The stuff on male attitudes about sex in the 1950’s will be in any good book on Kinsey and his cultural impact – his studies were disputed on the grounds of poor construction from the git go, and as part of the debate a number of follow up studies were done, none of which supported Kinsey’s findings to my knowledge. Back when I was seriously reading up on it him it was dead easy to find plenty of evidence that Kinsey’s studies were flawed, and that people said as much at the time – Judith Reisman has hit the scene since then, so books on Kinsey may be more polarized now.
I ran across the Victorian stuff researching prostitution in that era (focusing on the U.S. western states), but as I recall Ellen Rothman’s Hands and Hearts; A History of Courtship in America and Karen Lystra’s Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-century America touched on some of that, as did Reay Tannahill’s Sex in History from a different angle.
A good pro-life or pro-choice history of abortion through the late 1800’s should end up discussing the change in sexual attitudes through that period. Most of the pro-life ones will say the doctors at the forefront were motivated by their growing medical knowledge which showed that there was a living being before “quickening,” and by better understanding of sexually transmitted disease; most of the pro-choice ones will focus on the AMA collecting power through the campaign and on the Nativists feeling threatened by immigrants. ;) But going on my reading the info on the change in attitudes should be more closely parallel.
Most books on Puritans challenge the myth that they were antisex. A quick google turned up an essay on a romance site that lists among Puritan myths;
Puritans thought sex was evil and condemned those, especially women, who enjoyed it. False. This is myth is wrongly implied by most modern-day uses of the word "puritan," as in this famous line, attributed to H.L. Mencken: "A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun." In fact, Puritans had no particular issue with sex. They knew that both men and women were subject to sexual desires. They certainly knew that women experienced arousal and orgasm - conventional Protestant wisdom of the 16th and 17th centuries was that women might grow ill or mad if they didn't experience regular sexual release. Puritans thought that sex should only happen in the marriage bed, and that adultery and premarital sex were sins. They also thought that married couples should embark upon lovemaking prayerfully - they should always remember that sexual pleasure is a gift from God. In all these attitudes towards sex, they were in perfect agreement with Anglicans and other Protestants of the same period, and with quite a few modern-day Christians as well.
http://www.likesbooks.com/puritans.html
And Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County, 1649-1699 by Roger Thompson would be a good source, as I recall.
I know I’ve read a couple of authors discuss the evolution of the attitudes toward woman’s sexuality as families got more spread out that I outlined, but I can’t remember either of their names. I know Nancy Cott discusses how there was a sea change in the Victorian era, where the image of women changes from the more carnal sex to a “passionless” image, but she is not who I am remembering and the change from society and families holding the responsibility of sexual restraint to women holding it happens earlier.
After a quick google I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Intimate Matters, either, but I didn’t find the authors I’m remembering (the first author discussed it as the other’s theory so it could be in Intimate Matters but if so I’m guessing they weren’t completely sold on it and I was thinking when I first heard of it the author liked it). At any rate, I read that theory about the shift of responsibility and went, “Yes! Of course!” but I no longer have the names of the pertinent books. *sigh*
Re: Reposting to fix HTML...
I ran across the Victorian stuff researching prostitution in that era (focusing on the U.S. western states), but as I recall Ellen Rothman’s Hands and Hearts; A History of Courtship in America and Karen Lystra’s Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-century America touched on some of that, as did Reay Tannahill’s Sex in History from a different angle.
A good pro-life or pro-choice history of abortion through the late 1800’s should end up discussing the change in sexual attitudes through that period. Most of the pro-life ones will say the doctors at the forefront were motivated by their growing medical knowledge which showed that there was a living being before “quickening,” and by better understanding of sexually transmitted disease; most of the pro-choice ones will focus on the AMA collecting power through the campaign and on the Nativists feeling threatened by immigrants. ;) But going on my reading the info on the change in attitudes should be more closely parallel.
Most books on Puritans challenge the myth that they were antisex. A quick google turned up an essay on a romance site that lists among Puritan myths;
Puritans thought sex was evil and condemned those, especially women, who enjoyed it. False. This is myth is wrongly implied by most modern-day uses of the word "puritan," as in this famous line, attributed to H.L. Mencken: "A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun." In fact, Puritans had no particular issue with sex. They knew that both men and women were subject to sexual desires. They certainly knew that women experienced arousal and orgasm - conventional Protestant wisdom of the 16th and 17th centuries was that women might grow ill or mad if they didn't experience regular sexual release. Puritans thought that sex should only happen in the marriage bed, and that adultery and premarital sex were sins. They also thought that married couples should embark upon lovemaking prayerfully - they should always remember that sexual pleasure is a gift from God. In all these attitudes towards sex, they were in perfect agreement with Anglicans and other Protestants of the same period, and with quite a few modern-day Christians as well.
http://www.likesbooks.com/puritans.html
And Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County, 1649-1699 by Roger Thompson would be a good source, as I recall.
I know I’ve read a couple of authors discuss the evolution of the attitudes toward woman’s sexuality as families got more spread out that I outlined, but I can’t remember either of their names. I know Nancy Cott discusses how there was a sea change in the Victorian era, where the image of women changes from the more carnal sex to a “passionless” image, but she is not who I am remembering and the change from society and families holding the responsibility of sexual restraint to women holding it happens earlier.
After a quick google I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Intimate Matters, either, but I didn’t find the authors I’m remembering (the first author discussed it as the other’s theory so it could be in Intimate Matters but if so I’m guessing they weren’t completely sold on it and I was thinking when I first heard of it the author liked it). At any rate, I read that theory about the shift of responsibility and went, “Yes! Of course!” but I no longer have the names of the pertinent books. *sigh*
That help?
Sheryl