Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Riotous Flesh: Women, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice in Nineteenth-Century Americaby April R. Haynes
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. No reviews no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher Series
Nineteenth-century America saw numerous campaigns against masturbation, which was said to cause illness, insanity, and even death. Riotous Flesh explores women's leadership of those movements, with a specific focus on their rhetorical, social, and political effects, showing how a desire to transform the politics of sex created unexpected alliances between groups that otherwise had very different goals. As April R. Haynes shows, the crusade against female masturbation was rooted in a generally shared agreement on some major points: that girls and women were as susceptible to masturbation as boys and men; that "self-abuse" was rooted in a lack of sexual information; and that sex education could empower women and girls to master their own bodies. Yet the groups who made this education their goal ranged widely, from "ultra" utopians and nascent feminists to black abolitionists. Riotous Flesh explains how and why diverse women came together to popularize, then institutionalize, the condemnation of masturbation, well before the advent of sexology or the professionalization of medicine. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNone
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)305.42097309Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Groups of people Women Role in society, status History, geographic treatment, biography North AmericaLC ClassificationRatingAverage: No ratings.Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |