Riotous Flesh: Women, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice in Nineteenth-Century America

251 Pages·2015·2.58 MB·English

by  April R. Haynes

riotous flesh
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riotous flesh
Women, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice in
Nineteenth- Century America
april r. haynes
the university of chicago press
chicago and london
april r. haynes is assistant professor of history at the University of Oregon.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2015 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2015.
Printed in the United States of America
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28459-0 (cloth)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28462-0 (paper)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28476-7 (e- book)
doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226284767.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haynes, April R., author.
Riotous flesh : women, physiology, and the solitary vice in nineteenth-century
America / April R. Haynes.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-226-28459-0 (cloth : alkaline paper) — isbn 978-0-226-28462-0
(paperback : alkaline paper)—isbn 978-0-226-28476-7 (ebook) 1. Women—
Sexual behavior—Social aspects—United States—History—19th century.
2. Female masturbation—Social aspects—United States—History—19th century.
3. Women—United States—Attitudes—History—19th century. 4. Feminism—
United States—History—19th century. I. Title.
hq29.h39 2015
305.42097309'034—dc23
2015003802
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of
Paper).
for hex

contents
Introduction 1
1. The Gender of Solitary Vice 26
2. Licentiousness in All Its Forms 56
3. Making the Conversation General 81
4. A Philosophy of Amative Indulgence 107
5. Flesh and Bones 132
Epilogue 163
Acknowledgments 179
Notes 183
Index 231

vii

Introduction
“ They used to say that masturbation would make you crazy— but I’d go
crazy without it.” In responding to Shere Hite’s 1972 questionnaire on
women’s sexual practices, an anonymous member of the National Organi-
zation for Women acknowledged a profound historical change. The same
behavior once deemed a perversion that caused insanity had come by the
1970s to represent, for many feminists, the healthiest of all sexual expres-
sions. While Hite’s respondent charted a clear reversal in attitudes about
masturbation, she could not account for why so many Americans had ever
believed that it “would make you crazy.”1
What did seem clear to many feminists was that patriarchal definitions
of female sexuality, not masturbation, had made women mad. Dell Wil-
liams, founder of the feminist bookstore Eve’s Garden, announced that
women who purchased vibrators liberated themselves from “the shame
and guilt of centuries of oppression.” The writer and activist Anne Koedt
was more specific. Sigmund Freud and his popularizers, who had domi-
nated American sexual thought since the 1920s, had pathologized women’s
natural sexual functioning in order to maintain male dominance. Freud-
ians held that “vaginal orgasm,” achieved exclusively through heterosexual
intercourse, signified a woman’s maturity. Women who “fixated” on the
clitoris instead, particularly those who masturbated beyond the years of
puberty, were described as infantile, neurotic, maladjusted, frigid, and man-
nish. Koedt denounced the vaginal orgasm as a “myth” that kept women
fearful and sexually dependent upon men. Women’s liberationists thus set
out to demystify their bodies, to speak the “truth” about healthy female
sexuality.2
To this end, feminists began to distribute two kinds of information:
first, physiological studies, such as those conducted by William Masters and
1