Riotous Flesh: Women, Physiology, And The Solitary Vice In Nineteenth-Century America (American Beginnings, 1500-1900)

The claim that masturbation isn't good for you didn't just come out of nowhere. As April Haynes shows, a range of feminist reformers in nineteenth century America all agreed that the solitary vice caused untold suffering and death; that women and girls masturbated as frequently as did men and boys; that they did so because they lacked access to sexual information; and that therefore, female sex education would save lives. Haynes, in short shows that nascent feminists remade what might have been a puritanical crusade into a basis for envisioning their own sexual self-masterywith mixed results, for Haynes also tells the story of how, before the advent of sexology or even the professionalization of medicine, a great silent army” of evangelical female reformers first popularized, then institutionalized, the normative sexual discourse of the nineteenth century.

• | Author: April R. Haynes
• | Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• | Publication Date: Oct 21, 2015
• | Number of Pages: 256 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 022628462X
• | ISBN-13: 9780226284620