No Sex Please, We're British!

Hera Cook. The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex, and Contraception, 1800-1975. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 412 pp. $55.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-19-925239-8. Reviewed by Harry Cocks Published on H-Albion (December, 2005) Until quite recently, the history of nineteenth- more deeply in systems of knowledge that ulti‐ century sexuality was one of total repression. As mately seek to govern our subjectivity. We seek the excesses of the aristocracy gave way to the pleasure, Foucault says, but fnd only the ready- domination of the bourgeoisie, women, it was ar‐ made rules of "normality," or the demanding stric‐ gued, became cloistered and corseted, while men-- tures of consumerism. The Victorian bourgeoisie when they were not whoring after the double may not have actually had that much sex, but standard--were stuffy, inflexible patriarchs. Very were they not happier with all that longing? few people had sex outside marriage, and those Hera Cook's book argues that there was a lot that did usually came to a sticky end. Women, it more in the original story than has been conced‐ was assumed, knew little of their bodies, and even ed. First of all, she takes issue with Foucault's in‐ what they did know they found rather distasteful. terpreters. Foucault said that at the level of insti‐ Even worse, the Victorians bequeathed this stulti‐ tutions and domains, the Victorians were voluble fying state of affairs to their children and grand‐ about sex, but he said little about actual behavior. children, who only managed to throw off their op‐ The result of this has been, Cook suggests, that pressive yoke by participating in the sexual revo‐ historians of sexuality have tended to bracket be‐ lution of the 1960s. This story, frst put about by havior and to talk primarily about the rules that modernist intellectuals in the 1920s and 30s, last‐ sought to govern conduct. Cook seeks tofnd out ed pretty well until it was inverted by Michel Fou‐ what can be known of actual heterosexual behav‐ cault. For him it is us who are the "other Victori‐ ior. To do this, she uses the demographic tech‐ ans." It is we, not our forebears, who have devel‐ nique of determining coital frequency in mar‐ oped the most widespread and pervasive regula‐ riage from the rate of total marital fertility, a tory discourses governing sexuality. Most histori‐ method employed most fruitfully hitherto by Si‐ ans of any note have followed his line since the mon Szreter. If there are no safe or effective 1980s, suggesting that vaunted ideals of sexual lib‐ methods of contraception, then the rate of total eration have actually enmeshed us further and H-Net Reviews fertility within marriage (the average number of fear inducing" (p. 151). Furthermore, these parts children to women of childbearing age) will gen‐ of the body could not be kept very clean in any erally reflect the rate of marital sex. If fertility is case, Cook argues. The lack of domestic bidets-- declining, which it was from about 1870, then ei‐ which were purposely built for washing the ther rates of marriage were changing to produce nether regions--was not necessarily the result of this (which they were not) or coital frequency was poverty or inadequate plumbing, but reflected the lower and hence there were fewer children. fact that such things were regarded as evidence of Martial fertility rates that declined until the libidinous "French" sensuality. Not only was sex a post-1945 baby boom, Cook argues, were indica‐ matter of distaste, then, most people were actual‐ tive of the fact that most women repressed their ly disgusted by their own bodies. sexuality in order to avoid childbirth. Safe meth‐ Against this dismal background, the arrival of ods of contraception, such as withdrawal, were the contraceptive pill was a godsend. The advent largely ineffective and moreover reduced the of the pill in the late 1960s, Cook argues, freed amount of sexual pleasure for both parties. All women from their centuries-old reproductive la‐ things being equal, women would want to reduce bor, enabled them to experience proper sexual the quantity of reproductive labor that they per‐ pleasure without the fear and anxiety of pregnan‐ form, Cook argues. Therefore, in order to avoid cy and also helped them to contribute more fully this onerous duty, which Cook compares to the to society. Cook rejects the critiques of the pill by physical rigors of coal mining (p. 30), women de‐ Jeffrey Weeks and Elizabeth Wilson, both of veloped an understandable distaste for sexual in‐ whom saw it as a qualified gain for women, and tercourse. As a result, a culture of particularly instead sees it as the culmination of women's his‐ British sexual repression emerged at the end of toric attempts to control their own fertility. The the nineteenth century. By this time, Cook argues, possibility of controlling fertility therefore repre‐ "many, if not most, women repudiated physical sents the true sexual revolution of modern histo‐ sexual desire," and "took little pleasure in genital ry. However, women were not only liberated sex‐ sexual activity" (p. 62). At that point, the rate of ually. They were also able to involve themselves marital coitus in Britain could have been about more fully in medical decisions about their own once a week. bodies, and to fuel second-wave feminism with Cook suggests that other kinds of sex, such as this new confidence. Overall, Cook concludes, the petting, and oral or anal intercourse, were not pill resulted in "a huge increase in women's au‐ used to replace vaginal sex, if anecdotal evidence tonomy." It has been a story of "progress towards is to be trusted. In any case, most people, especial‐ the light" (p. 317). Women's (sex) lives are now ly the working class, lived in a culture that at‐ "without historical precedent" (p. 337). tached enormous shame to their genitals and The book is sex-positive. Coitus is here the anuses. This sense of shame and distaste was rein‐ motor of historical change. When heterosexual forced, Cook suggests, by the rigid toilet training vaginal intercourse becomes more possible and regimes of interwar Britain. As a result, even frequent, all sorts of other mostly beneficial washing the genitals might be regarded as slightly changes accrue. It is the changing rate of hetero‐ suspect. The consequence of this, Cook asserts, sexual coitus that has created a new confidence in was that female children "would have little or no women and encouraged the increasing participa‐ experience that would provide them with any tion of women in healthcare. However, for all its pleasurable, or even neutral, sensations to refute apparent feminist radicalism, Cook concedes the the construction of their genitals as dirty, ugly and conservative point that the pill has also disrupted 2 H-Net Reviews the family, made women more promiscuous as well as adulterous, and led to the abolition of the double standard, just as its critics predicted. As a result, women's sexual behavior is more like men's than ever before in human history. This book is trying bravely to give us some ac‐ count of the sexual behavior of the majority in British life. However, this work shares a difficulty with other similar books, in that it is much easier to speak on this matter about the late twentieth century than any earlier period. One prominent question remains about the nineteenth century: how can you tell if past individuals thought that they were "repressing" their sexuality rather than directing it in appropriate ways? The problem lies in making a priori decisions about "normal" rates of coitus based on present notions of what that is. The past appears "repressed" to us perhaps, but for those in the past, how much sex was enough, or too much? Would this question even make sense in 1850? The book is strongest when it gives us an account of twentieth-century sex manuals and the politics of the pill. In its attempts to dis‐ lodge Foucault and his followers, an effort which will fnd many adherents, it is a qualified success, but that is mainly because of the nature of the evi‐ dence. If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.org/h-albion Citation: Harry Cocks. Review of Cook, Hera. The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex, and Contraception, 1800-1975. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews. December, 2005. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11040 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 3.

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