Sex and Sexuality in 'First Wave' Feminism

Sex, Sexuality and Sex Work 1870-1930

Questions to ponder...

• Is it possible to talk about 'lesbians' or ''queer' women before these terms had been invented?
• Why were some feminists opposed to and/or silent about birth control and/or abortion?
• What do first wave feminist campaigns around prostitution tell us about the movement's approaches to sexuality more generally?
• Did first wave feminists primarily view sex as a site of pleasure or a site of danger?

This week you will give a 20 min presentation in your pre-allotted groups to the seminar class giving an overview of the key historical debates on these themes:

1. Struggles for sexual freedom
2. Writing 'lesbian'/ queer history.
3. Campaigns against prostitution

Use the core readings and others below which are also themed to the categories above.

For the most up to date readings see Talis Reading ListLink opens in a new window

Core Reading (for everyone)

S.S. Holton, ‘Free Love and Victorian Feminism: The Divers Matrimonials of Elizabeth Wollstoneholme and Ben Elmy’, Victorian Studies 37:2 (1994), 199-222 digitised

Lucy Bland, 'Purifying the Public World: Feminist Vigilantes, Prostitution and 'Protective Surveillance' in Banishing the Beast: English Feminism and Sexual Morality (1995) digitised

Further Reading

Sexual Freedom:

Lesley Hall, Review of L. Bland, Banishing the Beast and Margaret Jackson, The Real Facts of Life http://www.lesleyahall.net/bland.htm [The website in general is essential reading for anyone interested in history of sexuality.]

Lesley Hall (ed.), Outspoken Women: An Anthology of Women’s Writing on Sex 1870-1969 (2005) [primary documents collected together] digitised

Lesley A. Hall, The Life and Times of Stella Browne: Feminist and Free Spirit (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011)

Ruth Brandon, The New Women and the Old Men: Love, Sex and the Woman Question (1991)

Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast: English Feminism and Sexual Morality (1995)

Laura Schwartz, ‘Freethought, Free Love and Feminism: Secularist Debates on Marriage and Sexual Morality, England c. 1850-1885’, Women’s History Review 19:5 (Nov 2010), 775-794 digitised

Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 (1985) digitised

Writing Lesbian/ Queer Histories:

Edwards, ‘Homoerotic Friendships and College Principles, 1880-1960’, Women’s History Review 4:3 (1995), 149-163 digitised

Lillian Faderman, ‘Who Hid Lesbian History’, in S. Morgan (ed.), The Feminist History Reader (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp.205-211 digitised

Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 (1985) digitised

Sheila Jeffreys, ‘Does it Matter if the Did It?’, in S. Morgan (ed.), The Feminist History Reader (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp.212-218

Martha Vicinus, ‘Lesbian History: All Theory and No Facts or All Facts and No Theory?’, in S. Morgan (ed.), The Feminist History Reader (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp. 219-231

Judith M. Bennett, ‘”Lesbian-Like” And the Social History of Lesbianisms’, in S. Morgan (ed.), The Feminist History Reader (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp.244-259

Leila Rupp, ‘Toward a Global History of Same-Sex Sexuality’, in S. Morgan (ed.), The Feminist History Reader (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp.260-270

Sean Brady, Masculinity and Male Homosexuality in Britain 1861-1913 (2005) digitised

Matt Cook, London and the Culture of Homosexuality 1885-1914 (2003)

 

Campaigns Against Prostitution:

Forward, ‘Attitudes to Marriage and Prostitution in the Writings of Olive Schreiner, Mona Caird, Sarah Grand and George Egerton’, Women’s History Review 8 (1999), 53-80 digitised

Maria Luddy, ‘Irish Women and the Contagious Diseases Acts’, History Ireland 1:1 (1993), 32-35 digitised

Maria Luddy, ‘“Abandoned Women and Bad Characters” Prostitution in Nineteenth-century Ireland’, Women’s History Review 6 (1997), 485-503 digitised

Malcolm, ‘Troops of Largely Diseased women: VD, the Contagious Diseases Acts and Moral Policing in Late Nineteenth-Century Ireland’, Irish Economic and Social History 26 (1999), 1-14 digitised

Anne Summers, ‘The Constitution Violated: the Female Body and the Female Subject in the Campaigns of Josephine Butler’, History Workshop Journal 48 (1995), 1-15 digitised

Jane Caplan & J. Walkowitz, ‘Male Vice and Feminist Virtue : Feminism and the Politics of Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, History Workshop Journal 13 (1982), 77-93 [The seminal work, or read Walkowitz’s monograph on this Prostitution and Victorian Society (1980)] digitised