Table Of ContentHISTORIES OF SEXUALITY
Critical Histories of Subjectivity and Culture
Series Editors: Barbara Caine and Glenda Sluga
This new series highlights the relationship between understandings of subjec-
tivity, identity, culture and broader historical change. It seeks to foster histori-
cal studies which situate subjectivity in social, political and cultural contexts.
Some of these studies will interrogate and elucidate broad historical themes
and periods, and cultural and social change, by analysing discourses about
personal identity and subjectivity, others will focus on lifestories and repre-
sentations of the self.
The series will have no chronological or geographical limitations, although
preference will be given to comparative work and to studies which approach
their questions in a broad transnational framework. As the emphasis on sub-
jectivity suggests, questions about gender and sexuality, and national or eth-
nic identity will be central issues in all volumes. Detailed studies should also
offer a sense of the broad context of historical change: for example, questions
of national identity should be discussed within transnational and imperial
frameworks.
The emphasis on ‘critical’ histories is indicative of our interest in studies with
a theoretical and historiographical edge, especially those that open up new
historical approaches and problematise standard ways of dealing with subjec-
tivity and culture.
Forthcoming in the series:
Memory and Utopia
The Primacy of Intersubjectivity
Luisa Passerini
Friendship
A History
Barbara Caine (ed.)
Remembering Dispossession
Aboriginals, Colonization and History
Maria Nugent
HISTORIES
OF SEXUALITY
STEPHEN GARTON
LONDON
Published by
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
Unit 6
The Village
101 Amies St.
London
SW11 2JW
www.equinoxpub.com
First published 2004
Reprinted 2006
© Stephen Garton 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or trans-
mitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system,
without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10 1 904768 23 7 (hardback)
ISBN-10 1 904768 24 5 (paperback)
ISBN-13 978 1 904768 23 4 (hardback)
ISBN-13 978 1 904768 24 1 (paperback)
Typeset by CA Typesetting, www.shefeldtypesetting.com
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Lightning Source UK Ltd., Milton
Keynes
eISBN: 1845534727
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 conrming 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 denable area of
scholarly enterprise, has grown from a few works describing past atti-
tudes and behaviours into an enormously rich eld that sustains its
own journal, a number of monograph series and countless seminars,
conferences, articles and books. Moreover, this eld 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 eld 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 our-
ish if they take the time to savour the sustenance provided by others who
have gone before, even if they end up nding what has been served dis-
agreeable. This book looks at this process – how historians have made
