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Teaching America About Sex Marriage Guides and Sex Manuals from the Late Victorians to Dr

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Teaching America About Sex Marriage Guides and Sex Manuals from the Late Victorians to Dr Page iii Teaching America about Sex Marriage Guides and Sex Manuals from the Late Victorians to Dr. Ruth M. E. Melody and Linda M. Peterson Page iv New York University Press New York and London © 1999 by New York University All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging­in ­Publication Data Melody, Michael Edward. Teaching America about sex: marriage/sex manuals from the late Victorians to Dr. Ruth / M.E. Melody and Linda M. Peterson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0­8147­5532­1 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Sex instruction—United States—Handbooks, manuals, etc.—History. I. Peterson, Linda Mary, 1947–II. Title. HQ56.M365 1999 613.9'5—dc21 99­6300 CIP New York University Press books are printed on acid­free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Page v For Edward A. Goerner and Frances S. Parker Page vii Contents Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. The Late Victorians and the Spermatic Political Economy 20 Henry Hanchett, M.D. 21 1887 Sexual Health: A Plain and Practical Guide for the People On All Matters Concerning the Organs of Reproduction in Both Sexes and All Ages John Harvey Kellogg, M.D. 27 1888 Plain Facts for Old and Young 1888 First Book of Physiology and Hygiene, Revised Edition Henry Guernsey, M.D. 35 1882 Plain Talks On Avoided Subjects 1915 Plain Talks On Avoided Subjects, Revised Edition 2. "No Gods No Masters": Margaret Sanger and America's Sexual Future 49 Margaret Sanger 50 1920 Women and the New Race 1922 The Pivot of Civilization 1926 Happiness in Marriage 3. The 1920s and America's First Sexual Eruption 72 Joseph Collins, M. D. 76 1926 The Doctor Looks at Love and Life Ira S. Wile and Mary Day Winn 80 1929 Marriage in the Modern Manner Page viii Robert Binkley and Frances Binkley 83 1929 What Is Right with Marriage: An Outline of Domestic Theory Ernest R. Groves 86 1928 The Marriage Crisis Marie Stopes, Ph.D., D.Sc. 88 1932 Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties 4. Sexual Eruption and then Reaction: The Interwar Years 93 Theodore van de Velde, M.D. 93 1930 Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique 1931 Sexual Tensions in Marriage: Their Origin, Prevention and Treatment 1931 Fertility and Sterility in Marriage: Their Voluntary Promotion and Limitation 1965 Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique, Revised Edition 5. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Sex and Pleasure in the 1950s 115 Hannan M. Stone, M.D., and Abraham Stone, M.D. 122 1952 A Marriage Manual: A Practical Guidebook to Sex and Marriage Eustace Chesser, M.D. 125 1947 Love without Fear: How to Achieve Sex Happiness in Marriage 6. Sexual Upheaval in the 1960s: Counterculture, Counter­Sex 137 David Reuben, M.D. 147 1969 Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex, but Were Afraid to Ask 1971 Any Woman Can! Love and Sexual Fulfillment for the Single, Widowed, Divorced . and Married 7. Joy through Peak Experiences in the 1970s 158 Alex Comfort, M.D. 159 1972 The Joy of Sex: A Cordon Bleu Guide to Lovemaking Page ix 1974 More Joy: A Lovemaking Companion to The Joy of Sex 1991 The New Joy of Sex 8. Does Pleasure Demand the Conjunction of Particular Body Parts? Gay and 179 Lesbian Sex Charles Silverstein, M.D., and Edmund White 180 1977 The Joy of Gay Sex: An Intimate Guide for Gay Men to the Pleasures of a Gay Lifestyle Charles Silverstein, M.D., and Felice Picano 181 1992 The New Joy of Gay Sex Emily L. Sisley, M.D., and Bertha Harris 198 1977 The Joy of Lesbian Sex: A Tender and Liberated Guide to the Pleasures and Problems of a Lesbian Lifestyle Joann Loulan 204 1984 Lesbian Sex 9. Another Reaction: Dr. Ruth Defends Marriage 207 Ruth Westheimer, ED.D. 208 1983 Dr. Ruth's Guide to Good Sex 1986 Dr. Ruth's Guide for Married Lovers 1992 Dr. Ruth's Guide to Safer Sex 1993 The Art of Arousal 1995 Sex for Dummies 10. On Penetrative Power 234 Notes 261 References 265 Index 275 About the Authors 287 Page xi Acknowledgments Professors Melody and Peterson wish to acknowledge the assistance of J. Patrick Lee, Ph.D., provost and professor of French at Barry University, who introduced us to the work of [Pseudo] Aristotle. Hugh Ripley, dean emeritus of library services and university librarian, along with the able members of his staff, provided valuable assistance. Among Barry's librarians William Patrick Morrissey deserves special recognition, as does Isabel Medina. The former can track down any obscure reference, while the latter works miracles with inter­library loan. Susan M. Widmayer, Ph.D., and Martha Widmayer, Ph.D., read an early draft of the text and provided valuable suggestions. Our editor at New York University Press, Niko Pfund, a man of foresight as well as a sensitivity to currents in several disciplines, provided support and encouragement as we labored on the text and fussed over it. Jane Goggin provided secretarial assistance during the inevitable last­minute computer crisis. Priscilla Rankin of the Gainesville Junior College Library in Georgia facilitated the inter­library loan process so that we acquired a copy of Hanchett's book in record time. Without the synergy of our friendship and the gender politics class that we team­teach, this text could not have been written. Professor Melody also wishes to acknowledge the National Endowment for the Humanities for a Summer Institute grant from the Women's Studies Department at the University of Cincinnati, which allowed time to study writings in women's social and political theory. Professors Hilda Smith and Berenice Carroll provided skillful guidance to a neophyte whose graduate training muted the voices of women. Professor Carroll has also provided encouragement and support over the years as well as the benefit of her own many insights on these issues. Barry University provided a sabbatical that allowed for much of the background reading necessary for this book. Professor Laura Armesto, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and associate vice president for undergraduate studies, Page xii graciously supplied release time that allowed for the actual writing of the text. Jeffrey Seibert, Ph.D., Jeffrey Ehrlich, M.D., and Richard Beach, M.D., Ph.D., selflessly provided hope, support, and encouragement. Professor Peterson wishes to acknowledge Professor Clyde Hendrick, whose graduate seminar in women's studies showed her that women's voices need not be muted. Laura Armesto, Ph.D., dean and friend, proved steadfast in her faith that this book would get finished, and Susan Widmayer, Ph.D., was generous with her time, her criticism, and her love. Page 1 Introduction Sex matters. Everyone knows it. Scholars, however, have been reticent on the subject until fairly recently. Perhaps this reflects an inbred reserve or justifiable fears of tenure committees. Academia consigned sex and its corollary concerns to sociologists—John Gagnon is one example—or anthropologists like Malinowski or Mead. Anthropologists studied people who were several times removed from modern societies and thus nonthreatening to prevailing norms. 1 Michael Gordon notes this scholarly silence in his survey of American marriage/sex manuals (1978, 59), as do Porter and Hall in their more recent survey of the British literature (1995, 3). In fact, all the authors surveyed in Teaching America about Sex note America's general sexual silence. Despite the works of all her predecessors over the past century, Ruth Westheimer in her Sex for Dummies in 1995 writes that Americans still remain ignorant about sex. Gordon (1969, 1978) observes that the domestic advice genre developed in England as early as 1487 with the publication of Caxton's Book of Good Manners. Marital advice literature evolved from this genre by the nineteenth century in America, and early on it typically consisted of printed sermons drafted by clergy.2 Late in the century, medical doctors published as many marriage manuals as the clergy. In the 1890s, according to Gordon, members of the clergy published five marriage manuals, while doctors produced another five. All these works targeted the middle and upper classes. The medical writers even focused on intimate matters. In these early manuals written by medical doctors, theological and philosophical premises inform their work as much, if not more than, scientific ones. Medicine had yet to become fully developed as the science we know today. Gordon terms these works "conservative," in that they sought to keep sex bound tightly within the confines of marriage. By the 1930s medical doctors like Theodore Van de Velde and Hannah and Abraham Stone dominate the marital/sexual advice genre. Page 2 Several decades later other medical doctors like David Reuben and Alex Comfort transform marriage manuals into more explicit sexual ones. The cultural revolution of the 1960s fostered open discussion of sexuality as well as a pleasure ethic that permitted issues of sexuality to be divorced from marriage. Marriage manuals, in this sense, mainly restrict legitimate sex to marriage. Sex manuals, on the other hand, primarily focus on erotic techniques without much concern for legal formalities. Reuben's Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex, but Were Afraid to Ask and Comfort's Joy of Sex are sex manuals that focus on pleasure as an end in itself. Reuben's other work, Any Woman Can! Love and Sexual Fulfillment for the Single, Widowed, Divorced, however, represents more of a marriage manual, while Comfort's More Joy: A Lovemaking Companion to the Joy of Sex and New Joy of Sex are sex manuals (see also Gordon and Bernstein 1970).
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