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SEX ON THE MARGINS: NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF SEXUALITY AND GENDER

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2010

VICTORIA HARRIS
VICTORIA HARRIS*
Affiliation:
King's College, Cambridge
*
King's College, Cambridge CB2 1ST[email protected]
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Abstract

Over the last forty years, the history of sexuality has developed into a vibrant historical genre. Despite the diversity of the resulting academic literature, within it is an often implicit focus on ‘marginal’ subjects. This historiographical review examines why this is the case, exploring the development of the history of sexuality and its theoretical underpinnings, before suggesting the ways in which this focus on the ‘marginal’ has limited resulting works. Finally, it suggests ways in which the historians might move forward, both by discussing some of the more provocative new texts and concepts within the field, and also by posing several questions for future study.

Type
Historiographical Reviews
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 2010 , pp. 1085 - 1104
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 Indeed, Herzog's article is so recent that it was only published while this piece was being considered for publication. I am pleased to have been given the chance to cite it here, as it contains a wonderfully rich and informative discussion. Herzog, Dagmar, ‘Syncopated sex: transforming European sexual cultures’, American Historical Review, 114, (2009), pp. 1287–308CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Cocks, H. G., ‘Modernity and the self in the history of sexuality’, Historical Journal, 49, (2006), pp. 1211–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Journal of the History of Sexuality was established in 1990.

2 H. G. Cocks and Matt Houlbrook, ‘Introduction’, in H. G. Cocks and Matt Houlbrook, eds., Palgrave advances in the modern history of sexuality (London, 2006), p. 11.

3 Herzog's review, for example, while having a transnational focus, limits itself to Europe. Even more narrowly defined are several other recent reviews, focusing specifically on Germany: Dickinson, Edward R. and Wetzell, Richard F., ‘The historiography of sexuality in modern Germany’, German History, 23, (2005), pp. 291–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fenemore, Mark, ‘The recent historiography of sexuality in twentieth-century Germany’, Historical Journal, 52, (2009), pp. 763–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sean Brady, on the other hand, defines the boundaries of his piece through a focus on queer theory: Brady, Sean, ‘All about Eve? Queer theory and history’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41 (Jan. 2006), pp. 185–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Stephen Angelides does similarly, through a focus on gay and lesbian studies: ‘Historicizing (bi)sexuality: a rejoinder for gay/lesbian studies, feminism, and queer theory’, Journal of Homosexuality, 52, (2006), pp. 125–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rebecca Jennings limits her interesting discussion to modern lesbian Britain in her chapter ‘Sexuality in post-war Britain’, in Julie-Marie Strange and Francesca Carnevali, eds., Twentieth-century Britain: economic, cultural and social change (London, 2007), pp. 293–307.

4 Canaday, Margot, ‘Thinking sex in the transnational turn: an introduction’, American Historical Review, 114, (2009), pp. 1250–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 1252.

5 Ibid., p. 1254.

6 Michel Foucault, The history of sexuality, i: The will to knowledge (London, 1976), p. 39.

7 Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online, www.merriam-webster.com.

8 Regina Kunzel, Criminal intimacy: prison and the uneven history of modern American sexuality (Chicago, IL, 2008), p. 61.

9 Fred Fejes, Gay rights and moral panic: the origins of America's debate on homosexuality (New York, NY, 2008) p. 21.

10 Fejes, Gay rights and moral panic, p. 13.

11 Patrick Moore, Beyond shame: reclaiming the abandoned history of radical gay sexuality (Boston, MA, 2004), p. 149.

12 Mark Epprecht, Hungochani: the history of dissident sexuality in Southern Africa (Montreal, 2004), pp. 223–4.

13 Ian Dowbiggin, The sterilization movement and global fertility in the twentieth century (Oxford, 2008), p. 84.

14 Simone M. Caron, Who chooses? American reproductive history since 1830 (Gainesville, FL 2008), p. 87.

15 Matti Bunzl, Symptoms of modernity: Jews and queers in late twentieth-century Vienna (London, 1999), p. 16.

16 Sarah Hodges, Contraception, colonialism and commerce: birth control in South India, 1920–1940 (Aldershot, 2008), p. 50.

17 Susan K. Freeman, Sex goes to school: girls and sex education before the 1960s (Chicago, IL, 2008), p. 100.

18 Kate Fisher, Birth control, sex and marriage in Britain, 1918–1960 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 185–6.

19 Dowbiggin, The sterilization movement, p. 226.

20 Jonathan Ned Katz, The invention of heterosexuality (London, 2007), p. 177.

21 Simone de Beauvoir, The second sex (New York, NY, 1952), pp. xxi–xxii.

22 Rebecca Jennings, A lesbian history of Britain: love and sex between women since 1500 (Oxford, 2007), p. 43.

23 Sharon Marcus, Between women: friendship, desire and marriage in Victorian England (Oxford, 2007), p. 8.

24 Ibid., p. 259.

25 Martha Vicinius, Intimate friends: women who loved women, 1778–1928 (Chicago, IL, 2004), pp. xvi–xx.

26 Moore, Beyond shame, p. 14.

27 Ibid., p. 159.

28 Hodges, Contraception, colonialism, and commerce, p. 85.

29 Caron, Who chooses?, p. 5.

30 Jim Reichert, In the company of men: representations of male–male sexuality in Meiji literature (Stanford, CA, 2006), pp. 137–62; quote: John Potvin, Material and visual cultures beyond male bonding, 1870–1914: bodies, borders and intimacy (Aldershot, 2008), p. 2.

31 Fisher, Birth control, sex, and marriage, p. 11.

32 Ibid., esp. p. 65. For more on masculinity, see, for example: David S. Parker, ‘Gentlemanly responsibility and insults of a woman: dueling and the unwritten rules of public life in Uruguay, 1860–1920’, in William E. French and Katherine Elaine Bliss, eds., Gender, sexuality, and power in Latin America since independence (New York, NY, 2007), pp. 109–32.

33 Adrian Bingham, Gender, modernity, and the popular press in inter-war Britain (Oxford, 2004), p. 248.

34 Freeman, Sex goes to school, esp. pp. 45–68.

35 Fejes, Gay rights and moral panic, p. 19.

36 Mark Fenemore, Sex, thugs and rock ‘n’ roll: teenage rebels in Cold-War East Germany (Oxford, 2007), esp. pp. 19–68.

37 Scott Herring, Queering the underworld: slumming, literature, and the undoing of lesbian and gay history (London, 2007).

38 Moore, Beyond shame, p. 107.

39 Kunzel, Criminal intimacy, pp. 3–4.

40 What this question might be, will be returned to later in the piece.

41 Cocks and Houlbrook, ‘Introduction’, p. 3.

42 Bunzl, Symptoms of modernity, esp. ‘Conclusion: symptoms of post-modernity’, pp. 213–24.

43 Jennings, A lesbian history of Britain, p. xviii.

44 Alfred Thomas, The Bohemian body: gender and sexuality in modern Czech culture (London, 2007), p. 7; Hugh B. Urban, Magia sexualis: sex, magic, and liberation in modern western esotericism (London, 2006), p. 5.

45 Elizabeth Clement, ‘Prostitution’, in Cocks and Houlbrook, eds., The modern history of sexuality, pp. 206–30.

46 Herzog, ‘Syncopated sex’, p. 1288.

47 Of course, the situation within the sex trade itself is far more complicated, as prostitutes are not the only players within it. Thus, it might be that a prostitute's client would define his or her sexuality through the use of prostitutes. However, since studies of prostitution rarely discuss these individuals in a three-dimensional fashion, if they discuss them at all, this does not excuse the labelling of prostitutes in this way. Although I use the female gender here, this is not to ignore or forget the important, and under-recognized, point, that men also work as prostitutes.

48 Dagmar Herzog speaks eloquently about this problem in modern-day America. See: Dagmar Herzog, Sex in crisis (New York, NY, 2008).

49 Foucault, The history of sexuality, p. 49.

50 Dowbiggin, The sterilization movement, p. 151.

51 Scott Gunther, The elastic closet: a history of homosexuality in France, 1942–present (London, 2009), p. 3.

52 Ibid., p. 7.

53 Fenemore, Sex, thugs and rock ‘n’ roll, pp. 100–17, 156–83.

54 Deborah A. Field, Private life and communist morality in Krushchev's Russia (New York, NY, 2007).

55 Freeman, Sex goes to school, quote, p. xiv.

56 Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Undercurrents: queer culture and postcolonial Hong King (Vancouver, 2008), p. 41.

57 Katz, The invention of heterosexuality, p. 173.

58 Leung, Undercurrents, p. 2.

59 Kunzel, Criminal intimacy, p. 6.

60 Pablo Piccato, ‘“Such a strong need”: sexuality and violence in Belem prison’, in French and Bliss, eds., Gender, sexuality, and power, pp. 87–108, quote p. 101.

61 Kunzel, Criminal intimacy, p. 129.

62 Foucault, The history of sexuality, p. 39.

63 Marcus, Between women, p. 14.

64 Jennings, A lesbian history of Britain, p. xviii.

65 Katz, The invention of heterosexuality, p. 20.

66 Fejes, Gay rights and moral panic, p. 35.

67 Cornelie Usborne, Cultures of abortion in Weimar Germany (Oxford, 2007), p. 11.

68 Caron, Who chooses?, p. 3.

69 Ibid., p. 161.

70 Kunzel, Criminal intimacy, p. 29.

71 Erica M. Windler, ‘Madame Durocher's performance: cross-dressing, midwifery, and authority in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’, in French and Bliss, eds. Gender, sexuality, and power, pp. 52–70.

72 Leung, Undercurrents, p. 1.

73 Nadja Durbach, ‘The missing link and the Hairy Belle: Krao and the Victorian discourses of evolution, imperialism, and primitive sexuality’, in Marlene Tromp, ed., Victorian freaks: the social context of freakery in Britain (Columbus, OH, 2008), pp. 134–54, here, esp. p. 148.

74 Alison Oram, ‘Cross-dressing and transgender’, in Cocks and Houlbrook, eds., The modern history of sexuality, pp. 256–285, here p. 280.

75 Ibid., p. 259.

76 Matt Cook, ‘Law’, in Cocks and Houlbrook, eds., The modern history of sexuality, pp. 64–86, here, p. 74.

77 Marcus, Between women, p. 15.

78 Ibid., p. 259.

79 Epprecht, Hungochani, p. 225.

80 Reichert, In the company of men, pp. 69–98.

81 Ibid., p. 70.

82 Durbach, ‘The missing link and the Hairy Belle’, pp. 135, 146.

83 Chris Waters, ‘Sexology’, in Cocks and Houlbrook, eds., The modern history of sexuality, pp. 41–63, here, pp. 52–3.

84 Herring, Queering the underworld, p. 4.

85 For more on this criticism, see: Jeffrey Weeks, Making sexual history (London, 2000), p. 107.

86 Oxford English Dictionary, ‘sexology’.

87 See Potvin, Material and visual cultures, for example.

88 Marcus, Between women, p. 14.

89 Marlene Tromp, ‘Introduction: toward situating the Victorian freak’, in Tromp, ed., Victorian freaks, pp. 1–18, here, p. 4; Usborne, Cultures of abortion, p. 17.

90 Willem Floor, A social history of sexual relations in Iran (Washington, DC, 2008), p. xiv.