Rereading Sex: Battles Over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century America

by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz

Book Overview

A lively, scholarly, and often startling exploration of 19th-century American attitudes toward sexuality -- what we felt, thought, wrote, and said about the human body; about love, lust, intercourse,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 037540192X
• ISBN13: 9780375401923
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 2.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Academic Study

This is for those who wish to take the long lens, and an extremely academic, look at the public discussion of sexuality in 19th century America. Those who are looking for an, um, less academic study need to look elsewhere (titillation it is not). Horowitz demonstrates a thorough analysis of her subject, but presents it without becoming too bogged down in particular statistics. NIce job presenting the spectrum of thought in the 19th century while also connecting the course of history with the 18th and 20th centuries. Although a lot of her story is focused on NYC, the country at large is not forgotten. A book that delivers as advertised.

Excellent study of America's love/hate relationship with sex

This book is an educational, informative study of America's attitudes towards sex during the 19th century. The author's thorough research and interesting approach (taken from four very different perspectives, depending upon gender, profession, and philosophy/religion) offer a unique explanation and understanding of how Americans viewed sex during the 19th century. I was surprised by how much information (though much of it is incorrect, such as the "fact" that women who are raped cannot become pregnant because they do not feel passion during the rape) there was available to 19th century Americans about this taboo topic. Some of it was not a surprise (the whole male sporting culture, which was adopted as a Victorian moral code for men and women in which men are permitted and encouraged to have as many sexual relationships as possible whether they are married or single and in which women are to be kept ignorant of their husbands' (and fathers', brothers', etc.) relationships or, if they are aware of them, they are to turn a blind eye, yet absolute fidelity on the part of the females is required. It sets up an illogical double standard--who are these men having sex with if women are to remain virgins until marriage and faithful after marriage?) Other parts were a surprise--the concept of "free love" appeared much earlier than I thought and censorship appeared much later than I thought. The reasons for turning to the courts and for using censorship were also explained, with thorough detail about how mores changed as the century progressed, and the full impact of the Industrial Revolution made its mark on every aspect of Americans' lives. Horowitz shows how, with the Industrial Revolution, work changed, and young people left home to work in larger cities. Without parental/familial or community (religious) control or guidance, young men experimented with sex and young women were also now subject to sexual pressures and temptations. Horowitz also makes an interesting connection between the censors' fears of sexual information, particularly about birth control and abortion, and the dangers of having and using this information. Also discussed in great detail is why this particular group feared, above all, giving women (both married and single) any information which would help them limit the size of their families, despite very compelling arguments from opponents about the hardships faced by parents who could not afford to feed a large family yet lacked the information to limit family size and arguments about how important it was for the health of the mother (and her family) that she should not have 12 children in 12 years. Horowitz states firmly that it was the fear that these women, if they knew of ways to prevent pregnancy or that they could have an abortion, would all cheat on their husbands! Fear of pregnancy, they reasoned was the only thing that prevented female infidelity! In this area, I think that Horowitz did not go far enough. Undoubted

Understanding 19th Century American Attitudes Towards Sex

This marvelous books contains lots of surprises: that legal censorship of written material about sex came later in the 19th century than I had suspected; that "scientific " reformers who believed that disseminating informaton about sex appeared on the scene earlier; and that the perception that masterbation was a threat to American society came not from religious fundamentalists but from the scientific theories of some of these same reformers. Elegantly written, and brilliantly researched, this book is a must for anyone wanting to understand the strange cross-cutting attitudes about sex in contemporary America.

Our Sexual Foundation

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz says that she was puzzled by the stir in 1994 when Joycelyn Elders made a mild comment mentioning that masturbation might be taught about as part of sex education in schools. Our nation is used to hearing daytime talk show chatter about sexual abuse, homosexuality, prostitution, and more, but mentioning this universal and enjoyable practice as something that should be taught about (the religious right twisted her words into "should be taught") was enough to get Elders fired as Surgeon General. Why was there such a hysterical reaction to a mention of masturbation? Horowitz is a historian, a professor of American studies, and the one thing she could do to find an answer is historical research. She has done a mountain of it, looking into obscure court cases, journals, and newspapers, to produce the monumental _Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth Century America_ (Knopf). As the title reveals, Horowitz has not just covered ideas about masturbation (although ridiculous fears of that "evil" seem to have percolated through the minds of every parent and preacher of the time), but has covered the huge topic of what our predecessors thought about many aspects of sex.The evangelical Christian movement sweeping across the country in the first half of the nineteenth century seized upon such worries about masturbators and lustful women, and "sinful lust became a chief way of comprehending sexual desire." The American Tract Society was particularly vehement on such issues, and was aghast at the scientific understanding of sexual function that was beginning at the time. Especially important was the protection of female virginity, and fear of pregnancy was a vital shield of the nation's maidenheads. Physiological explanations of birth control were seen as a special danger; unimpeded by fear of impregnation, there was no telling what the women would get up to. Tractarians saw the freethinkers who promoted sexual knowledge as blasphemers. Nothing shocked them more than the non-religious (and it was generally the freethinkers who promoted the spread of physiological ideas) insisting that women had similar sexual desires and need for satisfaction as men, or that birth control would promote happiness, health, and economic freedom. It is surprising that the Young Men's Christian Association looms large in these pages. The YMCA had as a goal the promotion of evangelical religion, and during the Civil War, it was worried about Union soldiers, displaced from home, and in 1865 the YMCA was able to advocate for a post office bill that would forbid mailing erotic prints and books, the first time the federal government tried to regulate moral content of mailed material. The anti-sex activities of the YMCA were linked to the famous and foolish reformer, Anthony Comstock, whose censorious aims even kept birth control information out of medical texts.Horowitz has summarized four "frameworks" out of the