and by this I mean scientific
>photography, not the 30s New Deal kind of documentary photog.) presents
>the subject as a visual object of knowledge; a specimen or type for
>study.
I was under the impression you were referring to commercial
photographs of the female nude. Do these constitute documentary,
scientific photography? Are anthroplogical photographs
"documentary," "scientific"?
>The viewer of such photographs is analogous to a voyeur;
Only scientific photographs? Or anthropological photographs? Or both?
>one who
>derives sexual pleasure from looking without being seen.
I don't understand. Are commercial photographs of the female nude
the same as documentary, scientific photographs of the female nude?
Or are you referring to anthropological photographs of (partially)
naked females?
>Film theorists
>fond of psychoanalysis have made much of the viewer at the keyhole.
Oh, I believe in _Being and Nothingness_ Jean-Paul Sartre has
something to say about that considerably earlier ... as does Marcel
Duchamp in a non-textual format in _Etant donnes_
>The
>absence of the speaking subject signified by the presence of the
>photograph virtually ensures the scientific 'voyeur' will not be
>'discovered', a fact which surely encourages prolonged looking but
>lessens its sexual frisson, yes?
What about the sexual frisson of being caught in the act/discovered
during prolonged looking? And again is this "scientific 'voyeur'"
the viewer of "anthropological" photographs of (partially) naked
females?
>There's a fine, always-already crossed
>line between, for instance, French pornography and anthropological
>'types' of topless French Algeriennes.
IC ... anthropological topless "types" are documentary, scientific
... therefore prolonged looking by the scientific voyeur is "safer"
if less sexual than prolonged looking of porn?
With thanks for an interesting exchange ....
___________________________________________________________________Mon, 07 May 2001 19:47:39 GMT
From: "clair scrine" <cscrine@hotmail.com>
Subject: [histsex] Old Maids Mania
Dear List Servers, I am hoping that some of you out there may be able to
direct me to any references you know of in the British medical literature
(although doesn't have to be), regarding nineteenth century attitudes
towards, cases of, conceptions of (etc) "anomalous" sexual desire in
menopausal women. I am aware of William Tyler-Smith's work, and J.B Hicks
attitudes who both seem to suggest that such women were either liable to go
astray in regards to their sexual desire, or shouldn't really have any in
the first place - now that their child bearing years were over. If anybody
can help with this or has more to say on it I would be most appreciative -
Regards, Clair Scrine
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 14:40:02 -0700
From: Jack Kolb <kolb@ucla.edu>
Subject: [histsex] Fwd: [OscarWilde] New Wilde Trial Dossier
>Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 07:55:51 -0400 (EDT)
>From: royeaux@aol.com
>Subject: [OscarWilde] New Wilde Trial Dossier
>To: oscarwilde@yahoogroups.com
>>Posted for academic purposes from The Times, London, May 7th, 2001:
>>Wilde Dossier Spells Out His Lurid Affairs by Paul McCann, Media
>Correspondent.
>>A sheaf of explicit witness statements intended for the Oscar Wilde libel
>trial have come to light in London. The statements, which illustrate how
>openly Wilde conducted his homosexual affairs, were gathered by Day Russell
>of the Strand, solicitors for the defence in Wilde's failed prosecution of
>the Marquis of Queensberry for libel in 1895.
>>The 52 pages of statements from 32 witnesses, most of which were never used
>in the trial and have never been on public view, are meticulously handwritten
>on heavy sheets of paper held together with pink string. They were bought in
>a London junk shop for a pittance during the 1950s by a collector whose widow
>is now selling them at a Christie's manuscript sale on June 6. The statements
>are expected to fetch up to ú12,000.
>>Most damaging of the details in the statements are those from Margaret Cotta,
>a chambermaid at the Savoy Hotel, a favourite rendezvous of Wilde. Describing
>a prolonged visit to the hotel by Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas,
>Queensberry's son, Miss Cotta said she once found a "common boy,
>rough-looking, about 14 years of age" in Wilde's bed. The sheets "were
>always in a most disgusting state." The linen was apparently so unsavoury
>that it was kept apart from that of the other guests and washed separately.
>Miss Cotta said page boys delivering letters were kissed by Wilde, who then
>tipped them 2s 6d.
>>During the Goring-on-Thames regatta Gertrude Simmons, governess to Wilde's
>two sons, saw him "holding the arm of a boat boy called George Hughes and
>patting him very familiarly."
>>Other statements came from youths picked up by Wilde, including a lamp-wick
>seller, a theatrical extra, valets and Fred Atkins, a 20-year-old man whom
>the playwright met at the Cafe Royal.
>>Atkins said Wilde "took me to the hairdresser and had my hair curled" and
>later took him to Paris, ostensibly to employ him as his secretary, which
>involved "writing out only half a page of a manuscript which took about ten
>minutes" after which Wilde "made improper proposals."
___________________________________________________________________Date: Tue, 08 May 2001 09:19:41 +0100
From: Paula <fa1912@wlv.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Old Maids Mania
Contact Marie-Clare Balaam at the University of Wolverhampton who is
writing up her PhD research on menopausal women in general
Paula
___________________________________________________________________From: "Philip Stokes" <philip.stokes@btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: [histsex] oral sex and slang?
Date: Tue, 8 May 2001 16:39:08 +0100
In the early 50s I was staying with an aunt who lived at Sudbourne, Suffolk.
This was an area where there were many US airbases, and consequently
American personnel who sometimes rented houses.
My aunt and I were out walking, and passed a house with the name "Gobblecock
Hall" inscribed on a large board by the gate. Aunt was delighted at this,
exclaiming with joy that the Americans should have brought back with them so
many of the English usages of their emigrant forefathers; for how many
modern English people still knew the old name for a turkey?
Well, a dictionary bears her out, up to a point, but I didn't feel inclined
then - nor in regard to that particular lady would I feel now - inclined to
debate the etymological alternative which then and now I feel to be the more
probable, though fellatious alternative.
Regards,
Philip Stokes
philip.stokes@btinternet.com
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 08 May 2001 12:34:24 -0700
From: "Dr. David Hersh" <Dr_Sex@netidea.com>
Subject: Re: [histsex] oral sex and slang?
Just to add a word to this thread...
Irrumation = mouth fucking as opposed to fellatio (cock sucking) as cited in:
Legman, G. (1979) Oragentalism: Oral techniques in genital excitation.
Published by Bell Publishing Co. a division of Crown Publishers, Inc. (No
city given).
Thank you Charles Moser for the citation.
David Hersh
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David S. Hersh, Ed.D., FAACS
Clinical Sexologist
http://Doctor-Sex.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
___________________________________________________________________From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: [histsex] Book announcement
Date: Tue, 8 May 2001 20:26:21 +0100
I have been asked to pass on the following information: as the book seems
likely to be of interest to members of the list, I am therefore doing so:
Pickering & Chatto are proud to announce the forthcoming release of
Eighteenth-Century British Erotica in April 2002. This is a collection of
primary texts representing the rich fund of social and literary data from
the period. More information on this title can be found at
www.pickeringchatto.com/erotica
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 08 May 2001 16:42:37 -0500
From: jahouck@facstaff.wisc.edu
Subject: Re: [histsex] Old Maids Mania
I am finishing a manuscript on menopause in America (1897-1980) and I have
found a great deal of anxiety about "aberrent" sexuality thoughout this time
period. If you are interested in more detail, let me know.
And now that I've entered the discussion, I suppose I should introduce
myself. I am Judy Houck, serving as a postdoc at the University of
Wisconsin--Madison. My manuscript is a revision of my doctoral dissertation
on the popular, medical, and personal views of menopause during the
twentieth century.
As you might imagine, finding first-person accounts of menopause,
particularly for the period between 1900 and 1950 are very hard to find, and
I am always on the look out. If anyone runs across one and are willing to
share, I would be grateful.
Judy Houck
___________________________________________________________________
From: Lesley Hall <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Old Maids Mania
Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 14:16:01 GMT
I have a recollection that this is discussed, though
perhaps somewhat obliquely, in the chapter of Mary
Poovey's _Uneven Developments_ which deals with
medical attitudes to the introduction of the speculum.
There was one doctor in particular (?Brudenell Carter)
who went on about women of a certain age demanding
speculum examinations. Think this whol debate may also
be dealt with in Ornella Moscucci's _The Science of
Woman_
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 09 May 2001 15:19:39 +0000
From: Dr Crozier <ucgacro@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: [histsex] an old question... james kiernan ref
Sorry to bore the list with this, again, but a few months ago I posted a
question about locating a source by James Kiernan in the journal _Medicine_
(and there are millions of journals by that name inthelate 19th C).
Somebody sent me a really useful answer: exactly which library it was in
and how to order it on ILL. And I sent this to my librarian here, and then
I deleted it from my inbox, and then when I asked a few months later if
there was any nerw: it was missing. She does not have my email (for
whatever reason), and nor do I. A comedy of errors, indeed.
I have spent about half an hour reading through old emails to this list,
and cannot find it anywhere (but saw a whole batch of other stuff posted:
glad this is archived!). Nevertheless, I still cannot get an article by
Kiernan on Algophily, and I am DESPERATE for it now.
Would the kind person who saved me last time please save me again... 'Once
more unto the breach, dear friends'
Cheerio, Ivan
Ivan Crozier,
Research Fellow
Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
24 Eversholt St
London
NW1 2AD
email: i.crozier@ucl.ac.uk
'ignorance is the first requisite of the
historian--ignorance, which simplifies
and clarifies, which selects and omits,
with a placid perfection unobtainable by
the highest art.'
--Lytton Strachey
___________________________________________________________________From: Lesley Hall <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: [histsex] Accommodation in Cambridge Mass, this summer
Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 16:00:20 GMT
Person wanted interested in renting a flat in
Cambridge Mass (walking distance to all libraries,
easy public transport into Boston), from now, until
end of September. Suit single person, couple or 2
sharers. 1750USD per month inc utilities. Please
contact Estelle Cohen, e.cohen@ucl.ac.uk , directly
please.
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
___________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 03:28:55 EDT
Subject: [histsex] Spain and homosexuality
Hi folks
A request on behalf of another. Does anyone happen to know what the legal
position of male homosexuals was in Spain in the years immediately before
Franco and under Franco? Was there any statute law? Or did Church law cover
it? And in either case, what constituted a crime and what punishments could
be handed out?
Thanking you :)
Chris White
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 10:59:22 +0200
From: Hildur Kalman <hildur@fil.uit.no>
Subject: [histsex] question on abortions 1885
In the film "Topsy-Turvy" (1999), directed by Mike Leigh, the mistress of
composer Sullivan lets him know that she is pregnant (again), to which he
replies that he will "make the necessary arrangements". She replies "oh no,
I couldn't go through that again". Ones first guess is that she will keep
the baby, but then she continues, saying something about taking care of it
herself, or making arrangements of her own -- and then she laughs and says
a trifle triumphantly "after all, it's 1885!"
This scene puzzles me. An obvious feature of the film is that they seem to
have put a lot of work into research - to make the time of 1880' in London
come out right. So I can't believe the conversation above, with it's
concluding remark, to be accidental. There is a point, but which one is it?
Had a new method of abortion been invented?
Was there a change in the laws, or of how these were observed, so that e.g.
an abortion made by a physician was more possible to attain?
Or what?
I would be happy if one of you historians on this list can give me, a
movie-going philosopher, an answer!
********************
Hildur Kalman, PhD
SV-fak.
Dept. of Philosophy
Kjaerbrygga
Sndre Tollbugate 7B
NO-9008 Troms
Norway
e-mail:<hildur@fil.uit.no>
___________________________________________________________________
From: Mal123nash@aol.com
Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 05:34:48 EDT
Subject: [histsex] First Gay Activist (Ulrichs) honored in birthplace
Hi All!
This bit of news came recently from the Hildesheim Circle of Gay Friends.
By unanimous vote, the city council of Aurich in East Friesland ( in
northeasternmost Germany) decided to name a street after Ulrichs, the first
known Gay activist. Ulrichs was born near Aurich in 1825.
In 1998, the folks in Munich officially opened Karl-Heinrich-Ulrichs-Platz, a
charming square in Munich's Gay district.
Last year, Wolfram Setz, of the Munich Ulrichs Committee, spoke about Ulrichs
at a speech held in Aurich. Recently, the Honorable Hans-Michael Goldmann of
the German parliament proposed the streetnaming to the Aurich city
councilmembers, who gave their immediate approval.
Three cheers for Aurich!
Michael (Lombardi-Nash) (and Paul)
http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/celebration2000
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: First Gay Activist
http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/celebration2000/memory.html
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: Memory Book 2000: A Festschrift
http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/uraniamanuscripts
Urania Manuscripts: Gay History in Translation
___________________________________________________________________Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 11:11:04 +0100
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: [histsex] question on abortions 1885
Hi,
I haven't seen the film but - She may be talking about being an independent woman and acting
on her own behalf rather than changes in abortion. I am not aware that there were any
substantial changes around that period in abortion technology. There was a change in
attitudes to women and growing confidence on the part of some women.
Hera
___________________________________________________________________From: "Dannielle Orr" <dorr@central.murdoch.edu.au>
Subject: re: [histsex] Old Maids Mania
Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 21:55:24 +0800
I am wondering whether Sheila Jeffrey's book titled "The Spinster and =
her enemies" might be of any use. I am sure she discusses =
nineteenth-century attitudes towards sexuality and spinsters, if not =
menopausal women. She might have some further references perhaps, for =
you,
Dannielle Orr
dorr@central.murdoch.edu.au=20
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 12:05:46 -0500
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [histsex] question on abortions 1885
>In the film "Topsy-Turvy" (1999), directed by Mike Leigh, the mistress of
>composer Sullivan lets him know that she is pregnant (again), to which he
>replies that he will "make the necessary arrangements". She replies "oh no,
>I couldn't go through that again". Ones first guess is that she will keep
>the baby, but then she continues, saying something about taking care of it
>herself, or making arrangements of her own -- and then she laughs and says
>a trifle triumphantly "after all, it's 1885!"
After all ... don't you think ... it's 1885 ... and a woman can take
care of herself?
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 07:52:25 +1200
From: "Walter Cook" <Walter.Cook@natlib.govt.nz>
Subject: Re: [histsex] question on abortions 1885
Do you think, however well such a film is researched for applied arts, fashion, and facts about
Sullivan and Gilbert, there is usually a fair lashing of modern attitudes and lingo. Shakespear in
Love is an example. The setting may be 16th century, but the behaviour and accents are
contemporary. I suspect the the conversation between Sullivan and his mistress about her
abortion is a similar anachronism
___________________________________________________________________Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 16:05:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mary-Jo Povisil <lefty@wam.umd.edu>
Subject: [histsex] Feminist Studies
Please circulate the following announcements from the scholarly journal,
FEMINIST STUDIES.
TWO ANNOUNCEMENTS from FEMINIST STUDIES
First, FEMINIST STUDIES announces its graduate student prize, the Feminist
Studies Award, which honors the best essay submitted throughout the year
to the journal by a graduate student. With this prize, we aim both to
encourage and learn from a new generation of feminist scholars.
FEMINIST STUDIES invites graduate students researching any aspect of
feminist scholarship to submit papers that would be of interest to our
interdisciplinary audience. All articles written by graduate students
during 2001 and received by 15 December 2001 will be judged by our
editorial board which will announce the winner(s) in January 2002. The
winner will have her/his essay published in Feminist Studies and will be
awarded a prize of $500.00.
The submission guidelines are the following: the paper should be a maximum
of 35 double-spaced pages (including notes); please send four copies and
an abstract. In the cover letter, the applicant must indicate clearly that
she/he wants to be considered for the Feminist Studies Award and must
identify her or his graduate affiliation by school, department, and
expected date of completion.
Please send all materials to FSA, FEMINIST STUDIES, Department of Women
Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.
Second, the latest issue of FEMINIST STUDIES (Spring 2001) is in the
mail. What follows is the table of content. For more information about
the journal, check out the website at
www.inform.umd.edu/femstud or email the journal at femstud@umail.umd.edu
Ayse Parla, The Honor of the State: Virginity Examinations
in Turkey (Feminist Studies Award Winner)
Kathy Rudy, Radical Feminism, Lesbian Separatism, and Queer
Theory
Pat Aufderheide, Memoirs of the Feminist Film Movement (Review Essay)
Rosalyn Baxandall, Re-Visioning the Womens Liberation Movements
Narrative: Early Second Wave African American Feminists
Wang Zheng, Call Me Qingnian but Not Funu: A Maoist Youth in
Retrospect
Dana Heller, Shooting Solanas:Radical Feminist History and the Technology
of Failure
Lila Abu Lughod, Orientalism and Middle East Feminist Studies
Charlotte Weber, Unveiling Scheherazade: Feminist Orientalism in the
International Alliance of Women
Hoda Elsada, Discourses on Womens Biographies and Cultural
Identity:Twentieth-Century Representations of the Life of
Aisha Bint Abi Bakr
Hoda Lutfi, Art Essay
Norma Moruzzi, Women in Iran: Notes on Film and from the Field
Claudia Mangel, Sugar River, In The Garden (poetry)
Valerie Wohlfield, Rose
Gail White, Dorothy Parker, The Crisis
___________________________________________________________________Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 10:22:41 +0200
From: Hildur Kalman <hildur@fil.uit.no>
Subject: Re: [histsex] question on abortions 1885
Hi,
and thank you for taking the trouble of trying to answer my question of
this, after all, fictitious example of a conversation!
The conversation might of course be an anachronism, as suggested by Walter
Cook - but the conversation does not strike me as one.
I would rather go for the suggestions made by Hera Cook and Bob, along the
lines of "an independent woman [..] acting on her own behalf" and "a change
in attitudes to women and growing confidence on the part of some women."
There are other suggestions in the film pointing to hers moving in circles
of emancipating women.
The reason that I did seek for other explanations, though, is that the
emphasis put on "I could not go through that again", did not suggest that
what had been so burdensome the last time was only that somebody made an
appointment for her. But if researchers on this list knows of no other
explanation - I do not think there is one.
thanks again!
hildur
___________________________________________________________________Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 07:48:33 -0500
From: Gail Bederman <Gail.Bederman.1@nd.edu>
Subject: Re: [histsex] question on abortions 1885
>>The reason that I did seek for other explanations, though, is that the
>emphasis put on "I could not go through that again", did not suggest that
>what had been so burdensome the last time was only that somebody made an
>appointment for her. But if researchers on this list knows of no other
>explanation -
Well, another view would be that the "modern woman" part of the
interchange (I can fend for myself) was not what she referred to
about not being able to go through that again--i.e. about the
abortion. Abortions were physically painful, potentially dangerous
and strenuous--you're probably talking about someone taking a sharp
instrument through the cervix and piercing the amniotic sac with no
anaesthesia, and then she would go going through labor, and
delivering the fetus--not to mention the psychological and emotional
stresses that might (or might not, depending on the woman) be part of
abortion. There were other methods too, but none were pleasant.
Most people survived abortions, of course, but there were
complications and dangers, and a lot depended on the skill and
experience of the practitioner. It was no walk in the park.
Gail
___________________________________________________________________Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 16:14:26 +0000
From: Dr Crozier <ucgacro@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: [histsex] Book reviews
Dear All,
Following Lesley's earlier mention of the possibility of book reviews on
the list, I am posting a couple of the recent ones whch I have done which
are either forthcoming or out recently. I hope they are enjoyed, and that
other people follow my example!
Cheerio, Ivan
Chandak Sengoopta, Otto Weininger: sex, science, and self in imperial
Vienna, Chicago series on Sexuality, History, and Society, University of
Chicago Press, 2000, pp. x, 239, 20.50, $29.00 (0-226-74867-7).
Forthcoming in Medical History
Otto Weininger, the homosexual, twenty-three year old, self-hating Jewish
suicide and author of Geschlect und Charakter: Eine prinzipielle
Untersuchung (Sex and Character: an investigation of principles, 1903), has
been the focus of much historical writing. Feminists have chided him,
Freudians have shown how he caused the break-up between Sigmund Freud and
Wilhelm Fliess, philosophers have demonstrated the influence Weininger had
on Ludwig Wittgenstein, historians of sexuality have used him as an easy
way into medical ideas of bisexuality. What these studies have failed to
do, however, is place Weininger's work in its multiple historical contexts
of fin de siÞcle Viennese philosophy, science, medicine, religion, and
culture. This has been finally achieved by Chandak Sengoopta in this
important and scholarly work.
Weininger was very widely read in the early part of the twentieth century.
He elicited responses from many of the important thinkers of his day, such
as Freud, Havelock Ellis and Robert Musil. His ideas on women, on
Jewishness, on homosexuality, and on biology make him of immense interest
to historians of sexuality and historians of medicine alike. Weininger's
text is properly read as an influential anti-feminist, anti-Semitic tract
which drew heavily on biological reasoning. Humans were placed on a scale
between the masculine man and the feminine woman. All people had some
traits of each archetype, and all were thus bisexual at some level.
Couplings between people were done so on the basis of creating a balance.
For example, a man who was seventy five per cent masculine would balance
with a woman who was twenty five per cent masculine. Homosexual
relationships were explained by the same logic.
Weininger did not hold women in high esteem. He suggested that they were
irrational and purely sexual; they were capable only of feelings, and were
unable to distinguish between feelings and thought. Women had two
archetypical female role-models, of which they were all partially blended
intermediate forms: the mother and the prostitute, both sexual to the core,
and prone to become neurotic. The prostitute was interested in any man who
could give her erotic pleasure, the mother in any man who give her a child.
Utopia would be reached, Weininger believed, when women overcame their
sexuality, although he denied that they would ever be capable of
rationality. Sex got in the way of rational thinking. Jews came in for a
similar splenetic attack from Weininger, who noted that "The Jewish race is
pervasively feminine. This femininity comprises those qualities that I
have shown to be in total opposition to masculinity" (62). Jews were more
sexual and less rational, according to Weininger, than Aryan men, who most
closely approximated the ideal (asexual) man.
The important achievement of Sengoopta's book is the way that these tricky
ideas are placed in the multiple contexts from whence they derived: it is
not enough for the historian merely to show that Weininger was sexist and
racist. Understanding Weininger's wide reading is essential to reconstruct
the discursive context for Geschlect und Charakter, a task which has been
very well executed by the author. Sengoopta's study of Weininger stresses
the importance of German rather than Austrian sources, and argues for
placing Weininger in his broader Viennese culture. Weininger became
Protestant rather than Catholic (the dominant religion in Austria); he was
a neo-Kantian; he moved away from the 'anti-self' ideas of his former
professor, Ernst Mach; he rejected the folk psychology of Wilhelm Wundt (an
area of this study which could have benefited from reference to the recent
work of Martin Kusch). Weininger also used many of the latest
embryological and hormonal arguments as evidence for his theories of
universal bisexuality. Sengoopta makes a very strong argument for the
importance of reading Weiniger's work through these multiple lenses.
Central to his argument is the focus on gender, which is the crucial raison
d'Ûtre of Geschlect und Charakter. The result of such eclecticism is that
Weininger does not always make a coherent argument, but understanding the
different strains and tensions between these multiple discursive fields
which sit so strangely in one text are essential if one is to understand
his work.
Sengoopta's text, then, is an interesting guide to fin de siÞcle Viennese
intellectual culture through the work of one of the most enigmatic
characters in the history of sexuality. It is impeccably documented (with
seventy pages of notes to one hundred and fifty six pages of text). The
historiogaphical premises on which the work rests-that a wider contextual
reading must be taken, and that the different discursive fields in which a
text can be placed and from whence it stems must be considered; ideas which
derive from Michel Foucault-are sound and to be highly commended. It
deserves to become a standard reference work when considering the fantastic
life and work of Otto Weininger.
Ivan Crozier,
Research Fellow
Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
24 Eversholt St
London
NW1 2AD
email: i.crozier@ucl.ac.uk
'ignorance is the first requisite of the
historian--ignorance, which simplifies
and clarifies, which selects and omits,
with a placid perfection unobtainable by
the highest art.'
--Lytton Strachey
___________________________________________________________________Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 16:17:20 +0000
From: Dr Crozier <ucgacro@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: [histsex] oosterhuis review
another review
ijc
Harry Oosterhuis, Stepchildren of Nature: Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the
Making of Sexual Identity, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2000, ISBN
0-226-63059-5 cloth. 321 + x pages. Price???
forthcoming, History of Psychiatry
Richard von Krafft-Ebing is remembered-when he is remembered-as the least
liberal of the pre-Freudian psychologists of sex. The main reason for this
is that the only other pre-Freudian sex psychologist who is recalled
outside the narrow world of the history of sexology is Havelock Ellis, so I
suppose Krafft-Ebing's relative historical obscurity is sensible under such
popular reconstructions of history. Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia sexualis
(1st ed. 1886) is the reason that we remember him. This work is still in
print, usually reprinted from earlier English translations of the seventh
and twelfth editions, but sometimes retranslated or updated.1 Psychopathis
sexualis has had a chequered publishing history. It appeared on
pornographic book-sellers' lists in the 'sixties, after the explicit Latin
descriptions of certain acts were construed (and when one considers the
books which share the erotica section of the Creation list with
Psychopathia sexualis: Marquis de Sade's Philosophy in the boudoir, and
contemporary erotic literature, such as Pan Pantziarka's House of pain,
suitably billed as "the modern classic of sadism and sexual excess", one
could still make an argument that it is sometimes read for pornographic
rather than historical reasons). No matter. Although the work is often
decontextualised, and occasionally read for titillation, the point still
remains that the book is an important part of late-nineteenth- and
twentieth-century culture, and one about which we knew nothing for too
long. If Krafft-Ebing had written only the six editions of Lehrbuch der
Psychiatrie auf klinischer Grundlage f³r practische rzte und Studirende
(6th ed., 1897), or his study of menstrual psychosis, Psychosis
menstrualis. Eine klinischer-forensische studie (1902), then he may still
only be read by those who find Carl Otto Westphal or Albert Moll
fascinating: a very small minority when the scope of contemporary history
is concerned. And like the fate of Moll or Westphal, there would be no
serious secondary work of the magnitude of Harry Oosterhuis's new book
about Krafft-Ebing.
There are multiple readings of Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia sexualis.
Oosterhuis' Stepchildren of nature offers us one: the role of the cases in
Krafft-Ebing's work in the construction of contemporary sexual identity,
and the way that historians can look at sexual cases to see what is going
on in people's sex lives. The result is the best single book on the
history of sexology to date, and far and away the most significant
published discussion of Krafft-Ebing. The first section, which deals with
the development of sexual science on the Continent, is the finest
discussion of this topic I have seen in print. Oosterhuis masterfully
handles the very complex story of how theories of the sexual impulse were
developed in the second half of the nineteenth century, prior to
psychoanalysis. One might quibble that Oosterhuis maintains a rather
monolithic conception of degeneration, as it is shown to influence
Krafft-Ebing and other sexologists-whereas there are important differences
between French, English, Italian and German conceptions of degeneration,
based on their different relationships to Darwinism amongst other things,
and further there are differences between literary and medical,
psychiatric, and biological articulations of degeneration: essentially that
there is no such single object 'degeneration'-but this would not vitiate
the statement that Oosterhuis' is the top book on the topic. For a
straight-from-the-hip narrative about sexual science which bears up under
close scrutiny, Oosterhuis work surpasses even Arnold Davidson's enticing
essays from the 1980s and 1990, which to date have never been expanded
(although I have heard rumours that the book is on its way). This is no
mean feat, and nor does it denigrate Davidson's work in the slightest.
The second section appropriately places Krafft-Ebing in the developing
field of psychiatry in German-speaking countries. It addresses the
personal and institutional struggles with which Krafft-Ebing was faced when
becoming an expert on sex, and gives us important new information about the
personal development of the man. Asylums in Germany (and elsewhere)
suffered from the image that they offered no cure, but were merely
receptacles for dumping the mad or difficult to manage. The kinds of
treatment which offered hope at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
when psychiatry started to emerge as a profession, turned out to be pretty
useless. Advances in the discipline came from those who were interested in
biologizing psychiatry by uncovering the organic basis for the kinds of
behavioural and emotional problems which afflicted the mad and the
perverse. Much of this was formalised in the degeneration theory posited
by B. A. Morel, and in the biological psychiatry of Wilhelm Griesinger,
which Oosterhuis has shown was influential in Krafft-Ebing's earlier works.
Apart from Henry Maudsley in England, this was a particularly Continental
agenda, although degeneration had a different trajectory in England. In
this sense, Oosterhuis must be read as speaking only about Continental
sexology rather than its English variations (which are difficult enough to
trace under the banner of English medicine, although exposed by Lesley Hall
and others).
One of the significant changes which Krafft-Ebing brought about in
psychiatry was the redescription of perversions-especially homosexuality-as
a congenital rather than an acquired condition. This was where the impact
of Morel and Griesinger upon Krafft-Ebing's theory of sexual perversion can
be seen, although it should be emphasised that Krafft-Ebing came
significantly under the sway of the French hypnotic theories of fetishes
and of the sexual impulse as centring on object choice, something which he
incorporated into his work. Not all of Krafft-Ebing's cases were
congenital, but increasingly congenital cases were used to suggest that
homosexuality was a part of the natural world, rather than a crime and a
sin as German criminology and jurisprudence would have it. Oosterhuis's
main thrust of argument is that these congenital cases were important in
the construction of modern homosexual identity. And in the third section
of his book he does historians of sexuality great service by cruising
through the cases-both published and unpublished-which exist in
Krafft-Ebing's archive and in his printed works, bringing us detailed
descriptions of those who wrote to Krafft-Ebing when in sexual and social
opprobrium.
These cases form the backbone to Oosterhuis' work. Sexology does not exist
without cases, for all psychological arguments made about sexuality-and
about perversions in particular-are based on such detailed histories
gathered from patients. Oosterhuis informs us that the early cases used by
Krafft-Ebing came from his practices in asylums in Graz and Illenau, as
well as being borrowed from other authors (this practice was common. James
Kiernan borrowed from everyone from Westphal to Krafft-Ebing in his long
reviews of sex psychology in the Alienist and neurologist in the 1890s).
After the first edition of Psychopathis sexualis, however, private patients
started coming to see or (sometimes anonymously) writing to Krafft-Ebing
with their problems, in the realisation that they were not the only
homosexuals/masochists/sadists/fetishists out there. It was in this way
that the tenor of Krafft-Ebing's work changed, as he incorporated many
first-person narratives into his work, selected because they gave the right
type of information about the perversions which were being discussed. In
the field of sex psychology, Krafft-Ebing's case histories were the state
of the art. Other sexologists emulated him when they uncovered similar
cases in their own practice; even Havelock Ellis made it quite explicit
that his own case histories in Sexual inversion (1897 and later editions)
were selected because they did not come from asylums like so many of
Krafft-Ebing's early cases.
In a sense, Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia sexualis is a two-way dialogue
between the patient and the author. Some ideas about sexual perversions,
such as masochism, were first described to Krafft-Ebing in letters from
private patients, and he had these patients write out their narratives in
order to demonstrate these new perversions to the medical community.
Patients also copied this style as a model in their initial letters to him.
Oosterhuis, in the fourth part of his book, suggests that this new
'confessional' literature should be tied in with the growth of the
autobiography as a narrative form, itself situated in the growth of
economic (and thus social) individualism on the one hand, and in an image
of the self made possible by the changing patterns of conceiving of
romantic love and the restructuring of the family (and therefore of private
life) on the other. This section fits in with recent discussions of such
topics by Thomas Laqueur and Peter Gay on the self in the nineteenth
century. It does not, however, address issues like the growing scientific
naturalism and secularist political drive to scientifically describe
sexuality as a part of this context, an issue I regard as imperative if one
is to understand the development of sexual science. In line with other
cultural historians' agenda, Oosterhuis leaves medicine as a field of
discourse worthy of inquiry in itself, and looks for other sociological
factors which impacted upon the birth of the modern homosexual, which he is
loathe to discuss as a medical object separate from the social and cultural
manifestations of homosexuality. Rather than speak of how homosexuals
became articulated as medical objects within a field of inquiry we are told
a story of the emergence of an object outside discourse. This is a
reversal of the way that Michel Foucault looked at how disciplines such as
psychiatry forge their own objects of inquiry. Thus Oosterhuis tells us
more about homosexuals and less about how psychiatric texts are written.
This brings me to other readings of Krafft-Ebing and his cases. As a
caveat, I would like to note that these are not criticisms of Oosterhuis'
achievement, but reflections on other ways to write the history of
sexology. To follow my hints here would be to write a different book. But
the fact remains that there is more than one story to be told.
In a book which addresses cases in medicine, it is imperative to ask what
cases do in medical epistemology. They can be read, as Oosterhuis has
done, as vignettes of culture which can tell us about homosexuals' and
others' self-identification (as advocates of the 'history from below' might
do). But they can also be used as windows into medical practice. This is
a very different use of the case study. It involves asking more about the
theoretical choices which are below the surface of the case. Cases are not
such simple structures. They convert-even when they are first-person
discussions-real-life experiences into medical facts. They are framed in
medical discussion. In Krafft-Ebing's work, even when the cases are
written by perverts, they are still selected as appropriate for the
argument being presented by the author (that is, medical cases cannot be
published on their own as memoirs; they are medicalised by the preceding
and following discussions of the case material, and by the categorisation
by which the doctor organises the material-something important for
Krafft-Ebing in particular, who first suggested many categories of
perversion with which to organise his case histories). By focusing on the
case, the historian can get a lot closer to the practices by which medical
knowledge about human sexuality was constructed.
If one does decide to focus on the doctor's use of, and negotiations
about, the case rather than on the subject in the case, then all manner of
other questions appear: how are cases negotiated with other doctors? How
are the 'borrowed' cases chosen? How does Krafft-Ebing negotiate the work
of others based on case histories? How does Krafft-Ebing informally
articulate his ideas about particular cases in letters to doctors rather
than patients? By asking these-and other-questions, one addresses the
field of sexology, rather than writing a cultural history of people's sex
lives. And this is a key issue is what separates the contextual history of
the field of sexology from cultural history of sexuality.
The above meditations should not be read as spiteful criticisms, but as
reflections on other directions which scholars can push writing about the
history of sexology, and indeed of medicine and the human sciences. This
book is bound to be the standard reference on Richard von Krafft-Ebing for
many years. It is essential reading for historians of sexuality, sexology,
and psychoanalysis. I will certainly be setting it on courses on the
history of sexuality in the future.
1 Published by: Bloat (New York, 1999); Arcade Publishing (New York, 1998);
Creation Books (London, 1997)
Ivan Crozier,
Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London
Ivan Crozier,
Research Fellow
Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
24 Eversholt St
London
NW1 2AD
email: i.crozier@ucl.ac.uk
'ignorance is the first requisite of the
historian--ignorance, which simplifies
and clarifies, which selects and omits,
with a placid perfection unobtainable by
the highest art.'
--Lytton Strachey
___________________________________________________________________Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 16:15:46 +0000
From: Dr Crozier <ucgacro@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: [histsex] maclaren review
Another review.
ijc
Angus Mclaren, Twentieth-century sexuality: A history, Family, Sexuality
and Social Relations in Past Times series, Oxford, Blackwell, 1999, pp.
viii, 295, ú50.00 (hardback 0-631-20812-7), ú15.99 (paperback 0-631-20813-5).
Forthcoming, Medical History
Angus MacLaren's ability to provide an overview of as complex a topic as
sexuality in the mercurial twentieth century is truly outstanding. In
Twentieth-century sexuality, McLaren summarises-with amusing wit as well as
historical accuracy-many of the key issues which have shaped sexual
identity throughout the last century. He does this by focusing on the
stories which people tell about sex in court reports, newspaper clippings,
medical texts, case histories, and birth-control manuals. Topics covered
include contraception, psychoanalysis, decline in birthrates, sexology,
homosexual sub-cultures, fascism and Nazism, born-again virgins, the
'sexual revolution', marital advice, 'perversions', the Kinsey reports,
frigidity, and AIDS. All of these topic have been the subject of panics
of one sort or another: did women feel that they were good lovers? is AIDS
a gay plague? are youth sexually active? have a quarter of American had
homosexual experiences? how can over-protective mothering effect the
sexuality of the child? How much sex is too much? These questions are
focused upon by considering a wealth of European and American evidence,
always in their political, religious, cultural, social and ideological
contexts . . . no mean feat, especially in a text designed to introduce the
history of twentieth-century sexuality! And indeed McLaren has written a
very good introduction. While not all of the issues are covered as fully
as they are elsewhere, it is the synthesis of a wide range of material
which makes McLaren's book so good.
As this review is written for a medical history audience, I will spend
some more time on this element of McLaren's work. Unfortunately, I think
that aspects of his medical historiography are the weakest in the work. In
particular, I had some trouble with McLaren's propensity to pick up on
medical discourses, remove them from the context of their original
production, and use them to illustrate some aspect of the history of
sexuality. For example, the section on abortion, pp. 74-79, considers
discourses from social reformer Stella Browne, unplaced commentator Alice
Jenkins, figures from Austria and Germany on abortion rates, Dr Janet
Campbell, Marie Stopes in The Times, physical culturist Bernarr McFadden, a
paper from WD Cornwell in the Canadian Medical Journal and a number of
observations made by contemporary historians. Instead of this mish-mash of
sources used to discuss abortion, I would have preferred an account which
mapped the lay of the land, and showed how different fields of discourse
based their ideas on a number of different, field specific interests (which
could of course vary within the field between different actors). In other
words, I would have liked to have seen more of the mechanics of the
construction which McLaren spoke about in the introduction. This is not,
of course, a problem limited to McLaren alone: many social and cultural
historians remove medical discourses from their original contexts of
construction in this way. While McLaren is interested in the construction
of sexuality in a wider, social sense (what sex meant to the average
person), he does not consider how the medical texts where themselves
constructed in nearly so much detail (although McLaren does this more in
the chapter on Freud by situating Freud's work in the sexological tradition
which numerous Freud scholars have suggested informed the master's work).
Nevertheless, I do not think that this esoteric plea for constructivist
accounts of the development of medical knowledge is a severe problem for
McLaren. He does direct the reader to other sources which focus on these
issues. If we accept that McLaren has developed a large historical
synthesis of much material in order to construct a coherent narrative about
sexuality in the twentieth century, and that he has packaged it in an
extremely readable form (although in a lurid cover), then we can have
something to direct our students to for an easy to read, overarching
analysis of a complex issue.
Ivan Crozier
Ivan Crozier,
Research Fellow
Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
24 Eversholt St
London
NW1 2AD
email: i.crozier@ucl.ac.uk
'ignorance is the first requisite of the
historian--ignorance, which simplifies
and clarifies, which selects and omits,
with a placid perfection unobtainable by
the highest art.'
--Lytton Strachey
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 16:18:49 +0000
From: Dr Crozier <ucgacro@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: [histsex] wetzell review
Another review (last today: I don't want to bore anyone)
If people think that this is a useful adctivity, and that they would like
to see more reviews on line, please speak up!
Ivan
Richard F. Wetzell, Inventing the Criminal: a history of German
criminology, 1880-1945, Chapel Hill and London, The University of North
Carolina Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8078-2535-2 Pp. 348 + xiv. Cloth. ú29.95
fortcoming, history of psychiatry
Which group of experts is the proper one to write about criminals? What
causes criminality? How can a society best understand and control criminal
behaviour? These are the questions raised and analysed by Richard
Wetzell's excellent new study of German criminology between the reception
of Cesare Lombroso's theory of the born criminal in the 1880s and the end
of the Nazi final solution of sterilising and euthanazing criminals (1945).
There are three main branches of criminological research: jurisprudence,
psychiatry, and sociology. At different times in German history, there
have been struggles between these three main groups to be the dominant
voice on crime and its study. Although the sociology of criminality was an
early approach, utilising statistical studies of criminal behaviour, it was
the least represented in Germany (unlike in France). The serious
competition for the dominant criminological discourse was between
jurisprudence and psychiatry.
In some ways, the fact that psychiatry became enrolled to speak about
criminality is surprising, as crime was not held to be a form of mental
illness in the pre-1870s. But Lombroso's theory of the criminal type-an
atavistic human form who had the biological propensity to commit crime, who
could be detected by his/her physiognomy-challenged the psychiatric
profession, which was already interested in the degeneration theories of B.
A. Morel as well as having to deal with the consequences of James
Pritchard's theory of moral insanity, to address the biological and
psychiatric ramifications of crime. Furthermore, moral insanity had a
special interpretation in France and particularly in Germany, where there
was an active interpretation of anti-social behaviour under its rubric,
including criminal behaviour (less so in England). This web of atavism,
degeneration, and moral insanity is very complex, and it is to Wetzell's
credit that he does not overplay the degeneration card (where all three are
often conflated). Instead he maps the complex relationships between the
different-often incompatible-articulations of degeneration within the
psychiatric, sociological, and biological literature, which need to be
carefully separated, rather than bunched together, when explaining their
complex interrelationship with criminological ideas.
When the biological consequences of Lombroso's theory were realised in
Germany, there was a veritable explosion of writing both for and against
the congenital and heritable causation of crime which dominated the early
days of German criminology, with Emil Kraepelin-author of the many editions
of Psychiatrie: Ein kurzes Lehrbuch f³r Studirende und rzte (1st ed.,
1883)-emerging as a dominant voice in the biological (although not
Lombrosian) determination of crime camp. Other supporters of Kraeplin
included Eugen Bleuler. This school accepted that criminals were born, but
denied Lombroso's idea of there being detectable criminal characteristics.
The only defender of Lombroso's ideas in their entirety was Hans Kurella.
This it not to suggest that once Lombroso impacted upon German
criminological theory in a biological way that it was straight-sailing for
Nazism and the final solution. There were significant demurring voices to
be heard which Wetzell maps with great insight into the history of
scientific ideas. In particular, Wetzell should be congratulated on the
way he separates out the strands of this complex series of debates
throughout his text. The most serious dissenters from Kraeplin included
Paul Nõcke, who first suggested the sterilisation of criminals in 1899
because of his defence of a model of degeneration, and Gustav
Aschaffenburg, a former student of Kraeplin's. Aschaffenburg maintained
the notion of the psychopathische Minderwertkeiten, or psychopathical
degenerate, which was the dominant opposition to Kraeplin's model. The
Minderwertkeiten was not caused by biological degeneration. It was not
in-born, but rather was a social problem of degeneration which was manifest
in criminal behaviour.
The kinds of struggles between those who held biological versus social
views on the aetiology of criminal behaviour survived throughout the Weimar
and Nazi periods of German history. This fact both problematises the
popular view of that it was easy for the Nazis to start sterilising
criminals (including homosexuals), as well as supporting the findings of
scholars such as Paul Weindling and Robert Proctor on Nazi science. A
further complicating factor, addressed marvellously by Wetzell, is that
criminal justice was in competition with scientific endeavours to discuss
crime, and there was often much less support for biological degeneration as
an aetiological factor in the making of a criminal than for more social
explanations for such behaviour. Thus even though the Nazis would have
enjoyed a scientific rubber stamp under of the authority of which to start
sterilising criminals, other means, such as prevention of marriage and a
redefinition of 'feeblemindedness' to include criminal behaviour, were
necessary to persecute criminals more fully. This opposition came from
within science, from people such as Albert Moll, as well as from the
different strands of legal reform who opposed biological models of
criminality.
One of the aspects about which I would have appreciated more of Wetzell's
attention is the broader relationship between criminology and the debates
about homosexuality and prostitution which was being addressed in the
emergent field of sexology. Prostitution only appeared as a topic in the
book in quotations from the many sources which Wetzell used, even though it
was also treated as both a topic of inquiry by Lombroso as well as a
criminal problem in Nazi Germany (and earlier). Wetzell excused himself
from addressing homosexuality, as it has been looked at much more by recent
scholars (Vern Bullough, James Steakley), although some interesting
comparisons between the aetiological models of criminality and
homosexuality could have been drawn which would have situated Wetzell's
argument very nicely.
Another aspect about which I have slight quibbles is the lack of
methodological discussion employed. This is particularly relevant, as with
criminology we have two distinct disciplines discussing criminality (three
if we include sociology, although the sociology of deviance and crime was
much more advanced in America than Germany, as pointed out by Wetzell). In
what way was psychiatry-an emerging discipline in search of new objects to
discuss as it became a more professionalised field-able to create
boundaries between itself and jurisprudence? How can we think about the
reactions of the law to biological theories of criminality produced by
psychiatrists in a sociological way? What was the relationship between
psychiatry and the law? Attention to these kinds of questions-addressed by
Roger Smith in a number of uncited essays in the mid 1980s-would have
enriched Wetzell's study considerably, and would have drawn further
conclusions from his masses of detailed research. Such methodological
extrapolations when based on such brilliant empirical research can only be
a good thing, both for historians and sociologists of science and medicine.
Nevertheless, Wetzell has taught us much about German criminology, and this
is useful for painting a more contextualised picture of the history of
psychiatry. His meticulous use of sources, including mapping the way that
the ideas of the significant players changed over time, is invaluable. For
an overview of this aspect of German psychiatry, there is no better book.
Ivan Crozier,
Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London
Ivan Crozier,
Research Fellow
Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
24 Eversholt St
London
NW1 2AD
email: i.crozier@ucl.ac.uk
'ignorance is the first requisite of the
historian--ignorance, which simplifies
and clarifies, which selects and omits,
with a placid perfection unobtainable by
the highest art.'
--Lytton Strachey
___________________________________________________________________From: "Brian Dempsey" <editor@scolag.org.uk>
Subject: RE: [histsex] maclaren review
Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 11:08:39 +0100
I find these useful - please continue posting them.
Brian
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 20:16:47 +0100
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: [histsex] question on abortions 1885
Hi,
Just thought I'd say Walter does have a very good point. Movies are not noted for historical
rigour even when attempting accuracy.
Hera
___________________________________________________________________Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 20:06:30 +0000
From: fxxm <fxxm@aspma.com>
Subject: Re: [histsex] question on abortions 1885
> Just thought I'd say Walter does have a very good point. Movies are not noted for historical
> rigour even when attempting accuracy.
Which is why a historical drama is always more useful as a
reflection of the time in which it is made than of the time
it ostensibly depicts.
--Phil Milstein
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 08:01:25 +1200
From: "Walter Cook" <Walter.Cook@natlib.govt.nz>
Subject: Re: [histsex] question on abortions 1885
Re this subject. This weekend I viewed a video of a film on an 18th century castrato with a name (if I remember) of Farinelli. It wasn't a great film, but it appeared to be reasonably convincing in terms of its 18th century setting and scenery. But the two men who played the leading rolls in terms of their good looks and body types were modern commercial. Their muscular structure declared that 18th cenury castrati and their brothers were regular attenders at the local gymnasia. Their skins looked as though they exposed themselves, if not to sunbeds, at least to the open air at a time when I understand that this was not particulary fashionalble. And I suspect that the selections in the film from baroque music hall, though spectacular and magnificent, were designed for an audience capable of apreciating Priscilla Queen of the Desert, rather than the intricasies of classical ledgend. This does not answer the original question about abortion as portrayed in Topsy Turvey. It may be true that "advanced women" took this sort of thing in their stride. I do know that the 19th century can look pretty "modern" with the right selections. For example Bernard Shaw's parents, and the antics of some of the Fabians at their summer camps. Perhaps Sullivan or his mistress left diaries like the young women in Heavenly Creatures ?
Walter
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 09:05:01 +1200
From: "Walter Cook" <Walter.Cook@natlib.govt.nz>
Subject: Re: [histsex] question on abortions 1885
And re the castrato film. I forgot to mention the sex scenes. Not only were they threesomes, but the nakedness was modern. Most of the images of 18th century erotica that I have seen show the participants dressed, or the woman naked and the man dressed. Pehaps the Italians were different
Walter
___________________________________________________________________Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 15:10:07 +0000
From: Dr Crozier <ucgacro@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: [histsex] Book reviews on Histsex
Dear All,
Considering a number of positive comments (many in personal emails) on the
value of posting these review, I have a couple more, but I encourage other
peole to follow suit. Lesley Hall has a number of others on her web page
in addition, which I for one have found useful.
Cheerio, Ivan
Saving Sexual Science
Timothy F. Murphy, Gay Science: the ethics of sexual orientation research,
Columbia University press, New York, 1997, ISBN 0-231-10848-6. Paperback.
Pp. 268 + ix. Price???
Forthcoming, Metascience (although this is so far unedited)
Timothy Murphy's Gay Science: the ethics of sexual orientation research
addresses the politics and especially the ethics of research into the
causes of homosexuality. This topic has been much debated in different
branches of scientific research for over the last hundred and thirty years,
including developmental biology, genetics, psychology, psychoanalysis,
hypnosis, and forensic psychiatry, to name a few of the interested
disciplines. Needless to say, there is usually little agreement over the
findings of the different fields, for they often have different interests
(used in Barry Barnes' sense) as they come from varying
historically-grounded traditions. Usually in this contemporary debate,
'reasons for a particular sexual orientation' is taken to mean 'causes for
homosexuality', rather than a broader definition which would include those
sexual practices which engage in sadism, masochism, fetishism,
panty-sniffing, klismaphilia, and other sexual paraphilia which do not
include penile penetration as the hallmark of sexuality. This is
demonstrated in much of the current biological research for things such as
brain structure of homosexuals, the 'gay gene', gay finger patterns, etc.,
where the divisions for sexual preference fall into only two categories:
homosexual and heterosexual (although it would be an interesting point to
ask whether there is a masochistic or zoophiliac gene). Needless to say,
psychoanalytical approaches do offer a more comprehensive definition of
sexual orientation, but these are generally disqualified by Murphy's
approach, as they are not considered to be 'proper science'.
Murphy is primarily concerned with the ethical implications of research
into homosexuality. He regularly constructs hypothetical scenarios to
illustrate the (social and ethical) outcomes of different types of
scientific argument, and draws these theoretical diversions out to
illustrate that the sciences of sexual orientation research have a
potentially huge impact on the position of homosexual men and women in
society. In doing this, Murphy has written the most politically correct
book I have read. He takes the utmost care not to vitiate the personal
freedom of anyone: gays, lesbians, parents, scientists, etc. His liberal
individualism is admirable. The only groups he challenges are those who
say that homosexuality is 'wrong' (such as psychiatrist Joseph Nicolosi,
who argued that psychiatrists have "abandoned" homosexuals who need help by
striking homosexuality off the list of psychiatric conditions in the recent
editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American
Psychiatric Association), those who follow social constructivist
explanations for sexual behaviour (such as eminent historian, theorist and
classicist, David Halperin; incidentally, I did not find Murphy's
criticisms particularly convincing), and all manner of psychoanalysts, from
Sigmund Freud down through the ages. His main reason for this critical
standpoint is that these responses to, and varieties of, the sciences of
homosexuality either do not follow 'adequate scientific criteria', or are
some form of carpet-bagging knee-jerk reaction to the scientific proof that
homosexuality is OK, and indeed is a part of nature.
Throughout the book, Murphy sides strongly with the scientific
explanations of homosexuality, provided that they are based on 'adequate
science'. Murphy often describes "erroneous assumptions" (41) used by
scientists, criticising the psychoanalytically-derived hypotheses of
Nicolosi as: "By any measure this account fails to meet minimal standards
of scientific credibility" (37). He attributes these to the "excesses of
sexual science" (193), meaning mostly early sexological investigations. My
problem with these kind of criticisms of scientific work in different
traditions is that they rely on some kind of over-arching model of what
'good' science is, assuming that it is a set of criteria which can be
deployed in any number of situations over time, regardless of the field
from which these 'inadequate' statements stem. In other words, Murphy does
not subscribe to a view of science which sees different sui generis fields
of inquiry establishing their own standards for adequate practice in some
kind of post-Kuhnian way. Science is either good or bad, and it is
Murphy's thinking which makes it so. This is no more plain that in his
criticisms of psychoanalytical work. He does not take on board the idea
that it is the members of the field of science in question that decide
whether or not a claim is adequate, although he is not the first
philosopher to do this.
One could indeed ask why Murphy is so keen to protect science from the
"literature professor David Halperin" (22) and others whom, we may assume
from Murphy's tone, are considered to have no right to speak about
scientific research. This role of 'philosopher/protector' is a standard
position maintained in the science wars (most eminently by Ian Hacking, The
Social Construction of What?, Cambridge MA, 1999). Philosophers are
occasionally seen supporting scientific activity against the perceived
ravages of social constructivist critique (or analysis, more often than
not). Unfortunately, this can-as in the case with the book under
review-lead to a dehistoricised view of the subject. For while Murphy is
keen to criticise 'bad' science, he often separates strands of scientific
research from its history. His criticisms of the efforts of Havelock Ellis
or Richard von Krafft-Ebing, for instance, create the artificial notion
that contemporary science is up to scratch, while its antecedents were
misguided. The danger with this kind of 'face-value' approach is that it
prevents asking questions such as where did the impetus to understand
sexual orientation come from? Over the last hundred and thirty years,
numerous scientific workers have offered answers to this question. These
accounts have to be considered in their historical contexts, rather than
being criticised from a presentist standpoint, if we are to learn anything
about how the sciences of sex have operated, and if we are to be informed
about why certain approaches work as they do today.
Although Murphy is no historian or sociologist of science, he nevertheless
has an important ethical standpoint which is noteworthy:
"Sexual orientation science that actively seeks to produce therapy-to
produce a change in the erotic interests of a given individual-requires
rather more ethical scrutiny than does research that merely wants to
describe erotic interests and behaviors or observe morphological or
psychological differences between gay people and straight." (93)
This standpoint is laudable, and is indeed the strong point of the book.
Also in its favour is the fact that the book is very well and widely
researched. Its bibliography is especially valuable, and I will be using
it in future historical research.
Ivan Crozier,
Research Fellow
Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
24 Eversholt St
London
NW1 2AD
email: i.crozier@ucl.ac.uk
'ignorance is the first requisite of the
historian--ignorance, which simplifies
and clarifies, which selects and omits,
with a placid perfection unobtainable by
the highest art.'
--Lytton Strachey
___________________________________________________________________Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 15:14:35 +0000
From: Dr Crozier <ucgacro@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: [histsex] Book reviews on Histsex
And another review (this one was fun to write as well!):
Love and other catastrophes: an ecclesiastical history of sex.
Peter Lewis Allen, The Wages of Sin: sex and disease, past and present, The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2000. ISBN 0-226-01460-6.
Pp 202 + xxiii. US$25.00 HB.
Forthcoming, Metascience
Throughout the West, over the last thousand or so years, one tragic idea,
promulgated by those acting in the name of Christianity, has been dominant:
sex is sinful. If you have sex, you will suffer, in one way or another.
Like a self-fulfilling prophesy, this notion captures the fate of sex in
the West. In a multitude of cases, Allen traces through the heritage of
this idea, from love-sickness to syphilis to masturbation to AIDS. He does
this with compassion, a personal touch, and with a barrage of
well-documented arguments. The true misfortune of his book lies in his
subject matter; sex should be fun, and not cause suffering, but this is
often not the case for such preventable ways. It is hard to be a
dispassionate historian and review Allen on the skills he has demonstrated
in his writing without becoming furious at some of the material which he
uses. As such, I will not pretend to try. I support Allen's political
message whole-heartedly, and am outraged that something like sex has
suffered under the vicissitudes of politics and religious belief.
Universal suffering is sometimes too much to bear, even for a reader of
Lytton Strachey.
The idea of sex being sinful, of it being an object of morality, has a long
history which is intimately tied up with medical theory. The struggle
between sexual health and moral guidance is the central theme in this book,
and Allen does well to trace the ideas which were important before religion
kidnapped sex for its own (immoral) purposes. Allen begins his discussion
with love-sickness, the dreaded disease which struck down industrious men
and prevented them from getting on with their work (a few colloquialisms
have recently crossed my mind, but I'll spare you). It could happen to
anyone. The charms of some beauty would turn even the soundest man into a
smitten fool, incapable of writing anything. Relief from such an
affliction, as many Greek and Arabic doctors knew, was to tackle it at its
source: to have sex. "Galen had simply noted that Diogenes the Cynic
masturbated as a quick and easy way to rid himself of the nuisance of
sexual desire" (80); the usual means was, however, to have sex with the
object of one's desire. Not as fast, but sometimes more fun.
Such an idea did not wash with the new brand of Christian moralists who
emerged from the dark ages. Sexual control was necessary to get into
heaven. St Benedict skinny-dipped in thickets of briars and nettles in
order to dispel from his mind the lust he felt for some desirable young
thing; King Louis VII of France refused to have his way with a woman of the
town in order to restore his health-to his physical if not spiritual
demise; the Bishop of Louvain likewise proffered that he would "by no means
for the sake of my temporal life bring shame to my sacred order, my honor
(sic) and dignity, and damage my soul by what you suggest [have sex with a
woman to alleviate the fact that his genitals had swollen to "huge
proportions" which endangered his life]. I may die in my body, but through
God's grace I will live eternal life" (22). Win some, lose some, but for
the grace of God. At the end of the period, sex and sin were tightly bound
in an unhappy marriage. Procreation was unavoidable in some circumstance
(see the flow-chart concerning medieval theological ideas about when it is
appropriate give in to one's voluptuous feelings on page 19); falling for
someone and having sex with them for fun, let alone outside of wed-lock,
was a moral transgression, and would be duly punished by the man upstairs.
Allen makes a very convincing argument that the body was a site for God's
revenge for lust by examining leprosy. Plagues of leprosy gave medieval
bureaucrats and Churchmen-not that they were separable in the majority of
instances-ample opportunity to facilitate God's punishment beyond the
rotting flesh, the stinking breath, and the rasping voice which leprosy
brought. Leprosy was considered to be a vengeance visited upon those who
had come into close contact with others, something which implied sexual
contact, and as such there was a moral tainting of this awful disease.
Essentially creating a ghetto of rotting bodies, which unfortunately
sometimes included 'innocent' victims, was to become a typical way of
treating those who had made a physical and moral transgression. Medical
care was not administered. The soul was considered more important than the
body, so patients were not aided but admonished.
The same was the case with the syphilitic who became a popular sexual icon
in Europe from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Sex could lead to
syphilis, it was true. But help and information was withheld, and the
sufferer was locked up. Mad-houses abounded with tertiary-stage
syphilitics. Cures, as they were thought to be, like mercury and other
purgatives which relied on the patient sweating the poxy miasma out, were
held back from patients. The clergy insisted that syphilis was God's
punishment. The only way to avoid it, of course, was abstinence and
chastity. The body was being punished, and with syphilis, the sufferer had
the opportunity to repent (for death was not swift). The same was not the
case with all diseases. Allen provides an excellent comparison with the
bubonic plague to show that rather than develop medical remedies, those
sick from the plague were considered as coming under the strong arm of
God's retribution. God can be cruel, and wipe out entire cities, when the
sins of the populace are great. Sexually transmitted diseases were one way
of flexing divine muscle, but the same kind of moral arguments were made
for plague victims. The body as a locus for punishment was a key factor in
the early-modern age.
I was, of course, very interested in the chapter on masturbation (not
least because I am a Victorianist). After the Enlightenment, medical
discourses on masturbation flourished. The reason was not only because
this was another sexual aspect which religion and medicine could control,
but also because of the 'spermatic economy' models of the body which were
being used. This is a point which I do not think Allen made enough of.
Semen was considered to be reified blood in Greek medical theory, and it
was only during the Enlightenment period that such ideas were starting to
be challenged. Vitalism was still a strong medical theory in the first
half of the nineteenth century (most of the
anti-spermatorrhoea/masturbation texts were written before 1870, before
vitalistic ideas were expelled from biomedical sciences); the effects of
wasted semen, where noticeable lassitude set-in after a vigorous amount of
self-induced satisfaction, were commonly reported. Spermatorrhoea, the
disease caused by over-use of the genital parts, with the major symptom of
a leaking penis, resulting in the wasting of vital fluids detrimental to
the person, was a very large issue within medical discourse in the
nineteenth century. Whilst there were strong religious discourses produced
about the evils of playing with oneself (not to mention a grand amount of
scouting literature and 'boys own' journals which encouraged sports and
vigorous, manly pursuits in order to tire out the young lad so that he
would only sleep in his warm bed of a night), much medical discussion also
had other agenda in dealing with masturbation. That is not to say that the
moral overtones reported by Allen were not both overt and accurate, and
that they did not also strike me as bizarre, but that the discourses on
masturbation produced by William Acton, J.L. Milton and many others were
not only another case of the wages of sin. There were numerous medical
reasons why masturbation needed controlling which do not make sense today,
but which cannot be reduced to keeping little boys' hands above the covers
for solely religious reasons.
The saddest chapter in the book draws on frustration. It is one thing to
look retrospectively (as Allen often does, sometimes Whiggishly) at past
discourses and wonder at the prevalence of religious arguments; it is a far
worse thing to look at the 1980s and 1990s and wonder how the moral
arguments about sex arose from the halcyon days of the 1960s and 70s, where
everything was either fun, free, or curable, and music was not only in 4/4
time. Liberalism is under attack, and whilst not being too worried about
missing out on the parties which 1970s free-lovin' entailed, I am perplexed
about the increasing (on-line) presence of born-again-virgins and other
Christian-right products. In the chapter on AIDS in America, Allen does
not try to map the development of medical discourses about AIDS (which has
already been done admirably by Steven Epstein, Impure Science, Berkeley,
1996). He concentrates rather on the blind faith which people had in the
face of an epidemic, considering the political and religious-again
inseparable-responses to the crisis. It is nothing short of a tragedy that
he found himself repeating himself: the silence about syphilis mirrored the
silence about AIDS; the religious argument that illness is a visit from the
Angel of Death, brought about by the sufferers own moral transgressions,
have been present since St Benedict first birched himself. The fact that
governments do not take a stand for the health of their constituency
without fearing the repercussions from the Christian politicians is the
same, regardless if it is the treatment of syphilitics in medieval Paris or
the spreading of essential anti-HIV education in America. The exception is
that in the latter case, we have not learned from our hideous mistakes.
Throughout this book, Allen has shown us, with the utmost empathy and
consideration, mingled with his own personal experiences of the unhealthy
cocktail of religion and sexuality, that sexual misery is caused not purely
by spirochetes, retroviruses, and models of the body and their treatments,
but by ignorance, politics, and religious dogma as well.
Allen's book is not anti-religious, however; it is pro-human. It is a
polemic written in order to show us that the reactions to sexual misery
which have become institutionalised in our society through religious dogma
and politics have much to answer for, and that the only way to overcome the
ignorance which surrounds such a pressing issue as HIV/AIDS is to realise
that this moral fervour is an historical product, not a God-given state of
affairs. Sex and religion are ugly bed-partners. It is time for a divorce.
Ivan Crozier,
Research Fellow
Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
24 Eversholt St
London
NW1 2AD
email: i.crozier@ucl.ac.uk
'ignorance is the first requisite of the
historian--ignorance, which simplifies
and clarifies, which selects and omits,
with a placid perfection unobtainable by
the highest art.'
--Lytton Strachey
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 11:01:48 -0700
From: John Lauritsen <j.lauritsen@verizon.net>
Subject: [histsex] Gay Today article on Percy Bysshe Shelley
14 May 2001
An article of mine, "Was Percy Bysshe Shelley Gay?", is
featured in this week's Gay Today:
http://www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com/people.htm
(After this week the article will go into the Gay Today
archives.)
Comments are welcome. I think the folks at Gay Today set up
the article very attractively. Usually I tend to be a chauvinist
for the paper media, but this shows, to my mind, that the Internet
has some advantages over books and magazines.
Oh yes, I forgot to put in one of my "references", which is:
Roger Ingpen (editor), Plato's Banquet, Translated from the Greek
... Printed for private circulation MCMXXXI, One Hundred copies
Only. Printed at the Curwen Press, Plaistow, London, 1931.
John Lauritsen
author: A Freethinker's Primer of Male Love (1998)
john_lauritsen@post.harvard.edu
___________________________________________________________________Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 17:25:35 +0100 (GMT)
From: "Marcus. Collins" <Marcus.Collins@newcastle.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Book reviews on Histsex
I'm afraid that we might be reaching saturation point on the book review
front, but if anyone's interested there's a review of mine of Jeffrey
Weeks' Making Sexual History plus the author's response at the IHR's
Reviews in History on
http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/collinsMar.html
Best,
Marcus Collins
Univ. of Newcastle
___________________________________________________________________Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 14:07:51 +0100 (BST)
From: Lucy Bland <l.bland@unl.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Old Maids Mania
Dr TS Clouston in "Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases"
1883 writes about what he calls "ovarian or old maids'
insanity" - a madness occurring: "in unpresposessing old
maids, often of religious life, who have been severely
virtuous in thought,word and deed,and on whom nature, just
before the climatacteric, takes revenge for too severe a
repression of all the manifestations of sex, by arousing a
grotesque and baseless passion for some casual acquaintance
of the other sex whom the victim believes to be deeply in
love with her, or who has actually ravished her after having
given her chloroform. Usually the clergyman is the subject
of this false belief". I discuss this briefly in "Banishing
the Beast" Penguin '95. (Although this book has been long
out or print, IB Tauris are republishing it later this
year. Thought I would add that plug!)
Lucy Bland
----------------------
Dr Lucy Bland
l.bland@unl.ac.uk
___________________________________________________________________
From: TallSkinny@aol.com
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 07:23:52 EDT
Subject: [histsex] Off topic Request for reviews/criticism
Hi everyone. Please forgive the extraneous nature of this email but I
ask that you indulge me for a moment.
I am coming up on a deadline for an art installation project that
includes written reviews/criticism (reviews/criticism will become
part of the installation). I am in hope that some of you bright articulate
people on
this list may be interested in participating.
Details can be found at:
http://members.aol.com/artproject/graymatters/preview
Thanks,
-jb
___________________________________________________________________From: "Healey D." <D.Healey@swansea.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: [histsex] Book reviews on Histsex
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 13:39:20 +0100
I for one think it's a great idea that we share these. More please.
Dan Healey
History
U of Wales Swansea
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 18:32:29 -0500
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [histsex] question on abortions 1885
>And re the castrato film. I forgot to mention the sex scenes. Not
>only were they threesomes, but the nakedness was modern. Most of
>the images of 18th century erotica that I have seen show the
>participants dressed, or the woman naked and the man dressed.
I wonder about the differences between the actualities of
eighteenth-century sex and *representations* of eighteenth-century
sex in the form of erotica ....
Roberto Farinelli ... :)
___________________________________________________________________Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 10:40:10 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Marcus Collins pointer to book review
On Mon, 14 May 2001, Marcus. Collins wrote:
> front, but if anyone's interested there's a review of mine of Jeffrey
> Weeks' Making Sexual History plus the author's response at the IHR's
> Reviews in History on
> > http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/collinsMar.html
>
Marcus: I found that only the home page of the IHR was accessible--got the
venerable ERROR 404, suggesting either problems with the construction of
the site (unlikely) or perhaps that the site is accessible only to
subscribers.
I'm using the Weeks to support one detail in my diss., and a review would
be quite welcome. Thanks.
Tim Hodgdon
Ph.D. candidate
Department of History
Arizona State University
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] pointer to book review - change of site URL
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 20:04:25 +0100
The IHR website is now at www.history.ac.uk - old URLs are probably no
longer valid.
Re reviews, the review bit of my own site is at
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah/reviews.htm and includes my review
of Weeks' _Making Sexual History_ as well as reviews going back a decade or
so. I also have a section 'Recommended Reading'
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah/reading.htm with shorter comments.
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 11:06:57 -0500
From: "Lisa Johnson" <ljohnson@westga.edu>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Book reviews on Histsex
This is fun - I like the substance offered by sharing book reviews.
Here's mine, which appeared in an issue of _American Anthropologist_
last year:
Shameless Women: The Anthropological Mirror as Speculum
Woman: An Intimate Geography. Natalie Angiers. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1999. 398 pp.
After Silence: Rape and My Journey Back. Nancy Venable Raine. New
York: Crown, 1998. 278 pp.
Cunt: A Declaration of Independence. Inga Muscio. Seattle: Seal, 1998.
277 pp.
Lisa Johnson
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of English
State U of West Georgia
A friend of mine recently got dragged from her bed at six in the
morning and beaten by her ex-boyfriend. I am startled every time
something like this reminds me we still live in a world where womenÆs
bodies are under seige. As a feminist scholar, I get tired of talking
about sexism, inequality, womenÆs rightsùit all sounds so old hat. As a
woman, I get even more tired of the social conditions that create the
need to talk about such abhorrent abuse. Finally, as a reader, I am
grateful for women authors who bring new perspectives and fresh voices
to this old story, reinvigorating the language surrounding womenÆs
bodies with the skills of poets.
The female body may seem like a strange site for anthropological
inquiry, but as a kind of homelandùsomewhere between a little foreign
and all too familiarùit warrants the attention of field study. I like
to think of myself as an anthropologist of the female body, a
participant observer inside the skin of a woman. I take as my guide in
this perspective feminist anthropologist Ruth Behar, whose concept of
the body as homeland appears in The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology
That Breaks Your Heart. In her essay, ôThe Body in the Woman, the Story
in the Womanöùa book review interwoven with personal reflections on
medical colonizations of the female bodyùBehar makes a case for ôa
different kind of anthropology rooted in the stories women have to tell
about their bodiesöùpart of ôa new turn in American anthropology toward
doing fieldwork æat homeÆ rather than in faraway places,ö a ôturning of
the anthropological mirror backö on ourselves (270). With this speculum
of social science in hand, I turn to the texts of three women who
endeavor to redescribe, even transform, the situation of women in
contemporary Western culture.
Natalie Angiers describes the intimate geography of Woman as ôa
celebration of the female bodyùits anatomy, its chemistry, its
evolution, and its laughterö (ix). This celebratory mode of inquiry
diffuses the discomfort men and women have come to feel about discussing
gender roles and womenÆs problematic social status, a strategy shared by
Nancy Venable Raine in After Silence: Rape and My Journey Back and Inga
Muscio in Cunt: A Declaration of Independence. It works. Raine, whose
subject matter is sticky enough to drive readers away with the subtitle
alone (I almost didnÆt buy it myself for that very reason), opens with a
note to her reader describing her decision on the seventh anniversary of
her rape ôto celebrate the life of the woman who was bornö on that
distastrous day (3). Her inquiries into the problems of language in the
face of harsh reality parleys the unsayable story of rape into the realm
of the sayable. ôI thought about WittgensteinÆs observation that the
limits of language are the limits of reality,ö writes Raine, ôWas rape
off limits to our most distinctly human attributeùlanguage?ö (3). As
much as no one wants to talk about rape, RaineÆs linguistic angle, along
with her comment that ôsilence has the rusty taste of shameö (6), serves
to reopen the conversation surrounding the abused female body for those
of us who occasionally let the iron latch on our lips corrode with
disuse. Her goalùöto renew my faith in the alchemy of languageöùbrings
words to the wordless, turning the shadows of shame into spaces of
self-recovery.
Inga Muscio believes in the alchemy of language as well. Her
reclamation of the word ôcuntö endeavors to change womenÆs relationships
with our bodies first on the level of language. She declares, ôitÆs
ours to do with what we want,ö and further, ôthanks to the versatility
and user-friendliness of the English language, æcuntÆ can be used as an
all new woman-centered, cuntlovinÆ noun, adjective, or verbö (23). I
join Muscio in being ôin love with the idea.ö Her activism towards the
creation of a cuntlovinÆ universe changes the meanings of words and girl
parts for the positive. Through language, we learn what is valued in our
culture. When womenÆs body parts function as insults to hurl about, the
social devaluation of the female becomes clear.
Perhaps for this reason, Natalie AngiersÆ chapter-by-chapter
re-examination of each female body strikes me as part of a revolution in
social values and gender roles. One of the most important lessons in
Woman, for lay-scientists and professional anthropologists alike, is
that science involves more than the collection of raw data; it involves
the artùand the artificeùof interpreting ôfact.ö Anthropology has seen
the impact of introducing the personal into this process of
interpretation. Angiers enacts a similar revolution of biological
science, engaging in a process of speculation to reveal the guess-work
and gender-bias embedded in the construction of various theories of the
body.
Maybe IÆm giving too much away here, but my favorite chapter is on the
clitoris, or, as Angiers calls it, ôthe well-tempered clavier.ö While
her explorations of the X-chromosome, the prodigal uterus, female
aggression, and the chemistry of love all compel, her work on the
goddess Klitoris, Our Lady of Perpetual Ecstasy, wins my vote for
exemplary scholarship and inspired scientific writing. Indeed, the
ancient connection between science and poesy reappears with atavistic
glory in AngiersÆ witty and insightful commentary. In this chapter we
learn the ômicroarchitectureö of the clitorisùcylindrical and composed
of three parts (base, shaft, and crown). Fascinating and useful as this
belated vocabulary for womenÆs sexual anatomy is, even more important is
AngiersÆ research into ôthe question of whether we are supposed to have
it in the first placeö (65). This question links integrally with social
views and controls on womenÆs sexuality. ôAs it happens,ö writes
Angiers:
evolutionary thinkers are engaged in a vigorous debate over the point,
or pointlessness, of the clitoris and its bosom buddy, the female
orgasm. They are asking whether the capacity for orgasm does a woman
any good and thus can be counted an adaptation that hb6
___________________________________________________________________Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 11:20:03 -0500
From: "Lisa Johnson" <ljohnson@westga.edu>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Book reviews on Histsex
oops - somehow my review dissolved into the ether halfway through
cyberspace - here's the rest:
They are asking whether the capacity for orgasm does a woman any good
and thus can be counted an adaptation that has been selected over the
wash of time, or whether it is, to borrow a phrase from Stephen Jay
Gould, a glorious accident. (65)
Angiers traces three theories of the clitoris for our consideration.
One: the clitoris is a vestigial penis:
A girl has one because the body is inherently bisexual, poised as a
fetus to grow either male or female sex organs. In the event she had
been designated a male, she would have needed a functioning,
ejaculating, innervated penis. Instead, she received a penile
remnant, a small nubbin of sensory tissue with the same underlying
neuronal architecture as that found in a genuine phallus. The
clitoris, then, is like nipples on a man, an atavism, the faint
signature of what might have been but no longer really needs to be.
(66)
Harsh. Her second theory is that once upon a time women used the
clitoris, like the bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee) does: ôto curry
friendships, to placate tempers, to solicit meat or favor from any
number of partners, and to disguise issues of paternityö (67).
Thirdùand Angiers knocks this one out of the parkùöthe clitoris is
designed to encourage its bearer to take control of her sexualityö (69).
Quick to defend against her critics, she acknowledges the politics
underlying her interpretation, but she also makes a good case for their
accuracy:
Yes, this idea sounds like a rank political tract, and body tissue has
no party affiliation. But it can vote with its behavior, working best
when you treat it right, faltering when itÆs abused or misunderstood.
In truth, the clitoris operates at peak performance when a woman feels
athunder with life and strength, when she is bellowing on top,
figuratively if not literally. The clitoris hates being scared or
bullied. Some women who have been raped report that their vaginas
became lubricated even as they feared for their livesùand a good thing
too, for the lubrication prevented them from being ripped apartùbut
women almost never have orgasms during a rape, male fantasies
notwithstanding. (69-70)
Drawing on anthropologist Helen FisherÆs work, Angiers writes that
multiply orgasmic women share one trait: ô[T]hey take responsibility for
their
pleasure. . . .They know which positions and angles work best for them,
and they negotiate said postures verbally or kinestheticallyö (70).
This sort of insight marks AngiersÆ text as an example of what one
reviewer calls ôliberation biologyö (Lynch). Woman consistently
unearths factsùexposes body partsùand expands our understanding of them
by revealing the social investment in keeping them either buried,
clothed, or distorted through lenses of patriarchy, misogyny, and
gynophobia. In these connections, AngiersÆ gives the reader pause over
the way our U.S. American ômental clitoridectomyö (64)ùand its more
gruesome practical application worldwideùreaches beyond matters of
biology into cultural conceptions of womanhood and the specific physical
(mis)treatment of womenÆs bodies.
Nancy Venable Raine explores this mistreatment in the form of her own
experiencesùnot only being raped but trying to overcome its residual
effects in a culture that proscribes silence and shame. A proscription
so strong that as a reviewer, I find myself pursing my lips
apologetically as I recommend After Silence to friends, family,
students, even to you. Raine takes the subject of shame and our
cultural acquiescence to silence as a central part of her memoir,
threading it through defining autobiographical moments in several
chapters. In ôThe Woman in the Amber Necklace,ö Raine recounts an
evening when she was confronted painfully with the power of women to
police other women into rape quietism. Elegant and cultured, the woman
turns to her over dinner and remarks on RaineÆs recent rape article: ôI
thought your article was well-written. . . . But letÆs face it, no one
wants to hear about such terrible thingsö (119). Raine struggles with
the code of etiquette that determines what one may discuss in publicùand
what one may not. She hears in her mindÆs ear the rapistÆs command to
shut up in this womanÆs well-intentioned words, and when she gets over
the initial shock and ensuing writerÆs block, she hears something else:
the pain of witnesses to human suffering (138). We have trouble hearing
about rape or beatings or murdered girlfriends because itÆs an ugly
story, one we want to believe is outdated, a seventies thing. But we
are wrong.
RaineÆs memoir engages in wide-reaching analyses of violence, trauma,
and recovery. She draws on sources from anthropology (Demonic Males:
Apes and the Origins of Human Violence by Richard Wrangham), feminism
(Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape by Susan Brownmiller), psychology
(Trauma and Recovery by Judith Hermann), and much more. In her pursuit
of the tangled roots of gender inequality, silence, and physical abuse,
as she turns over the dark clots of memory and fear, Raine brings
riveting discoveries to the surface. The phenomenology of shame is one
of these discoveries. How it writes itself all over our bodies, how it
strangles us with invisible cords, coercing us to shrink and grow small
from the inside out. Shame makes us want to hideùeven when weÆve done
nothing wrong. The worst part of this phenomenology is that shame is
woven inextricably into cultural conceptions of womanhood.
I take this point from another text on gendered bodies, Nancy MairsÆ
collection of essays, Carnal Acts. Mairs critiques the Western cultural
division of body from consciousness, asserting this notion creates an
environment in which bodiesùall bodies, menÆs and womenÆsùget treated
badly: ôBodies get treated like wayward women who have to be shown whoÆs
boss, even if it means slapping them around a littleö (85). For women,
the scenario is worse: ôLet the word for my external genitals tell the
tale: my pudendum, from the Latin infinitive meaning æto be ashamedÆö
(86). Mairs, disabled from a combination of multiple sclerosis and your
basic church upbringing, provides a figure that resonates with RaineÆs
(and AngiersÆ and MuscioÆs):
To be silent is to comply with the standard of feminine grace. But my
crippled body already violates all notions of feminine grace. What
more have I got to lose? IÆve gone beyond shame. IÆm shameless, you
might say. You know, as in æshameless hussyÆ? A woman with her bare
brace and her tongue hanging out.
Shamelessness is a state to which all women should aspire. In this
conceptual space, we are free of social controlsùfrom etiquette to rape
cultureùthat seek to cover up our bodies and the stories we tell about
them.
Inga Muscioùwhose title Cunt: A Declaration of Independence defies all
these social controlsùexemplifies this sort of shamelessness. Muscio
takes it as her job to begin rectifying the problem of womenÆs
alienation from our bodies, and she starts by looking, making us all
look, at our cunts. First, she refuses the negative connotations of
this word and anatomical part. Next, she immerses herself in
reflections on its appearance, cycles, flavor, and potential as seat of
social activism. ôTo know oneself truly is to love oneself,ö she
opines, ôWhereas women do not learn the veritable nature of ourselves in
this culture, the likelihood that we love ourselves and/or one another
is highly suspectö (27). Although her separatist feminist philosophy
strikes me as implausible and not entirely desirableùöWhat it boils down
to is this: If it didnÆt originate with women or the Goddess, if it does
not spiritually, emotionally, physically, psychologically and
financially benefit women, it does not serve women. So fucken chuck itö
(76)ùher reparations to the female body redirect U.S. American cultural
energies from controlling women to liberating them, at least a little.
In the midst of what might seem like mere ranting in the margins, one
finds critiques of such weighty sociological issues as birth control,
autoeroticism, and menstruation, all of which undergo social controls
that, according to Muscio, reflect negative images of womenÆs bodies
while exploiting those same bodies under U.S. capitalism. In fact,
Muscio focuses on the specific abuses of womenÆs bodies in this country
to avoid the more common tendency of critiquing other cultures while
remaining blind to parallel problems in our own. ôAmerican women indeed
learn to look at our pain in others, rather than deal with it as a
reality in our livesö (136).
Muscio repeatedly asserts the importance of women sharing ôknowledge,
history, experiences, recipes and remedies like our motherkin could notö
(68) as part of developing a cuntlovinÆ universe. This sharing of
body-stories, this aspiration to shamelessness, creates a sense of
community among women and an alternative body of knowledge for the
scientific community to consider. All these women are aware that people
donÆt want to hear about such things, that nice girls donÆt talk about
bad experiences, that good women donÆt say ôcunt.ö ôWeÆre not supposed
to talk about womenÆs rights anymore,ö says Angiers, ôfor to do so is to
commit the sin of ævictimology,Æ to act the weak whiner, the
neurasthenic corseted Victorian lady. The charge of victimology, like
that of political correctness, instantly squelches all effort at precise
protest, neutering a complaint before it has been uttered, for complain
is what victimologists do. But if you donÆt ask for a raise, you wonÆt
get one, and if you donÆt snarl about an injustice, it wonÆt go awayö
(362). Woman, After Silence, Cuntùand my review of all threeùsnarl at
injustice and celebrate womenÆs potential in one smooth gesture,
exposing the female body like the shameless hussies we are.
Works Cited
Behar, Ruth.
1991. The Body in the Woman, the Story in the Woman: A Book Review and
Personal Essay. The Female Body: Figures, Styles, Speculations. Ed.
Laurence Goldstein. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 267-311.
Behar, Ruth.
1996. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart.
Boston: Beacon.
Brownmiller, Susan.
1975. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. New York: Simon and
Schuster.
Geertz, Clifford.
1989. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford:
Stanford UP.
Hermann, Judith.
1992. Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic.
Lynch, Thomas.
1999. Liberation Biology. Los Angeles Times.
Mairs, Nancy.
1996. Carnal Acts: Essays. Boston: Beacon.
Okeley, Judith and Helen Callaway, eds.
1992. Anthropology and Autobiography. New York: Routledge.
Richard Wrangham.
1996. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin.
-------
Lisa Johnson
lj30108@mindspring.com
ljohnson@westg
___________________________________________________________________From: Richard Cleminson <r.m.cleminson@Bradford.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 12:51:58 +0100
Subject: Re: [histsex] Spain and homosexuality
The situation for Spain seems to be this: Code NapolÚon was in
place until an attempt in 1928 under the dictatorship of Primo de
Rivera to penalise homosexuality but this was never approved (the
dictatorship ended in early 1930). This responded to issues of
'defensa social' (social defence). In 1933, during the democratic
Second epublic, the lawyer Luis JimÚnez de Asua introduced a series of
pieces of legislation on 'peligrosidades' (dangerous types), but these
did not include homosexuals. There was legislation, however, covering
public scandal, rape, minors. 1954 marked the criminalisation of
homosxuality under General Franco.
Best source: Francisco Vazquez Garcia & Andres Moreno Mengibar, Sexo y
Raz¾n (Madrid, 1997).
Dr.Richard Cleminson
Lecturer in Spanish Studies
Department of Modern Languages
University of Bradford
Bradford, West Yorkshire
BD7 1DP
r.m.cleminson@bradford.ac.uk
tel +1274 234595
fax +1274 235590
* This e-mail message was sent with Execmail V5.1 *
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 10:09:48 -0700
From: julian carter <jcarter@leland.stanford.edu>
Subject: [histsex] reviews
Dear colleagues
I very much want reviews, but as long as we're discussing the subject I
would like to register my vote for either a real book-review editor or some
commonly agreed upon standardization of subject line and formatting (as the
other H-Net lists do for reviews). Formatting is easy: if you repost a
review you wrote for paper publication, simply make sure that you use email
friendly punctuation (asterices instead of underlining, e.g.), that the
margins are set narrow enough to fit the virtual page, and that paragraphs
have breaks between them.
In order to keep subject lines to a reasonable size, I suggest the following:
(1) abbreviate "[histsex]" to "[hs]" or "[hsex]"
(2) abbreviate "review" to "RVW"
(3) add author's last name _and title of book_, snipped for brevity and/or
to identify relevant subjects: this makes for much easier archiving!
The resulting subject line for some of Ivan's (very kind) posts would then
have read:
[hs] RVW Sengoopta, "O. Weininger...imperial Vienna"
[hs] RVW Maclaren, "20th c sexuality"
Obviously, some titles will be conceptually complex to the point that it's
difficult to edit them down--e.g., _Stepchildren of Nature: Krafft-Ebing,
Psychiatry, and the Making of Sexual Identity_. In such a case I might try
[hs] RVW re: Krafft-Ebing & Sexual Identity
Does this strike you people as useful, or am I simply obsessing over
minutiae? (I'm spending the morning correcting the proofed copy of a new
article, so things like standardized formatting are suddenly seeming
significant...perhaps disproportionately so!)
Julian
Julian B. Carter, Ph.D.
Fellow in the Humanities
Stanford University
Office: 650 723 1557
Home: 415 346 4361
___________________________________________________________________Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 12:39:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lois Patterson <****@****>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Old Maids Mania
Is this the sort of thing that Adela Quest experiences
in E. M. Forster's 1924 novel, A Passage to India, in
respect to her relationship with Aziz? Adela in that
novel was 25 or so, however.
Lois Patterson
___________________________________________________________________From: "Natalia Gerodetti" <splndg@lucs-01.novell.leeds.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 15:01:00 +0000
Subject: [histsex] spatial concepts of sexual maturity
I am wondering whether anyone on the list has come across
divided conceptions of sexual maturity according to a north/south
dichotomy and whether they could point me towards any
references. I know from Daniel Healey that Russia followed this
pattern of attaching perceptions of sexual maturity to climatic
conditions which were thought to result in a younger age of sexual
maturity in the south than in the north. I presume this might be
linked with Laqueur's explanations about heat being a driving force
for sexual organs. But I would like to know whether anyone is more
knowledgable on this. Also, if Daniel Healey could actually point
me towards a publication where he talks about north/south
divisions I would appreciate it.
Thanks.
Natalia Gerodetti
_________________________________________________
Natalia Gerodetti
School of Sociology & Social Policy
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
UK
++44 113 233 4786
___________________________________________________________________
From: "K.L.Harvey" <K.L.Harvey@sheffield.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 15:47:50 +0100
Subject: Re: [histsex] spatial concepts of sexual maturity
From: "Natalia Gerodetti" <splndg@lucs-01.novell.leeds.ac.uk>
> > I am wondering whether anyone on the list has come across
> divided conceptions of sexual maturity according to a north/south
> dichotomy and whether they could point me towards any
> references.
> Natalia Gerodetti
Dear Natalia,
I've done some work on English botanical erotic texts from the
eighteenth century, and they use the north/south divide when
talking about sexual maturity. Southern 'plants' mature faster and
are defunct sooner in terms of vigour and fertility. Northern 'plants'
mature at 15 (male) and 15/16 (female), thus remaining fruitful for
longer.
I've written about these texts in an article in Hitchcock and Cohen's
<English Masculinities> (1999), and Peter Wagner talks about
them in <Eros Revived> (1988).
Best wishes,
Karen Harvey
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 16:19:27 +0000
From: Dr Crozier <ucgacro@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] spatial concepts of sexual maturity
Dear Natalia Gerodetti,
>From my notes on Havelock Ellis, I have the following which might be of
interest to you:
Ellis was interested in the relationship between different cultures and
climates and sexual response. He made notes on M³ller's Physiology which
established "that African females attain puberty in the 8th year, in
Persia, in 9th. All of the Africans like, not women, but very young
girls." Ellis also cited Mayo's Human Physiology, to the effect that "In
the hottest regions of Asia, Africa and America, girls arrive at puberty at
10, even at 9 years of age: In France not till 13, 14, or 15--whilst in
Sweden, Russia and Denmark this period is not attained for from two to
three years later." Ellis, Commonplace book 2, 1875-77, SLNSW, A6904/4 p539.
This was written when Ellis was still a teenager.
I would not look at Laqueur on heat to find the answer to this problem (he
is talking about Galenic physiology, rather than climate); I would turn to
Humbolt who wrote on geography and its relationship with development to see
more about the origins of this idea.
Further, R F Burton, in the 'terminal essay' to his 1000 nights and a night
translation (and I cannot recall if it is the long or the short version,
perhaps both, but the long is more explicit), describes the development of
sodomy as a physiological response in this climatic way as well.
I hope this helps.
Cheerio, Ivan
Ivan Crozier,
Research Fellow
Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
24 Eversholt St
London
NW1 2AD
email: i.crozier@ucl.ac.uk
'ignorance is the first requisite of the
historian--ignorance, which simplifies
and clarifies, which selects and omits,
with a placid perfection unobtainable by
the highest art.'
--Lytton Strachey
___________________________________________________________________Subject: Re: [histsex] spatial concepts of sexual maturity
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 11:11:00 -0500
From: "Michael J. Murphy" <mjmurphy@artsci.wustl.edu>
Ivan et al.,
Richard Burton's discussion of the Sotadic Zone is found in his longer
version of the Arabian Nights--it is often difficult to locate. However,
I believe there's a generous discussion of this in Rudi Bleys, The
geography of perversion: male-to-male sexual behaviour outside the West
and the ethnographic imagination, 1750-1918 (New York University Press,
1995.)
>Further, R F Burton, in the 'terminal essay' to his 1000 nights and a night
>translation (and I cannot recall if it is the long or the short version,
>perhaps both, but the long is more explicit), describes the development of
>sodomy as a physiological response in this climatic way as well.
>>I hope this helps.
>>Cheerio, Ivan
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 17:26:18 +0000
From: Dr Crozier <ucgacro@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] spatial concepts of sexual maturity
Dear Michael et al.
Here is what I have on Burton, from my forthcoming study of Ellis and
homosexuality:
Many anthropologists, because of their commitment to the physical
explanations of racial differences, were not interested in theorising the
physical basis of homosexuality, which was generally considered a moral
aberration in 'primitive races' rather than a physical manifestation.
However, the famous traveller, translator and commentator on Eastern
culture, Sir Richard Burton, in the notorious terminal essay of his famed
translation of Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night, described not only
his encounters with sodomistic cultures, but his interpretation of why it
occurred. Burton, a member of the Anthropological Society of London,
recorded that in 1845 Sir Charles Napier asked him about the rumours
surrounding three brothels in Karachi where boys instead of women were
collecting double the pay for engaging in prostitution. As Burton was the
only Sindi speaker amongst the party, he made inquiries. Extensive
subsequent researches into homosexual culture in "many and distant
countries" enabled Burton to conclude that homosexual activity relied on
geographical climate.(1) He suggested the name "Sotadic Zone" for the area
which included Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and Chaldµa, Afghanistan, Sind, the
Punjab and Kashmir, Indo-China, China, Turkey, Japan, South Sea Islands,
and the New World. This was the climatic zone which encouraged homosexual
practices.(2)
Within the Sotadic Zone the Vice is popular and endemic, held at worst to
be a mere piccadillo, whilst the races to the North and South of the limits
here defined practise it only sporadically amid the opprobrium of their
fellows who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the
operation and look upon it with the liveliest disgust. (3)
Having studied classics for a time at Oxford, Burton was aware of the
historical and cultural specificity of pµderasty. He reminded his reader
that "the love of boys has its noble sentimental side,"(4) and described in
detail the Platonic love of the Ancient Greeks. Also drawing from Greek
notions of pµdophilia, Burton suggested that the "only physical cause" for
the practice was that "within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the
masculine and feminine temperaments, a crisis which elsewhere occurs only
sporadically."(5) Burton also cited Mantegazza as the discoverer of the
physical cause for sodomy: namely, "the nerves of the rectum and genitalia,
in all cases closely connected, are abnormally so in the pathici who
obtains, by intromission, the venereal orgasm which is usually sought
through the sexual organs."(6)
Hence this three fold distribution of sodomy; (1) Peripheric or anatomical,
caused by an unusual distribution of the nerves and their hyperµsthesia;
(2) Luxuriousness, when love a tergo is preferred on account of the
narrowness of the passage; and (3) the Psychical. But this is evidently
superficial: the question is what causes this neuropathy, this abnormal
distribution and condition of the nerves.(7)
One of the effects of Burton's detailed accounts of the literature of
Ancient Greece and Rome, and of the East, which described sodomy in the
Sotadic zone, was that while sodomy was not considered 'normal', it was
accepted as a part of other cultures. Burton noted that "[t]his prevalence
of 'molities' astonishes the anthropologist, who is apt to consider
pµderasty the growth of luxury and the especial product of great and
civilised cities, unnecessary and therefore unknown to simple savagery
where the births of both sexes are about equal and female infanticide is
not practiced."(8) He also suggested that outside the Sotadic zone
homosexual practices were sporadic, not endemic. Burton's lengthy writing
on pµderasty did not appear in later editions of his work. In the later
published editions, the only sanctioned writings were discussions of the
literary effects of pµderasty in his translation. Thus Burton's theory of
homosexuality was not widely circulated.(9)
Notes
1. Richard Burton, Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night, 10, "Terminal
Essay", London, 1886, p.205
2. ibid, p.206
3. ibid, p.207
4. ibid
5. ibid, p.208
6. ibid, p.209
7. ibid
8. ibid, p.240
9. Richard Burton, Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night, "Terminal
Essay", London, 1897, 8, pp.185-187
I hope that helps further...
Ivan
Ivan Crozier,
Research Fellow
Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
24 Eversholt St
London
NW1 2AD
email: i.crozier@ucl.ac.uk
'ignorance is the first requisite of the
historian--ignorance, which simplifies
and clarifies, which selects and omits,
with a placid perfection unobtainable by
the highest art.'
--Lytton Strachey
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 13:13:37 -0700
From: John Lauritsen <j.lauritsen@verizon.net>
Subject: [histsex] Burton's Sotadic Zone
Ivan Crozier has been led down the garden path by the
Sotadic Zone theory propounded in Sir Richard Burton's "notorious
terminal essay of his famed translation of Book of a Thousand
Nights and a Night".
Burton had a wicked sense of humor, and the Sotadic Zone was
his way of running rings around the censors (whom he loathed). It
enabled him to defend and celebrate pederasty, while seeming to
attack it. The sheer craziness of the Sotadic Zone theory masked
Burton's real message: that the acceptance or condemnation of male
love followed theological, rather than geographical boundaries.
An essay on Burton and an analysis of the Sotadic Zone
appear in the book I co-authored with David Thorstad, *The Early
Homosexual Movement (1864-1935)* (New York 1974).
John Lauritsen & David Thorstad.
The Early Homosexual Movement (1864-1935).
Second, Revised Edition.
Times Change Press, Ojai, California, 1995.
John Lauritsen
author: A Freethinker's Primer of Male Love (1998)
john_lauritsen@post.harvard.edu
___________________________________________________________________Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 18:40:37 +0000
From: Dr Crozier <ucgacro@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Burton's Sotadic Zone
Dear John,
A problem with what you are saying: you seem to be assuming that when
someone writes something ironically, then they will be taken as such. But
others, such as Ellis and Symonds, did not necessarily read RFB in that
way. Ellis took Burton seriously (for a while, and on some points of
fact). So regardless of what Burton privately thought, anyone could read
him at face value. All the more because RFB enroled other Italian
criminological and sexological discourses to back up his findings. And
this appealled to Ellis at some level, himself being fond of biological
descriptions of perversions such as homosexuality for political reasons.
Also, as the edition of 1000 nights... with the 'notorious' essay was
privately printed and had a small circulation, why would RFB be interested
in censorship? I could imagine a coded or tongue in cheek version of the
essay working in a widely published edition (although this would not impact
on my above ideas that it could be read literally).
Of course, one problem here is that I am treating Burton's ideas as an
essentially insignificant curio rather than an anthropological idea which
carried any serious weight. But it was available for Ellis, Symonds and
others to comment upon, which was my aim in the long chapter on English
ideas about sexual perversions and the sexual impulse. Burton's ideas
should not be considered comparable with some of the more important medical
ideas about homosexuality coming from Moll, Krafft-Ebing, Ellis, Kiernan,
etc. And further, the excerpt was completely decontextualised, and should
not be taken to represent my final thoughts on the matter of ethnological
and anthropological threories of sexual perverion/homosexuality.
Cheerio, Ivan
Ivan Crozier,
Research Fellow
Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
24 Eversholt St
London
NW1 2AD
email: i.crozier@ucl.ac.uk
'ignorance is the first requisite of the
historian--ignorance, which simplifies
and clarifies, which selects and omits,
with a placid perfection unobtainable by
the highest art.'
--Lytton Strachey
___________________________________________________________________Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 18:46:19 +0100 (BST)
From: "=?iso-8859-1?q?Michael=20O'Rourke?=" <tranquilised_icon@yahoo.com>
Subject: [histsex] Thanks
Many thanks to Philip Stokes for his response to my
Byron/disability query.
Michael O'Rourke, UCD.
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Hall ,Dr Lesley" <l.hall@wellcome.ac.uk>
Subject: [histsex] The anthropology/pornography question, and Fallaize collection
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 13:53:08 +0100
My colleague was extremely grateful for the points raised and suggestions
made following the query I posted about this. He hopes to produce a short
paper on Fallaize and the collection and I will post further details here
once I have them
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
http://homepages.primex.co.uk
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 02:04:23 +0400
From: Lubov <lu_soc@mail.ru>
Subject: Re: [histsex] spatial concepts of sexual maturity
Dear Natalia,
Wednesday, May 16, 2001, 7:01:00 PM, you wrote:
NG> Russia followed this pattern of attaching perceptions of sexual maturity to climatic
NG> conditions which were thought to result in a younger age of sexual
NG> maturity in the south than in the north.
Really, I met about it often in russian publication 19th century.
Russian physicians started these researches since 70 years 19 centuries.
They considered that in the south of Russia a younger age of sexual
maturity than in the north.
I can not to name at once exactly publication but if it is necessary to you -
let me know (but mean, that all these works in Russian).
While I can recommend publication
Antonio Morro "La puberta, studiata nell'uomo e nella donna in rapporto" (Toronto,1898).
Best regards,
Liubov Kuznetsova
Institute of Sociology Russian Academy of Science
St.Petersburg
Russia
e-mail: lu_soc@mail.ru
Fax: (812) 316 2929
___________________________________________________________________From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 03:32:32 EDT
Subject: Re: [histsex] Spain and homosexuality
Dear Richard
Thank you very much indeed. That certainly seems to answer the case :)
Chris White
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Peter Boston" <peterboston@paradise.net.nz>
Subject: Re: [histsex] spatial concepts of sexual maturity
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 21:18:22 +1200
There is some discussion in the New Zealand Parliamentary Debates of the
late nineteenth century about the age of consent and its relationship to
girls maturing earlier in the Antipodes than the Old World. By memory, NZ
raised the age from 12 to 16 in 1896 but there were some anomalies
concerning marriage legislation.
For a general but somewhat poor book on sexuality in nineteenth century NZ
you might be able to locate a copy of the following:
Stevan Eldred-Grigg, 'Pleasures of the Flesh: Sex and Drugs in Colonial New
Zealand, 1840-1915', Auckland: Reed, 1984.
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 00:28:33 +0200
From: Bruno Wanrooij <wanrooij@mail.dada.it>
Subject: Re: [histsex] spatial concepts of sexual maturity
Dear Natalia Gerodetti<br>
<br>
The following is probably well known to you, but let me throw in my two
cents:<br>
<br>
In Italy, after unification, the North/South dichotomy played a major
role in the discussion about the introduction of a new penal code valid
for the entire national territory. According to many, the proposal to fix
at twelve the age under which sexual relations were to be considered
statutory rape denied the differences between the population of the North
and of the South of Italy. According to Cesare Lombroso, the law should
take into consideration the anthropological differences existing among
the Italians rather then trying to cancel differences in sexual mores,
procreation and sexual maturity that were founded on the climate and
other factors. <br>
<br>
A collaborator of Cesare Lombroso, Guglielmo Ferrero, published in 1897
<i>L Europa giovane</i>, an account of studies and travels in the
countries of Northern Europe, in which he underlined the psychological
differences between what he called the German and the Latin races. These
differences, which could be explained by climatic conditions, found their
clearest expression in gender relations: according to Ferrero, precocious
puberty left the Latin "race" no energy for a serious
intellectual preparation or sport and placed sexual passions at the
centre of their existence.<br>
<br>
Earlier on, in 1875, senator Maggiorani had objected to an age limit of
twelve claiming that especially in the Southern provinces of Italy it was
not uncommon for mothers "to sell the verginity of their daughters
under the age of twelve and then to try to blackmail the male buyer by
threatening him with denunciation" <br>
<br>
Similar arguments about the early sexual maturity of the African
population were used in the colonial context studied by Barbara So2rgoni
(Parole e corpi. Antropologia, discorso giuridico e politiche sessuali
interrazziali nella colonia Eritrea (1890-1941), Napoli, Liguori, 1998)
<br>
<br>
Bruno Wanrooij<br>
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 17:03:25 -0700
From: John Lauritsen <j.lauritsen@verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Burton's Sotadic Zone
Dear Ivan,
In my posting of 16 May I meant mainly to alert you to the
error you have made in taking Burton's "Sotadic Zone" at face
value. After three sentences describing your error I wrote:
"An essay on Burton and an analysis of the Sotadic Zone
appear in the book I co-authored with David Thorstad, *The Early
Homosexual Movement (1864-1935)* (New York 1974).
"John Lauritsen & David Thorstad.
The Early Homosexual Movement (1864-1935).
Second, Revised Edition.
Times Change Press, Ojai, California, 1995."
I hoped and expected that you would then obtain a copy of
this book and read the capsule bio of Burton and my analysis of
the Sotadic Zone. I did not anticipate that you would attempt to
enter into a debate based solely on three sentences and an
assumption (incorrect) about you thought I was saying.
The book has been continuously in print since 1974, so there
should be no problem in finding a copy. I've looked at the Burton
section again, and find that I am unwilling to summarize it,
mainly for the reason that it is extremely concise already. I do
not wish to post it in electronic form because that would be in
violation of the "fair use" principle relating to copyright.
You say that I "seem to be assuming that when someone writes
something ironically, then they will be taken as such." I'm
afraid not. Very few people, even among the educated classes, are
able to detect, let alone appreciate, irony.
For example, I doubt that one out of a thousand recent
college graduates in America would be capable of reading Gibbon's
chapters on religion in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
They would be unable to grasp whether, in a given passage, Gibbon
were speaking in earnest or ironically. They would have no idea
where his own sympathies lay.
The same may be said of the Sotadic Zone. I don't doubt
that most readers have taken it literally. But if so, they have
not really read it.
Please read what I have already written on Burton and the
Sotadic Zone before attempting to debate the issues I have raised.
Best,
John Lauritsen
author: A Freethinker's Primer of Male Love (1998)
john_lauritsen@post.harvard.edu
___________________________________________________________________From: "Pat Hawkins" <pat.hawkins@virgin.net>
Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 19:58:29 +0100
We are so lucky to have the lives we have when other women suffer so
much around the world simply for being women. Please read and add your
support to this.
Subject: Fw: Petition about Womens Rights in Afganistan
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Petitions: PLEASE do not post here, and reasons why
Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 20:25:58 +0100
>Subject: Fw: Petition about Womens Rights in Afganistan
[and rest snipped]
Please do not post these petitions for the list - this is not the first time
this has been posted here. For the reasons why this does no good, see
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/afghani.htm
The mailbox given as a forwarding address is long since defunct.
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 13:56:17 -0700
From: John Lauritsen <j.lauritsen@verizon.net>
Subject: [histsex] The Stonewall Experiment
[One of the most important gay studies books in the past decade,
and certainly one of the most beautifully written, was Ian Young's
_The Stonewall Experiment_. It has just been remaindered, which
is a shame. Though the book acquired an underground reputation on
its own, the publisher did nothing to promote it. However, for
those who haven't read it yet, this is now an opportunity to
obtain it quite reasonably. It's selling for $4.95 at Hamilton
Books (www.hamiltonbook.com). Below is a review by Michael
Verney-Elliott. -- JL]
BOOKSHELF
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Ian Young, 'The Stonewall Experiment; A gay psychohistory'
Cassell UK/USA 1995, 312 pages ISBN 0-304-33270-0.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK REVIEW:
This is an easy, and uncomfortable, book to read. The ease is
afforded by Ian Young's pellucid prose style; the discomfort
lies in the sadness of his account of the betrayal of gay hopes
following so soon after the Stonewall rebellion, and the
consequence of that betrayal - the seeming inevitability of
AIDS.
Young gives a brief account of the pioneers of gay culture,
headed by Walt 'Dad' Whitman, with his Platonic ideal of male
love and comradeship. This had a profound influence on the
Englishman, Edward Carpenter, who became outspoken in his
championing of homosexual emancipation. He lived openly with
his lover, George Merrill, at Millthorpe in the North of
England, and even after Wilde's trial and disgrace, he remained
steadfast to his 'Uranian' ideals, when more timorous writers
kept a low profile. Until virtually the 1960's, writers fought
shy of open expression of gay sympathies, but there were
exceptions in the previous decade - Gore Vidal with The City
And The Pillar, James Baldwin with Giovanni's Room, spring to
mind. Things then started to get more graphic - and even more
depressing and pessimistic - with the works of John Rechy. By
the 70's, Young says ".... the mystical/political patrimony of
Whitman and Carpenter had been largely forgotten." The rest of
his book explains how and why.
A 1979 screenplay by William Burroughs (a relative of the
Mr.Burroughs who teamed up with Mr. Wellcome to form the
company which eventually brought us AZT!) presents an uncannily
prescient description of AIDS. "The hero of the story is Billy,
a gay man who is a 'blade runner', a courier of medical
contraband. His attempts to spread the word about a new
medicine are hampered by the atmosphere of distrust and
paranoia generated by the official Health Control as well as by
an illness he has contracted - pneumonia."
Long before the word 'homosexual' was coined by Karl Benkert in
1867, gays had been persecuted and demonised. In his chapter on
'The Myth of the Homosexual', Young states:
"The homosexual was thus installed in a rogues' gallery with
other mythical creations of Western diabolism: the Vampire, the
Leper, the Witch, the Gypsy, the Werewolf, the Jew - figures
concocted out of the fears, folk memories and repressed desires
of a civilisation, aspects of Christian society's dark
unconscious, its shadow side."
Gays have been systematically classified as sick by the medical
profession, criminalised by governments and brutalised by
police, abused and derided by heterosexuals. Young draws a
parallel between the gay urban ghettos of the 60's and the
plague-stricken city of 'Death in Venice', and has this to say:
"The Stonewall Experiment began in the untutored hands of gay
people who had had enough of being second-class citizens,
partial people, never fully human. It was an experiment in
reclaiming full humanity from the medical/governmental
establishment. Within a few years, control of the experiment
had fallen into other hands, and the initiators found
themselves in the position of experimental animals. The new
phase of the experiment involved the development of a
commercial gay scene that could be test-marketed as a prototype
of the urban lifestyle of the future."
Young unflinchingly depicts the cynically commercialised
hedonism of the bathhouse and backroom bar 'culture' which
ironically came to symbolise gay 'liberation', using
descriptive passages from novels like Faggots by Larry Kramer.
Other writers extolled the virtue of promiscuity, and even
STD's, as proof of homosexual political commitment; drugs and
poppers became an indispensable part of the gay scene; the
Mafia took over the pornography market; whether a gay man was
'deep' or 'wide' defined whether he could take one forearm up
his arse to the elbow, or two fists simultaneously. Crisco and
nitrite inhalants became the anointing oil and incense of the
new religion.
"The impulses that led young men to join in these darkly
alluring activities had something in common with feelings that
an older writer of the time recalled encountering in himself as
a young man, decades earlier. 'It seemed to me', he wrote,
'that I had passed a threshold, and that in passing it, I was
dimly dismissing something from where I had come: my land, my
past, the traditions of my country. But these men fascinated me
and I wanted to incorporate myself there. I perceived them as
strong, generous and pitiless: beings without weakness who
would never putrefy.' The words are those of the French author
Christian de La Mazi, remembering his emotions when, thirty
years earlier, he joined the Waffen SS."
Young's descriptions of AIDS are very moving. His own partner,
Jamie, died aged 32, on World AIDS Day, 1993, as this book was
nearing completion. His understanding and summation of the
dissident views of Duesberg, Lauritsen and others who have
never been blinded by the official 'explanations' for the
malady, are quite the best and most comprehensive I have been
privileged to read.
"Piece by piece, the stone wall of orthodoxy was crumbling. But
the ruins were heavily defended. Over a decade into the
epidemic, the public was still being told by newspapers and
television, and all but a tiny handful of physicians, that a
positive result from an HIV antibody test showed present and
lifelong 'infection' by the virus; that the virus was certain
or very likely to lead to AIDS; and that AIDS was universally
fatal. None of these assertions had been proven. Yet the
psychological effect of believing them could be
catastrophic.... In the post-1984 world, a growing number of
people considered their allotted blood 'status' as the key to
both their identity and their fate."
In not purporting to be a "history of homosexuality, the gay
movement, or the health crisis'" but merely the observations of
a poet with a "particular interest in images, verbal messages
and psychic undercurrents...", Ian Young is being modest. His
book is all these and much, much more. Whatever his intentions,
he has written a wonderful book, and Cassell Lesbian and Gay
Studies have published an important one. This book should be
read by all those concerned about the truth and the tragedy of
AIDS - gays, lesbians and straights. They may make what they
will of Young's last sentence: "The experiment continues." *
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Reviewed by Michael Verney-Elliott
Source: Continiuum Sept./Oct. 1995
___________________________________________________________________From: "Peter Boston" <peterboston@paradise.net.nz>
Subject: [histsex] Origins of 'Double Life'
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 01:37:59 +1200
Recently I acquired a copy of Edward Carpenter's pamphlet 'Some Friends of
Walt Whitman', published by the British Society for the Study of Sex
Psychology. In it, Carpenter refers to the 'double life' as a way of
denoting the higher social function ascribed to his idea of the intermediate
sex. The usage of the term made me wonder about the origins of 'double life'
when referring to gay men, which I've always--perhaps
fallaciously--associated with ideas of the closet. Would any list member
care to comment.
Thanks.
Peter
___________________________________________________________________From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Origins of 'Double Life'
Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 18:29:53 +0100
Peter Boston writes:
>Recently I acquired a copy of Edward Carpenter's pamphlet 'Some Friends of
>Walt Whitman', published by the British Society for the Study of Sex
>Psychology. In it, Carpenter refers to the 'double life' as a way of
>denoting the higher social function ascribed to his idea of the
intermediate
>sex. The usage of the term made me wonder about the origins of 'double
life'
It's a while since I looked at Carpenter but I wonder if 'the double life'
in the text you mention is actually alluding to his ideas about the double
nature of the 'invert' - i.e. achieving a balance of the qualities usually
ascribed to the two sexes ('intermediate'). Rather than being about
closetting/concealment.
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________From: "Peter Boston" <peterboston@paradise.net.nz>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Origins of 'Double Life'
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 05:53:21 +1200
Oh yes, I think you're right but I was thinking more about how the term
seems to have come to infer concealment. Was Carpenter the first to use
'double life' re inversion, or was it possibly a subversion of some other
accepted meaning? A similar example would be 'coming out', which Chauncey
associates with the culture of debutantes (if I recall correctly) cf the
closet.
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Dannielle Orr" <dorr@central.murdoch.edu.au>
Subject: re: [histsex] life imitates art? Lord Roseberry
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 17:31:39 +0800
I'm not sure if my memory serves me correctly, but not long ago I saw =
the film of Oscar Wilde with Stephen Fry starring in it. I recall there =
was a mention about why Bosie's father was so homophobic; which was that =
the older brother had had an affair with a minister of the government =
whilst working as an under-secretary. It might be worth a view if you're =
interested, but I'm not sure of the film's sources,
Dannielle Orr
___________________________________________________________________
From: ralfdose@t-online.de (Ralf Dose)
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 14:08:10 +0200
Subject: [histsex] tattoos for prostitutes and homosexuals in France after the Revolution?
Dear list members,
I wonder if someone could help me with a question a friend of mine
asked me recently and to which I did not know an answer: He had
heard some gossip information about a tattoo that was said to be
used in France after the Revolution to brandmark prostitutes and
homosexuals--possibly a lily. He would like to know how it looked
like. As my knowledge of French sexual history is scarce (and my
French rather poor) I neither know whether there is a background in
historical research for this gossip nor--if there is--where I could find
images or more information. Any help list members could give
would be greatly appreciated.
Ralf Dose M.A.
Grobeerenstr. 13a
D-10405 Berlin
tel. 030/215 94 74
e-mail ralfdose@t-online.de
___________________________________________________________________Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 13:22:36 +0000
From: Dr Crozier <ucgacro@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [histsex] tattoos for prostitutes and homosexuals in France after the
Revolution?
Dear Ralf,
I would direct your friend to A-J-B Parent-Duchatelet, *De la prostitution
dans la ville de Paris, consideree sous le rapport de l'hygiene publique,
de la moral, et de l'administration*, 2 vols, J B Bailliere, Paris, 1936.
Also the work of Jane Caplan on tattooing is good. One relevant paper is
in Bland and Doan, *Sexology in Culture*, Chicago, 1998, pp. 100-15
I hope this helps.
Cheerio, Ivan
>Ivan Crozier,
Research Fellow
Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
24 Eversholt St
London
NW1 2AD
email: i.crozier@ucl.ac.uk
'ignorance is the first requisite of the
historian--ignorance, which simplifies
and clarifies, which selects and omits,
with a placid perfection unobtainable by
the highest art.'
--Lytton Strachey
___________________________________________________________________From: "Healey D." <D.Healey@swansea.ac.uk>
Subject: [histsex] Review: Mikhail Kuzmin: A Life in Art
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 14:07:04 +0100
John E. Malmstad and Nikolay Bogomolov, Mikhail Kuzmin: A Life in Art
(Cambridge, Ma. & London: Harvard University Press, 1999), xvi + 463 pp.
Review by Dan Healey,
Department of History
University of Wales Swansea
d.healey@swansea.ac.uk
Poet, novelist, diarist, dramatist and musician, Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin
(1872-1936) wrote, arguably, the first modern coming-out novel with an
optimistic ending. His Kryl'ia ("Wings"), published in St Petersburg in
1906, embedded the theme of same-sex love in Russian culture in an
unapologetically affirmative key. Kuzmin continued to celebrate male love in
his works with a degree of confidence that his analogues in western Europe
failed to match. After the blazing debut of Wings, Kuzmin gained respect for
the "beautiful clarity" of his poetic voice, rooted in the present and its
charms, a bracing shift from the Symbolism of an earlier generation. Kuzmin
too was a poet who mined his own biography, incorporating its associations
and events in his poem-cycles.
Naively apolitical in the most volatile of political environments, he hailed
and then rejected the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. Too indigent and
stubborn to emigrate, he struggled to find enough literary commissions to
survive in Soviet times. Despite his status under Bolshevism as a cultural
anachronism, much of Kuzmin's artistically most successful work was produced
after 1917. As censorship tightened and ideological wars raged in
proletarian literature, Kuzmin's diary (1906-1934) chronicled a life lived
through sexuality, art and contemplation of the everyday. His finest
autobiographical poem cycle, "The Trout Breaks through the Ice" (published
in 1928) demonstrated the muscularity and range of his mature voice, and
evoked a reply from Anna Akhmatova, her famous "Poem without a Hero".
A creative figure who occupies the cultural space filled by the likes of
Wilde, Coward, Gide, with measures of Cavafy and Proust, would ordinarily be
immortalized as a national landmark. But Soviet Russia was no ordinary
country, and after Kuzmin's death (of merciful natural causes - had he
lived, evidence suggests he would have been executed two years later) his
life's work was buried. His poetry and prose were proscribed, and his
marvellous diary languished first with the secret police from 1934 to 1940,
then lay sequestered as "indecent" in the archives. When in 1966 American
graduate student John Malmstad arrived in Leningrad to research his thesis
on author Andrei Belyi, in conversations with Russian poetry specialists,
"one name kept coming up again and again" - Kuzmin's, and Malmstad left
having "fallen completely under his spell".
Malmstad devoted great energy to the recovery of Kuzmin's biography and
works, despite being denied a Soviet entry visa during the 1970s, apparently
for this unacceptable interest. A 1977 monograph, based on interviews and
documentation obtained unofficially from archives through Soviet
researchers, presented a "best available" portrait of the life. The present
biography, written with Russian Kuzmin authority Nikolay Bogomolov, is
nothing short of thrilling, for it represents the fruits of the new openness
in post-Soviet scholarship. In particular, Kuzmin's diary, now accessible
and gradually seeing annotated publication, has brought the poet's
homosexuality to the fore in what has now become (as 69 pages of notes
attest) the sub-field of Kuzmin studies. Malmstad and Bogomolov have
produced one of the cornerstones upon which Russian gay studies will be
built.
Their chief argument, convincingly made, is that Kuzmin's art deserves
recognition for its seriousness, in addition to the "carefree and
lighthearted" reputation he has long enjoyed. The authors demonstrate that
this "light" reputation is a distorting result of Soviet information
controls. With freedom to publish Kuzmin's complete works, and especially
with access to the diaries, the full spectrum of his wisdom and complexity
is revealed. Against this new backdrop, the scandalizing Kuzmin of Wings and
affairs with hussars and adventures with bathhouse attendants grows into a
figure less noisy but more intently queer. As the authors write, "Same-sex
love is the defining fact of Kuzmin's life and art." (p. 10) Here was a
radically modern and homosexual author who refused the closet of emigration
(with its loss of language), and whose diary reveals his maturing commitment
to his lover Yuri Yurkun, and their shared life in increasingly harrowing
circumstances.
This English-language version of the Malmstad-Bogomolov project differs
somewhat from a Russian version issued three years ago (Mikhail Kuzmin:
Iskusstvo, zhizn', epokha [Moscow: "Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie", 1996]).
Some welcome differences in the English version reflect new biographical
revelations in the intervening years. Others are explicable with reference
to the conventions of scholarship in Russia and America, such as the frank
statement (for English-language readers) about "same-sex love" cited in the
preceding paragraph. The same reflections get a euphemistic explication in
Russian. Curiously, the Russian version never uses the word "gei", and often
evades explicit statements about homosexuality so as to hold a stuffy
Soviet-minded audience. (Cf. p. 139, "gay society" in English, and p. 136 in
Russian; p. 229 "fag hag" in English, and p. 181-82 in Russian.) It seems
sad that Americans (and those of us tagging along in English-speaking
markets), enjoying a flood of queer scholarship, can buy a "gayer" Kuzmin
than the Russians, who surely need one as much as we do, if not more.
Literary scholars who care about the revolutionary period may take issue
with the authors' fashionably post-Soviet dismissal of the era's literary
politics (e.g., p. 338). They meant little to Kuzmin, but their progress
dictated the opportunities that shaped his existence. It is ironic, given
his spendthrift ways, that Kuzmin enjoyed his final years (years of famine
and terror in the countryside), receiving guests to tea in his salon, thanks
to friends who organized his entry into the Union of Soviet Writers.
Historians will consider that the conceptualization of the sexual culture
Kuzmin lived in deserves strengthening in this account. Presumably because
the core of this book was laid down in the Russian original as early as
1991, the authors have not addressed the important work about modern Russian
sexualities by Laura Engelstein or Igor Kon. A variation between Russian and
English texts illustrates the problem. In Russian, an eyewitness describes
Kuzmin's final public reading (in Leningrad in 1928) as "the last
demonstration of Petersburg's pederasts" (p. 260), while in English it is
"the last demonstration of Leningrad's homosexuals" (p. 349). I suspect the
speaker actually said "Petersburg" and "pederasts", and that the tidying
obscures important differences. (For the same operation, see Alexander
Poznansky, Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man [New York: Schirmer
Books, 1991], p. 626 n. 47.) Similarly, the authors refer to people,
bathhouses and plots as "gay" in the English text, but not enough is offered
to give the term either social or discursive context. History-conscious
readers will wonder how a St Petersburg "gay" bathhouse in 1906 differs from
the diverse post-HIV "gay" baths of our own heterogenous and not always
American experience. To be fair, Malmstad promises a forthcoming article on
these questions in Journal of the History of Sexuality. Yet as he and
Bogomolov have resolved that their English readers deserve a Kuzmin for whom
"same-sex love is the defining fact", they could have provided more purchase
on what, in the context, that meant.
These quibbles of a pedantic constructionist nature are not meant to
undermine the signal importance of this book. We still have far too few
works about queer life and history east of the Brandenburg Gate. Queer
theory and queer history are hobbled by a parochial focus on the American
experience. At last we have an accurate, archive-based, and exhaustively
researched account of this forgotten "northern Wilde": a major icon in our
heritage has been restored to its proper place.
Originally published in The Newsletter of the Committee on Lesbian and Gay
History, Vol. 12 No. 3 (Fall 1999)
___________________________________________________________________Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 09:59:22 +0100
From: dcsouden@nildram.co.uk (David Souden)
Subject: [histsex] Life imitates art? - Lord Rosebery
Dear Listmembers
I have come across an article: 'A Note on Oscar Wilde, Alfred Douglas and Lord
Rosebery', Baylen and McBath, English Language Notes, 1985, claiming that
Lord Rosebery (British Prime Minister 1894-5) had an affair with Viscount
Drumlanrig - brother to Lord Alfred Douglas and the eldest son of the
Marquess of Queensberry. Drumlanrig died in a 'shooting accident', and
Queensberry reportedly wrote to both Rosebery and Queen Victoria accusing
Rosebery of seducing his son.
Can any of this be true? - especially given the affair and scandal of Oscar
Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas not long after. Is it even plausible that
there were forces seeking vengeance for Drumlanrig in the Wilde case? Or
might it be an example of Queensberry's own obsessions?
Astonished by coincidence,
David Souden
author and freelance historian
London E1
___________________________________________________________________Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 10:01:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: Elise R Chenier <3erc3@qlink.queensu.ca>
Subject: [histsex] Homosexuality and Pedophilia
Friends,
I am just finishing up my doctoral thesis on criminal sexual psychopath
legislation and treatment programs for sex offenders in post-WWII Canada,
and need to clarify an argument. I call on your collective expertise for
assistance.
In one of my chapters I draw attention to the popular argument by mental
health experts who claim that homosexual behaviour does not inflict
injury, and therefore should not be regulated by the law (but rather by
them). However, in the end and despite the British Wolfenden report, the
Canadian Commission that studied these issues decides to preserve criminal
sanctions against homosexual sex.
I argue that they justify this by showing that homosexuality *is* harmful.
The Commission does this is by emphasizing the testimony of police
officers who claim homosexuals are constantly recruiting younger boys into
their "fraternity". My (unsubstantiated) claim is that the link between
homosexuality and pedophilia is tightened in the 1950s, that it is made to
appear dangerous and harmful in order to meet the changing legal/cultural
standards for dealing with sex crime.
I have been asked to clarify whether or not the link btwn homosexuality
and pedophilia is new or in some way unique to this period. I notice that
in _Trials of Masculinity_, Angus McLaren argues that the connection was
made in the medical literature as early as the late nineteenth century.
It would help, not hurt, my thesis if I could convincingly argue that
these pre-WWII medical ideas were popularized in the post-WWII period.
Not being as well-versed in pre-WWII homo history as I'd like, I am hoping
others might provide some insight into the historical roots of this
particular issue.
Regards,
Elise Chenier
D-Day: June 22, 2001
___________________________________________________________________Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 15:24:15 +0100 (BST)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Noreen=20Giffney?= <stheno_gorgon@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: [histsex] Queer stuff for ú3!
Dear List Members,
> > Please forward on to all interested individuals.
> > You might be interested in the recently published
> volume of the academic journal, THE HISTORY REVIEW,
> XII (2001). It includes 21 articles (3,500-7,500
> words), 2 work in progress reports (2,000-3,500
> words), 6 book reviews (800-1,100 words), and 4
> web-site reviews (400-600 words). Diverse topics,
> which might be of interest, include: eighteenth
> century French political pornography, lesbian
> activism
> in late twentieth-century Ireland, queer
> masculinities
> 1550-1800, and witchcraft in medieval Ireland. To
> purchase the journal, please send a cheque/postal
> order for IR ú5 (IR ú3 for journal, IR ú2 for p&p)
> to
> Coleman A. Dennehy and Noreen Giffney, Combined
> Departments of History, John Henry Newman Building,
> University College, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. For
> a
> copy of the table of contents, please contact Noreen
> Giffney: stheno_gorgon@yahoo.co.uk
> > Noreen Giffney
> Department of Medieval History
> University College, Dublin
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 18:00:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: Michael Sibalis <msibalis@wlu.ca>
Subject: Re: [histsex] tattoos for prostitutes and homosexuals in France after the Revolution?
Prostitutes were sometimes branded (not tattooed) in France BEFORE the
Revolution -- but the practice was not continued afterwards. I have
studied the repression of male homosexuality since the 17th century and
have never seen a case of a male homosexual being branded.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Michael D. Sibalis
Associate Professor
Department of History
Wilfrid Laurier University
Waterloo, Ontario
CANADA N2L 3C5
(519)-884-0710 ext. 3141
msibalis@wlu.ca
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 13:07:02 +1000
From: Stephen Robertson <stephen.robertson@history.usyd.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Homosexuality and Pedophilia
Elise
My recently published article ["Separating the Men from the Boys: Masculinity, Psychosexual
Development, and Sex Crime in the United States, 1930s-1960s," Journal of the History Of
Medicine and Allied Sciences, 56, 1 (2001): 3-35] includes a discussion of the argument
that boys 'seduced' by men became homosexuals. That argument had a place in psychiatric
discussions of homosexuality and sex crime in the 1950s U.S., but generally took second
place to family dynamics as a cause of homosexuality. In popular writings, such seductions
have a more prominent place, spinning off a discussion distinct from the general accounts of
pedophilia.
I've read extensively in the medical jurisprudence literature in the nineteenth and early
twentieth century without coming across the references referred to by Angus McLaren. But it
would not surprise me if some isolated references existed, since, as I see it, the idea that
boys could be 'seduced' into homosexuality depends on a developmental concept of sexuality,
a notion that is spreading among medical writers in the late nineteenth century. Popular
discussion of sex crime in the U.S. generally has little to say about boys as victims until
the late 1930s. The popular appeal of the idea of seduction as a cause, in the U.S. at
least. is delayed until the 1950s, when the efforts of mental hygienists to disseminate the
idea of psychosexual development begin to pay dividends, and Cold War arguments about
Communists recruiting followers by poisoning the minds of the young echo that framework.
Hope that helps
Stephen
--
Dr. Stephen Robertson
Department of History (A17)
University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW 2006, AUSTRALIA
Phone: +61 2 9351 3782 (Fax) +61 2 9351 3918
E-mail: stephen.robertson@history.usyd.edu.au
Web Site: http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/~sterobrt
___________________________________________________________________Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 09:48:03 +0200
From: Gert Hekma <hekma@pscw.uva.nl>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Homosexuality and Pedophilia
Dear friends,
In The Netherlands, the discussion went into another direction,
Psychiatrists who had claimed that boys could become homosexual through
seduction, discovered halfway the 1950's that boys rarely become homosexual
in this way. So, some of the main Dutch authors discussing homosexuality
(especially F.J.Tolsma) went from an argument that stressed seduction, to
an argument that stressed that homosexuality was inborn, or developed
(psychoanalytic school) in the child's early days. The rejection of the
seduction-thesis led also to the decriminalization of homosexual relation
between majors (21 years) and minors in 1971 and to legal recognition of
the homosexual movement in 1973 (among other topics).
Best,
Gert Hekma
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Gert Hekma
Gay and Lesbian Studies
Dpt of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Amsterdam
Oudezijds Achterburgwal 185
1012 DK Amsterdam
Phone: * 31 20 525 2226 or 6278877
Fax: * 31 20 525 3010
Email: hekma@pscw.uva.nl
Website: http://www.pscw.uva.nl/gl
___________________________________________________________________
From: David Greenberg <david.greenberg@nyu.edu>
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 16:29:46 -0400
Subject: Re: [histsex] Homosexuality and Pedophilia
This is interesting, but there is something about the timing that makes
one feel that this account must be incomplete. Couldn't the
psychiatrists have discovered that seduction usually doesn't lead to
homosexuality have been made fifty years earlier? David Greenberg,
Sociology Department, New York University, 269 Mercer St., Room 402, New
York,NY 10003.
___________________________________________________________________Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 22:36:31 -0700
Subject: [histsex] Origin of syphilis?
From: Hazel Hipkins <hipwalk@telusplanet.net>
Hello.
I am not a health professional at all, but have subscribed to this list
temporarily in hopes of resolving a friendly dispute between my 80-yr old
mother and myself.
Mom wasn't sure of her sources, but felt quite sure that syphilis was
introduced to Europe from South America, and was in some way connected with
llamas. Her claim seems bizarre to me, but I'd love to be able to tell her
that there was some truth to it...
I haven't been able to discover much on my own; I recall that Syphilis was a
character in a 16th century play, and that he wasn't very sympathetic, but
I'm not at all sure that he was poxy.
If anyone can shed some light on this matter, we will both very much
appreciate it. If my question is misdirected (or just silly), please forgive
my barging in...
Good night to all from Calgary, Canada
-Hazel
___________________________________________________________________Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 22:23:06 -0700
From: "Dr. David Hersh" <Dr_Sex@netidea.com>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Origin of syphilis?
For a discussion of this topic, see Sexual Variance in Society and History
by Vern Bullough, University of Chicago Press, 1976. pp. 425-430.
David Hersh
___________________________________________________________________From: "Hall ,Dr Lesley" <l.hall@wellcome.ac.uk>
Subject: [histsex] Origins of syphilis
Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 10:19:14 +0100
This is a (still) hotly debated medical-historical question.
Osteo-archaeologists have found bones in Europe pre-Columbus which manifest
the signs of syphilis (though possibly a non-venereal treponomatosis - these
are v hard to distinguish). Europe at the time of the 'discovery' of America
was in a state of social and political upheaval highly conducive to the
epidemic spread of STDs.
By ruthlessly limiting a search on the Wellcome Library catalogue
(http://library.wellcome.ac.uk) to English language items published after
1990 (and then ruthlessly selecting just a few items from the extensive
hitlist), I have come up with the following references of relevance, which
tend to suggest to me that the jury is still out:
The great pox : the French disease in Renaissance Europe by Jon
Arrizabalaga, John Henderson, and Roger French, Yale University Press, c1997
History of syphilis by Claude QuÚtel, Polity Press, 1992
The French pox : concepts and cures for syphilis and gonerea in the 16th and
17th century by Hugh Petrie, Bristol : Stuart Press, 1999
'The discovery of America, the Italian wars, and the impact of syphilis on
Western Christendom ' by Cecil H. Clough In Medical historian. No. 6 (Jul.
1993)
'Early modern syphilis' by Bruce Thomas Boehrer In Forbidden history : the
state, society, and the regulation of sexuality in modern Europe : essays
from the Journal of the history of sexuality Chicago, 1992
'On the American Indian origin of syphilis : fallacies and errors ' by
Plutarco Naranjo
and 'The voyage of Columbus led to the spread of syphilis to Europe ' by
Michael H. Grieco in Columbus and the New World :
medical implications Providence, RI : OceanSide Publications,
1995
'The origin of syphilis in Europe : before or after 1493?' by Ann J.
Stirland In International journal of osteoarchaeology. Vol. 4 (1994)
'Syphilis and the Columbian exchange : was the new disease really new?' Ann
G. Carmichael In
International Congress on the Great Maritime Discoveries and World Health
(1st) : 1991 : Lisbon,
Portugal. The great maritime discoveries and world health : proceedings of
the first International
Congress on the Great Maritime Discoveries and World Health held in Lisbon
on 10-13 September 1990 Lisbon : Escola Nacional de Sade Pblica, 1991
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
___________________________________________________________________Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 11:28:10 +0200 (MET DST)
From: <a2534304@Smail.Uni-Koeln.de>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Homosexuality and Pedophilia
I remember that the German psychologists William Stern mentioned in his
book about juvenile witnesses (1926) two groups of chronic endangered
boys: first those seduced by older men in youth organizations and sports
clubs and second the child prostitution. He saw a connection between
sports and homosexuality and proposed to examine this topic in a single
study. It seems that this connection was more a hypothesis because he did
not give any empirical reference for it.
Stern, William, "Jugendliche Zeugen in Sittlichkeitsprozessen : ihre
Behandlung und psychologische Begutachtung ; ein Kapitel der forensischen
Psychologie," [= Juvenile witnesses in sex crime proceedings : their
treatment and psychological assessment], Leipzig : Quelle & Meyer, 1926.
Stefan Blaschke.
___________________________________________________________________Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 16:51:07 +0200
From: Gert Hekma <hekma@pscw.uva.nl>
Subject: Re: [histsex] Homosexuality and Pedophilia, and Islam
Dear David and others,
My argument concerned mainstream psychiatrists in the Netherlands. The
first pro-homosexual physicians (Arnold Aletrino, Lucien von Roemer) of
course objected to an argument that seduction made boys homosexual. Their
argument that dates from the period around 1900 (1897-1907), was that
homosexuality was inborn. But the majority of psychiatrists (many of whom
of course never spoke out about this theme) will have endorsed a
perspective that homosexuality was evil and sick, and could originate in
seduction. The law of 1911 that forbade minor-major same-sex relations was
based on the idea that boys could be seduced into homosexuality.
Nowadays, this idea of seduction has returned to the Netherlands. An imam,
based in Rotterdam, has created great alarm in the Netherland by saying
that homosexuality is a typical Dutch, infectuous disease. The opening up
of marriage for same-sex couples would lead to the end of Dutch society
because gay men will indeed seduce young men into their sinfull habits and
so end reproduction. Many politicians and even the prime minister have
warned the imam that such intolerant statements are not done in the
Netherlands, and the minister responsible for ethnic issues invited a group
of muslim leaders to discuss the wronged statement where the imam
apologized for his statements, but nevertheless told the press that he had
not changed his mind. The statement is also under scrunity of the court of
Rotterdam. The anger of many people was even more raised by what the imam
said because his quotes came in an item about violence of young Moroccans
against gay men and were seen as inciting more queer bashing. Since, the
media have been flooded with articles, letters and news items on islam and
homosexuality, and meetings and panels have been organized where gays,
lesbian and muslims discuss homosexuality and islam in a Dutch context.
Gert Hekma
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Gert Hekma
Gay and Lesbian Studies
Dpt of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Amsterdam
Oudezijds Achterburgwal 185
1012 DK Amsterdam
Phone: * 31 20 525 2226 or 6278877
Fax: * 31 20 525 3010
Email: hekma@pscw.uva.nl
Website: http://www.pscw.uva.nl/gl
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