Histories of Sexuality: Antiquity to Sexual Revolution

323 Pages·2014·6.224 MB·English

by  Stephen Garton

HISTORIES OF SEXUALITY
HISTORIES
OF SEXUALITY
STEPHEN GARTON
First Published 2004
by Equinox Publishing Ltd.
This edition by Routledge:
Routledge Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group
711 Third Avenue, 2 Park Square,
New York, NY 10017 Milton Park, Abingdon,
Oxon, OX14 4RN
© Stephen Garton 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or repro
duced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without per
mission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the Library of
Congress
ISBN 0-415972-29-9 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415972-30-2 (pbk)
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.
For Iain Cameron
(1948-2002)
CONTENTS
Preface ix
1. Writing Sexual History 1
2. Rule of the Phallus 30
3. Sexual Austerity 48
4. Christian Friendships 64
5. Making Heterosexuality 81
6. Victorianism 101
7. Dominance and Desire 124
8. Feminism and Friendship 148
9. Imagining Perversion 169
10. Normalizing Sexuality 189
11. Sexual Revolution 210
Epilogue 229
Endnotes 234
Select Bibliography 287
Index 304
PREFACE
A history of sexuality runs the risk of confirming popular fears that
academics are capable of ruining even the most simple of pleasures.
This book, however, is written in the hope that histories of sexuality
(although not necessarily this one) can enlighten and, occasionally,
even delight. At their best such histories offer a means of investigat-
ing the clash of instinct and culture - how seemingly timeless and
natural behaviours shape and are in turn shaped by history. Sexual
practices may persist through time but history also illuminates how
sex and sexuality are surprisingly mutable. This capacity of history to
unsettle and surprise is evident in many of the works discussed here.
In less than 40 years the history of sexuality, as a definable area of
scholarly enterprise, has grown from a few works describing past atti-
tudes and behaviours into an enormously rich field that sustains its
own journal, a number of monograph series and countless seminars,
conferences, articles and books. Moreover, this field has moved well
beyond accounts of exotic ideas and strange obsessions to embrace
sophisticated analyses of such issues as subjectivity, identity, power,
desire, gender and embodiment. Through these studies we now have
a much more detailed account of past sexual ideas, beliefs, practices,
fantasies and struggles.
This picture has been pieced together through numerous invalu-
able inquiries. Historians are always conversing with the past, asking
questions of the surviving evidence, listening for the answers and then
reformulating their questions. They also argue with each other. Like any
vibrant field of inquiry the history of sexuality is full of the cut and thrust
of debate. There are important issues at stake here in the development
of plausible explanations of the past. Historical accounts can only flour-
ish if they take the time to savour the sustenance provided by others who
have gone before, even if they end up finding what has been served dis-
agreeable. This book looks at this process - how historians have made
X HISTORIES OF SEXUALITY
histories of sexuality through the 'double helix' of researching the past
and arguing with each other. It explores how historians have under-
stood sex and sexuality across different times and places and how the
assumptions, debates, theories and politics of the present have shaped
our perceptions and understandings of this past.
This book is a critical survey of some key debates within this emerg-
ing area of scholarship. It is certainly not an effort to write a compre-
hensive history of sexuality, although it will touch on the key findings of
many historians. Nor does it attempt to provide an adequate coverage
of all the relevant historians or debates in the field. The historiography
on sexuality is now so vast as to be beyond the reach of any single text
and, while the pursuit of comprehensiveness might result in a very large
and more or less adequate compendium, it would probably miss the vital
process of'making history'. This book has a different trajectory, offer-
ing both a study of specific debates and a history of the history of sexu-
ality. It traces the emergence of this field of inquiry: the early efforts to
theorize sexuality as subject to historical change, the stark differences
over whether sexuality was an essential, timeless force or the product
of social and historical conditions, and more recently the attempts to
move beyond this constraining dichotomy.
In pursuing these aims this account shifts between the terms sex
and sexuality. At times the focus is on sex, defined here as intertwined
practices of pleasure, desire and power. These practices include, but
are not confined to, intercourse or other acts of penetration. Sexuality,
on the other hand, refers to the ways sexual practices are turned into
signifiers of a particular type of social identity. Conventionally, sexu-
ality is seen as a personal orientation of desire, something we all have
and something that manifests itself in different forms in each individ-
ual. In this framework sexuality also tends to cluster into types - het-
erosexuality, homosexuality, sadomasochism and the like. But such
commonplace wisdom blurs the differences between practice and iden-
tity. Recently historians have focused on distinguishing these things.
Same-sex practices may occur across a wide range of times and places,
but is a homosexual identity found with equal frequency? As we shall
see, this is a matter of debate. But in this context it is important to
state that I am not drawing a rigid distinction, common amongst some
historians of sexuality, between acts and identity. Sex can play a part
in the formation of a range of identities. Equally, sex alone does not
always determine identity. In the following chapters it is clear that
gender, concepts of masculinity and femininity, as well as race, class
and status intersect with sex in different times and places to deter-
mine a range of identities. These complex interplays between sex,
culture and identity are the source of much debate amongst historians
and one of the key themes of this study.
PREFACE xi
The first chapter provides a conspectus of the historiography and
many of the debates explored in later chapters build upon this ini-
tial discussion, adding flesh to its bare bones. In part this survey indi-
cates the shallow foundations for the history of sexuality and affirms
the efforts of those seeking a more sophisticated grounding for the
enterprise. Equally, the analysis attempts to situate the evolution of
this field of historical inquiry in its own historical and political context.
The emergence of the field, some of its early proponents and many
of its central concerns were embroiled in the history of the last half-
century. The politics of gender, race and sexual identity, the effort to
legitimate gay, lesbian, feminist and anti-colonial struggles, and the
dominance of key terms such as repression, liberation, patriarchy and
masculinism resonate throughout many of the studies under scrutiny
here. And while many historians have sought to move beyond the con-
straints of these original concerns, these ideas, concepts and founding
debates have shaped the history of sexuality in profound ways.
A book such as this is by its very nature selective. My aim is not so
much to tell the history of sexuality, but rather to examine the ways
in which it has been told. To do this requires case studies, particular
debates and arguments that reveal how history comes into being. This
study confines its focus largely to the West, mainly because so much of
the historiography has been concerned with developments in Britain,
Europe and America. There is, of course, a growing and rich literature
on the history of sexuality in Asia, Africa and Latin America, but on the
whole these sit outside my effort to mark some tentative signposts in an
already extensive field. That they do so is no reflection on their impor-
tance, only on the limitations of a manageable study.
Most historians, by force of the difficulty of recovering the past, nat-
urally confine their studies to specific times, places and themes - be it
the late Roman Empire, Renaissance Venice or early-twentieth-century
New York. Similarly, most choose a specific theme within these cultural
and historical contexts, such as homosexuality, cross-dressing, prostitu-
tion, courtship, marriage or myriad other aspects of sex and sexuality.
Exceptionalism is an abiding tension within most historiographies. By
trying to take a longer view (from antiquity to the late-twentieth century)
and a broader canvas (Britain, Europe and America) this book attempts
to highlight some general themes - such as the pervasiveness of the sex-
ual oppression of women, the persistence of tropes of active/passive in
the understanding of sex - and develop some comparative perspectives
on different sexual regimes. While this book does not offer a systematic
comparative analysis of the type developed for racism by scholars such as
George Fredrickson, it works from the premise that the historiography of
sexuality will gain immeasurably from greater attention to historical and
cultural comparisons.
xii HISTORIES OF SEXUALITY
Few could be more conscious than I am that space constraints have
resulted in neglect of major historians and vital works. In part that is
a measure of the scope of the field. It also reflects the origins of this
study as a course offered to undergraduates. Much of what is chosen
for closer examination here first ran the gamut of classroom trial and
error. I found some of the key debates explored here worked very well
for students. Other debates dropped by the wayside (both in the course
and in this book), not because they were unimportant, but because they
did not engage the interest of students as much as I had hoped. A few
topics, however, have survived student apathy. Try as I might, sexual
renunciation remained something that failed to catch the imagination
of most 20-year olds.
As I have tried to suggest this study is not an effort to 'cover' the
area, but instead offers a series of inquiries into how it works. Inevita-
bly people will, quite rightly, question my choices as well as my inter-
pretations. Nonetheless, the exploration of debates in this book does
uncover a wealth of fascinating detail about past ideas and practices.
By focusing on historical debates about sex and sexuality the book does
seek to bring to light a number of important insights from a wide range
of historians into general transformations in sex and sexuality over the
longue durée.
This study is structured through a mix of thematic and chronologi-
cal approaches. After the initial survey of the emergence of the field, the
next four chapters take particular debates about the history of sexual-
ity in specific historical periods - Greek and Roman antiquity, the early
Christian epoch, medieval and Renaissance Europe, and early-modern
Europe and America. The key themes here are homoeroticism, gay and
lesbian subcultures, asceticism and the valorization of marriage. The next
three chapters, however, concentrate on the Victorian era, largely in Eng-
land and America, a key area of debate in the field and the focus of an
enormous body of historical enquiry. These chapters (6, 7 and 8) develop
different aspects of nineteenth-century sexuality - debates about Victori-
anism itself, problems of race, class, nation and Empire and the feminist
critique of Victorian sexual culture. The final three chapters move through
the twentieth century. Chapter 9 examines debates about the emergence
of sexology and discourses of perversion in the late-nineteenth and early-
twentieth centuries. The next chapter focuses on twentieth-century chal-
lenges to concepts of sexual abnormality by investigators such as Alfred
Kinsey. The final chapter examines debates about the nature of the 1960s
and 1970s 'sexual revolution'.
The history of how this book came to be explains something about
the shape it has taken. In 1989 I decided that I needed to know more
about the history of sexuality. By then the work of Michel Foucault, Jeffrey
Weeks, David Halperin and a host of others was becoming well-known