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