tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/sexual-histories-series-47407/articlesSexual histories series – The Conversation2019-03-24T17:47:36Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1012602019-03-24T17:47:36Z2019-03-24T17:47:36ZLascivious virgins and lustful itches: women’s masturbation in early England<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258958/original/file-20190214-1733-1435p2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Battita Dossi, Nymph of Spring (16th century).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dossi_Nymph_Spring.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/sexual-histories-series-47407">sexual histories series</a>, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
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<p>In the 18th and 19th centuries, masturbation <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Solitary_Sex.html?id=5ygEAQAAIAAJ">was thought of as a “disease”</a>, capable of causing psychological or physical damage like blindness or insanity. This medical and moral panic surrounding masturbation can <a href="https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/masturbation">still shape beliefs</a> today.</p>
<p>Little is known about the history of women’s solo sex, in particular, partly because the study of women’s history is itself a relatively recent development. Still, an exception is the historical period known as early modern England (between 1500 – 1800). </p>
<p>Descriptions of women’s masturbation in this period, especially from 1600 – 1700, are seemingly everywhere: in poetry, literature, theatre, popular ballads, diaries, pornographic texts, midwifery guides and medical books.</p>
<p>Typically, women in early modern England were expected to be pious and chaste, and erotic behaviour was deemed appropriate only within the space of heterosexual marriage. Despite this, there was both a cultural and medical understanding that women experienced sexual desire and pleasure. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258960/original/file-20190214-1758-1rp3q31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258960/original/file-20190214-1758-1rp3q31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258960/original/file-20190214-1758-1rp3q31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258960/original/file-20190214-1758-1rp3q31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258960/original/file-20190214-1758-1rp3q31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258960/original/file-20190214-1758-1rp3q31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258960/original/file-20190214-1758-1rp3q31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258960/original/file-20190214-1758-1rp3q31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Picture of a woman’s uterus, Berengarius, 1523.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/c2tzd6xu?query=1523%20picture%20of%20woman%20uterus">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>In medical texts it was suggested that in order for conception to occur, a woman had to experience an orgasm, preferably at the same time as the man. Advice given in the English translation of French surgeon Ambroise Paré’s <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A08911.0001.001/1:30.5?rgn=div2;submit=Go;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=dalliance">medical treatise</a> suggested that: “when the husband commeth into his wive’s chamber hee must entertaine her with all kinde of dalliance” and give her “wanton kisses with wanton words and speeches”. This would help the woman to orgasm and would better the chances of pregnancy.</p>
<p>Medical texts also promoted the idea that unmarried women could suffer physical ailments because of a lack of sexual activity. It was widely believed that women had their own type of semen, or “female seed”, which contributed to procreation. A build up of this seed, due to lack of sexual release, could cause a range of disorders, like “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17146991">madness from the womb</a>”.</p>
<h2>Descriptions of masturbation</h2>
<p>These medical ideas were also prominent within broader society, where virgins and widows were viewed as particularly lustful women. Representations of unmarried women’s sexual desires were often humorous, like the <a href="https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/21716/image">ballad</a> “The Maids Complaint For Want of a Dil Doul [dildo]”, published around 1680. </p>
<p>The poem describes a young woman’s quest for a “dil doul”, or a lover to take her “maiden-head”, to cure her of the “strange fancies” that came into her mind at night. </p>
<p>Such texts indicate a familiarity with women’s sexuality, but the most common descriptions of women’s masturbation appear in medical and midwifery texts. This is interesting because towards the end of the 1600s, these texts were increasingly aimed toward female readers and female midwives. This may suggest that medical authors had some knowledge that women did masturbate, and that their female readership would recognise such behaviour.</p>
<p>For example, English physician Nicholas Culpeper’s 1662 edition of his <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A69832.0001.001/1:16.2.2.13?rgn=div4;view=toc">Directory for Midwives</a> refers to young women’s masturbation. In a discussion on whether the hymen was the “sign of virginity”, he believed that the hymen:</p>
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<p>is not to be found in all Virgins, because some are very lustful, and when it itcheth, they put in their finger or some other thing, and break the membrane.</p>
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<p>Culpeper also noted that while some virgins might experience bleeding during the consummation of marriage, if they did not bleed, the women should “not be censured as unchaste” because:</p>
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<p>If the girl was wanton afore, and by long handling, hath dilated the part or broke it, there is no blood after copulation.</p>
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<p>Here, Culpeper is directly referring to the masturbatory practices of young women experiencing sexual desires or an “itch”, and their possible masturbation by penetrating themselves with their fingers or “other things”. Culpeper describes these women as “wanton” or “lustful”, which were terms often used to insult women who acted beyond the bounds of acceptable sexuality.</p>
<p>Yet in this context, Culpeper does not appear to use them with the same intention. He encourages the reader not to “censure” or scold women who did not bleed as being unchaste, because of their prior masturbatory acts, suggesting an acceptance or knowledge that women masturbated.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261332/original/file-20190227-150715-9c2yod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261332/original/file-20190227-150715-9c2yod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261332/original/file-20190227-150715-9c2yod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261332/original/file-20190227-150715-9c2yod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261332/original/file-20190227-150715-9c2yod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261332/original/file-20190227-150715-9c2yod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261332/original/file-20190227-150715-9c2yod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261332/original/file-20190227-150715-9c2yod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A 16th century woodcut depicting a woman in bed recovering from childbirth, a midwife washes the baby while another attendant looks after the mother.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/jjcba979?query=V0014914ER">Wellcome Collection.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Other medical, midwifery guides, directly aimed at female readers, depicted masturbation in much more explicit language. Scottish physician James MacMath <a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/B26427.0001.001?view=toc">wrote</a> in 1694 how:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>lascivious virgins, and widows, wholly intent to lustful cogitations [thoughts], and much in thinking of breasts, milks, and their sucking, wantonly rubbing, tickling, and their sucking thereof, may have got milk in them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>MacMath’s description of how <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/lactating-not-pregnant">non-pregnant women</a> may produce “milk” through breast-related masturbation again uses words typically aimed at scolding overly sexual women. Despite this, the passage is one of many throughout his book that refers to masturbation, suggesting that such practices were commonplace.</p>
<h2>Lessons for us today</h2>
<p>Revisiting the historical records of women’s masturbation allows us to consider how women may have performed their sexual desires. But it also allows us to examine attitudes to women’s masturbation in this period, and trace how these attitudes transform with time. </p>
<p>In Australia, discussion about solitary sex remains stifled: the Victorian government <a href="https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/masturbation">Better Health</a> website continues to assure the public that masturbation does not cause “blindness, mental health issues, [or] sexual perversion”.</p>
<p>Myths and taboos about masturbation appear to still affect Australian women in particular. In 2013, the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-842X.2003.tb00806.x">Australian Study of Health and Relationships</a> found that out of a study of 20,000 Australians, with nearly equal male and female participants, only one-third of women reported masturbating in the 12 months prior to the study interview, compared to two-thirds of men. </p>
<p>By exploring and discussing the long history of women’s masturbation, these taboos can be overcome, and women’s sexual desires and pleasure can be discussed openly and unashamedly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101260/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paige Donaghy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Women’s solo sex can be taboo even today. But in 17th century England it featured in many texts from poetry to medical books, suggesting knowledge or even acceptance of female self-pleasure.Paige Donaghy, PhD Student, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1034452018-09-27T20:21:58Z2018-09-27T20:21:58ZFriday essay: how the moral panic over ‘sexual sadists’ silenced their victims<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238235/original/file-20180926-48641-74j7ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Portrait of Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), whose name and writings gave us the term 'sadism'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marquis_de_sade.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Between the 1920s and the 1950s, sexual sadism was widely discussed in Australian newspapers. Ironically, attempts to ban the Marquis de Sade’s books gave journalists an excuse to write about them, thus spreading knowledge of this “perversion”. Public awareness of sadism also incited social panic, provoked by a series of highly publicised murders of Australian women. </p>
<p>One of these was the mutilation and killing of Dorothy (“Dot”) May Everett in Newcastle in November 1937. Everett was a 27-year-old kitchenmaid who worked at the Broughton Church of England School for Boys. After a night at the theatre, she was last seen walking home.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237691/original/file-20180924-85755-1t96ukf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237691/original/file-20180924-85755-1t96ukf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237691/original/file-20180924-85755-1t96ukf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1644&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237691/original/file-20180924-85755-1t96ukf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1644&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237691/original/file-20180924-85755-1t96ukf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1644&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237691/original/file-20180924-85755-1t96ukf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=2066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237691/original/file-20180924-85755-1t96ukf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=2066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237691/original/file-20180924-85755-1t96ukf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=2066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Dorothy May Everett, who was killed in November 1937. Daily Telegraph, Saturday December 11.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/247329920?searchTerm=Dorothy%20May%20Everett%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20&searchLimits=exactPhrase|||anyWords|||notWords|||requestHandler|||dateFrom|||dateTo|||l-illustrated=true|||sortby">Trove</a></span>
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<p>At eight the following morning, her naked body was found. Her clothes had been ripped from her body, there were teeth marks on her chest, and one nipple had been bitten off. She had been strangled with her own stockings.</p>
<p>This was a particularly brutal murder, made worse by the fact that it took place in one of the most fashionable areas of Newcastle. Women living in the city were reported to be extremely frightened: they were reluctant to go out at night without a male escort. A “School Killer” (later sensationalised as the “Vampire Killer”) was at large.</p>
<p>One word dominated discussions of Everett’s murder: sadism. All the newspapers agreed that the perpetrator was “of no ordinary type”: he was “someone known as a sadist”, a “person of abnormal tendencies, a pervert, and a sadist”. Newspapers warned that “A SADIST of a type not previously known in the State is being sought”, and if this “sex-maniac” was not caught soon “he might commit similar horrible crimes”.</p>
<p>Everett herself seems to have been a fairly typical young woman. She was a bit moody, in part because she shared a room that was only 12 feet wide and contained two beds. She was said to have been frightened after an unknown man had attacked her only a fortnight before her murder. Tragically, she had not reported this to the police “because of the fuss it might have caused”. </p>
<p>It was discovered that dozens of other women in Newcastle had also endured sexual attacks at the time, but none had officially reported the assaults for fear of publicity. In the words of a headline in Brisbane’s Telegraph, a “Wave of Sex Assaults Revealed After Murder of Newcastle Woman”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/between-innocence-and-experience-the-sexualisation-of-girlhood-in-19th-century-postcards-87328">Between innocence and experience: the sexualisation of girlhood in 19th century postcards</a>
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<p>Eventually, 34-year-old Leonard (“Len”) William Roberts, a former gardener at the school, was charged with her murder. The main evidence was the bite marks. The man who had bitten Everett had no teeth in his lower jaw and Roberts had no teeth at all (although he habitually wore false teeth in his upper jaw). </p>
<p>After consulting leading British and American forensic texts, the detectives asked Roberts to bite the “fleshy” chest of Police Sergeant Stephen Pender in an attempt to match the teeth marks. In court, Pender claimed that Roberts had merely “simulated” biting him.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237692/original/file-20180924-85755-1w2nmkc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237692/original/file-20180924-85755-1w2nmkc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237692/original/file-20180924-85755-1w2nmkc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237692/original/file-20180924-85755-1w2nmkc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237692/original/file-20180924-85755-1w2nmkc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237692/original/file-20180924-85755-1w2nmkc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1764&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237692/original/file-20180924-85755-1w2nmkc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237692/original/file-20180924-85755-1w2nmkc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1764&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Leonard William Roberts, who was accused of killing Dorothy May Everett in 1937. Daily Telegraph, Saturday April 30.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/247466419?searchTerm=Dorothy%20May%20Everett%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20&searchLimits=exactPhrase|||anyWords|||notWords|||requestHandler|||dateFrom|||dateTo|||l-illustrated=true|||sortby">Trove</a></span>
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<p>There was, however, a secret witness: “Miss X” whose identity was never disclosed on the grounds that her reputation would otherwise have been destroyed. “Miss X” regularly engaged in sexual intercourse with Roberts and claimed that he was perverted. </p>
<p>She told police that Roberts had beaten her with a rolled newspaper and threatened her in other ways as well. There were things he had done to her that were “too horrible to tell”. When she heard about the murder, the first thing she asked was: “Was Dot bitten?”</p>
<p>The problem with all this evidence was not only that it was circumstantial, but that Roberts didn’t fit the image of a sadistic monster. He made an impression in court, appearing (in the words of one journalist) “faultlessly dressed in a navy blue suit, white shirt and collar and striped blue tie. He was clean shaven. His hair was neatly brushed and he looked well.” Indeed, there were demonstrations in his favour outside the court. </p>
<p>At the end of the trial, Roberts left the courtroom an innocent man.</p>
<h2>From de Sade to sadists</h2>
<p>Reportage on the Everett murder was fairly typical and reveals a lot about the moral panic about sadism in the first half of the 20th century. Although there was huge interest in the concept of the “sadist” in Australia, journalists nevertheless felt obliged to explain what “sadism” actually involved. This suggests it was a fairly new word for many Australians. Newspapers informed their readers that a “sadist” was “a person who experienced pleasure when inflicting pain on another” and it was derived from the French nobleman, the Marquis de Sade. </p>
<p>They noted that there was a continuum in cruelty – from the sadist who murdered women to those who believed that naughty children should be caned. In Australian publications, as well as in British and American ones, there was also a constant conflation of sadists and homosexuals. Indeed, in 1952, the Psychiatric Section of the West Australian branch of the British Medical Association used the term “sadist” and “queerness” interchangeably.</p>
<p>Where were journalists getting information about sadists? In Australian publications, the most common authorities mentioned were European psychiatrists Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Albert Moll and Ivan Block. </p>
<p>Of these, Krafft-Ebing is mentioned the most frequently, especially his view that sadism arose from biological degeneracy. A sadist’s parents and other relatives were likely to have been insane, syphilitic, epileptic, or “constitutionally neuropathic”. Sadists possessed the “seed” of their perversion from birth.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237690/original/file-20180924-129844-1j1cfix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237690/original/file-20180924-129844-1j1cfix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237690/original/file-20180924-129844-1j1cfix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237690/original/file-20180924-129844-1j1cfix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237690/original/file-20180924-129844-1j1cfix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237690/original/file-20180924-129844-1j1cfix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237690/original/file-20180924-129844-1j1cfix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237690/original/file-20180924-129844-1j1cfix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Article by Sydney psychology professor H.T. Lovell. The Sun, Sunday July 28 1928.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/222177165?searchTerm=Over%20the%20Edge.%20From%20Man%20to%20Brute%20-%20The%20Criminal%20Mind%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20&searchLimits=#">Trove</a></span>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-reproducers-to-flutters-to-sluts-tracing-attitudes-to-womens-pleasure-in-australia-87852">From reproducers to 'flutters' to 'sluts': tracing attitudes to women's pleasure in Australia</a>
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<hr>
<p>Other commentators maintained that sadism arose from a mixture of causes. In 1930, for example, an unnamed “leading Sydney psychiatrist” interviewed about the sadistic strangling of some young girls claimed that the “Melbourne murderer” must have had his “natural instincts repressed” as a young person, and these instincts “found an unnatural outlet” in a fetish for suffocating girls with their own stockings. </p>
<p>This psychiatrist also believed that in “most cases of sadism” there would be “a taint of insanity in his ancestry”, a history of “intermarriage of close relatives”, or even evidence of “an injury to the head during childhood”. </p>
<p>The anxiety-inducing conclusion, therefore, was: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Any one of us is capable of sadism … We might acquire it through an accident, or through the repression of our natural instincts.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Monsters and men</h2>
<p>Most commentators believed that sadists were outwardly normal men. This may seem strange, given the overblown language of monstrosity that was routinely applied to them, particularly in the sensationalist or tabloid press. After all, lurid descriptions of the “Vampire Killer” (as Everett’s killer was called) and “bestial” murderers boosted sales. It gave licence for prurient descriptions of wounds, torn flesh and gaping holes.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237689/original/file-20180924-129853-2vvtco.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237689/original/file-20180924-129853-2vvtco.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237689/original/file-20180924-129853-2vvtco.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237689/original/file-20180924-129853-2vvtco.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237689/original/file-20180924-129853-2vvtco.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237689/original/file-20180924-129853-2vvtco.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237689/original/file-20180924-129853-2vvtco.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237689/original/file-20180924-129853-2vvtco.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rebecca May Andersen, who was killed in Sydney in May 1924. Truth, May 18 1924.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/168707732?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FT%2Ftitle%2F699%2F1924%2F05%2F18%2Fpage%2F16117402%2Farticle%2F168707732">Trove</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One example is the way Sydney’s Truth newspaper reported the “Devilish Murder and Mutilation” of Rebecca May Andersen, who was tortured, mutilated, then killed near Long Bay Prison in Malabar (Sydney) in May 1924. Readers were told the murderer had to be “lust-mad”, or a “revengeful demonical monster with an appetite for inhuman atrocity”: he suffered from “a perverted, depraved, sexual degeneracy”.</p>
<p>However, at the same time, these reports suggested sadists could be “any of us” – that is, a male “us”. They possessed a normal outward appearance, the sadist being “a monster in human form”. In the words of a psychiatrist explaining a brutal abduction, rape and torture of a woman in Corrimal (northern suburb of Wollongong) in 1946:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>People capable of sadistic acts like the Corrimol crime would never be noticed in a crowd. They would appear quite normal individuals. But the latent tendency to sadism comes out if the opportunity arises. Some sadists suffer from the “tough guy” complex. By inflicting pain on a weaker person, most often a woman, they boost their own ego. But usually sadists are sexually frustrated people, who express their perversion in bodily cruelty.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Alcohol abuse was often blamed for transforming a “normal” man into a sadistic one. This was the explanation given by Sir John Macpherson, the first professor of psychiatry at the University of Sydney and the author of Mental Affections: An Introduction to the Study of Insanity (1899). Referring to the sadistic attack on Andersen, Macpherson observed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some of the most extraordinary and dastardly crimes in history have been committed by alcoholics who, under the influence of the drink, perform deeds which, in their normal state, they would shrink from contemplating.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was the explanation for the sadistic violence of Roy Governor, an Indigenous Australian. After drinking half a bottle of wine, Governor had raped an elderly, white, disabled woman. In his statement from the dock, Governor explained: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I drink wine my sex controls me; I have no control over it; I am what they call a sadist; I have read a lot of books on sex things … I am a funny man when I drink wine I want with a woman.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Curiously, sadism was conceived of as an excess of normal male sexuality. In other words, a sadist would not harm anyone if he could be “relieved” of his “natural” passions by regularly engaging in sexual intercourse with a “legitimate” partner. In 1920, for example, Perth’s Truth concluded that sadism was the “Cave-Man Kink”. The journalist contended that the perversion was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>more common than is generally supposed. The nips and pinches and the playful slaps, that in many cases mark the preliminary stages of love’s young dream likewise denote a tendency towards that kink. Fortunately for the happiness of mankind, or rather womankind, this tendency becomes weaker in the vast majority of cases, and mostly dies away altogether with the satisfaction of the sexual appetite. Should it persist, however, it eventually develops into plain brutality, usually of a most revolting type.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Blaming the victims</h2>
<p>Disturbingly, victims were often said to be partly responsible for their fate. Of course, there were degrees. The press failed to find anything salacious about Everett, for example. But Andersen was “fair game”. “Big Nose May”, as she was known, was castigated as a slut and “insatiable” alcoholic. Newspapers even speculated that she might have been murdered because she stole money from one of her customers or had given them a sexually transmitted disease.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237697/original/file-20180924-85776-f2dhfz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237697/original/file-20180924-85776-f2dhfz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237697/original/file-20180924-85776-f2dhfz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237697/original/file-20180924-85776-f2dhfz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237697/original/file-20180924-85776-f2dhfz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237697/original/file-20180924-85776-f2dhfz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237697/original/file-20180924-85776-f2dhfz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237697/original/file-20180924-85776-f2dhfz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women gather outside the court for the inquest into Dorothy May Everett’s murder. Newcastle Sun, Tuesday January 4 1938.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/166682131?searchTerm=Dorothy%20May%20Everett%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20&searchLimits=exactPhrase|||anyWords|||notWords|||requestHandler|||dateFrom|||dateTo|||l-illustrated=true|||sortby">Trove</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Finally, sadists were a type of person, as opposed to a practice. In particular, he had a racial identity: he was “foreign”. In writing about Everett’s cruel murder, readers were informed that the perpetrator had probably arrived recently in the Newcastle port. There was nothing “Australian” about such perversions.</p>
<p>More importantly, newspaper reports increasingly focused less on the victim’s sufferings and more on the identity of the perpetrator. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the perpetrator had been labelled a sadist because of the mutilation and extreme violence done to the victim. Increasingly, though, the victim’s pain became secondary to the perpetrator’s identity and, in particular, his fantasies.</p>
<p>Indeed, to be labelled a “sadist” a man did not even have to harm anyone. Sadistic acts became secondary to a sadistic identity, which was located in the fantasy life of the perpetrator. This medicalisation of perpetrators of extreme violence had the effect of silencing the victims of sadism.</p>
<p>Women like “Dot” Everett were doubly silenced – both by their murderer and by newspaper reportage that was more interested in speculating about the “sadist” than his victims.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103445/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Bourke receives funding from the Wellcome Trust. She is the director and Principal Investigator of a 5-year project on "Sexual Violence, Medicine, and Psychiatry".</span></em></p>In early 20th-century Australia, a series of highly publicised murders of women saw newspapers widely discuss sadism.Joanna Bourke, Professor of History, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/984592018-06-26T19:48:48Z2018-06-26T19:48:48ZSpells, charms, erotic dolls: love magic in the ancient Mediterranean<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223746/original/file-20180619-126566-1k6mwlm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Statue of Eros of the type of Centocelle. Roman artwork of the 2nd century AD, probably a copy after a Greek original.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our sexual histories series, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
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<p>It was a well-kept secret among historians during the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the practice of magic was widespread in the ancient Mediterranean. Historians wanted to keep the activity low-key because it did not support their idealised view of the Greeks and Romans. Today, however, magic is a legitimate area of scholarly enquiry, providing insights into ancient belief systems as well as cultural and social practices.</p>
<p>While magic was discouraged and sometimes even punished in antiquity, it thrived all the same. Authorities publicly condemned it, but tended to ignore its powerful hold.</p>
<p>Erotic spells were a popular form of magic. Professional magic practitioners charged fees for writing erotic charms, making enchanted dolls (sometimes called poppets), and even directing curses against rivals in love.</p>
<p>Magic is widely attested in archaeological evidence, spell books and literature from both Greece and Rome, as well as Egypt and the Middle East. The Greek Magical Papyri, for example, from <a href="http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline_9.html">Graeco-Roman Egypt</a>, is a large collection of papyri listing spells for many purposes. The collection was compiled from sources dating from the second century BC to the fifth century AD, and includes numerous spells of attraction.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-ancient-mesopotamia-sex-among-the-gods-shook-heaven-and-earth-87858">In ancient Mesopotamia, sex among the gods shook heaven and earth</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Some spells involve making dolls, which were intended to represent the object of desire (usually a woman who was either unaware or resistant to a would-be admirer). Instructions specified how an erotic doll should be made, what words should be said over it, and where it should be deposited.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223694/original/file-20180619-38808-1xjmnyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223694/original/file-20180619-38808-1xjmnyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223694/original/file-20180619-38808-1xjmnyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223694/original/file-20180619-38808-1xjmnyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223694/original/file-20180619-38808-1xjmnyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223694/original/file-20180619-38808-1xjmnyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223694/original/file-20180619-38808-1xjmnyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223694/original/file-20180619-38808-1xjmnyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Louvre Doll.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such an object is a form of sympathetic magic; a type of enchantment that operates along the principle of “like affects like”. When enacting sympathetic magic with a doll, the spell-caster believes that whatever action is performed on it – be it physical or psychic – will be transferred to the human it represents.</p>
<p>The best preserved and most notorious magical doll from antiquity, the so-called “<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Voodoo_doll_Louvre_E27145b.jpg">Louvre Doll</a>” (4th century AD), depicts a naked female in kneeling position, bound, and pierced with 13 needles. Fashioned from unbaked clay, the doll was found in a terracotta vase in Egypt. The accompanying spell, inscribed on a lead tablet, records the woman’s name as Ptolemais and the man who made the spell, or commissioned a magician to do so, as Sarapammon.</p>
<h2>Violent, brutal language</h2>
<p>The spells that accompanied such dolls and, indeed, the spells from antiquity on all manner of topics, were not mild in the language and imagery employed. Ancient spells were often violent, brutal and without any sense of caution or remorse. In the spell that comes with the Louvre Doll, the language is both frightening and repellent in a modern context. For example, one part of the spell directed at Ptolemais reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do not allow her to eat, drink, hold out, venture out, or find sleep …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another part reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Drag her by the hair, by the guts, until she no longer scorns me …</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224821/original/file-20180626-19408-18ait8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224821/original/file-20180626-19408-18ait8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224821/original/file-20180626-19408-18ait8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224821/original/file-20180626-19408-18ait8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224821/original/file-20180626-19408-18ait8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224821/original/file-20180626-19408-18ait8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224821/original/file-20180626-19408-18ait8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224821/original/file-20180626-19408-18ait8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Coptic codex with magic spells, 5-6th century AD from the Museo Archeologico, Milan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such language is hardly indicative of any emotion pertaining to love, or even attraction. Especially when combined with the doll, the spell may strike a modern reader as obsessive (perhaps reminiscent of a stalker or online troll) and even misogynistic. Indeed, rather than seeking love, the intention behind the spell suggests seeking control and domination. Such were the gender and sexual dynamics of antiquity.</p>
<p>But in a masculine world, in which competition in all aspects of life was intense, and the goal of victory was paramount, violent language was typical in spells pertaining to anything from success in a court case to the rigging of a chariot race. Indeed, one theory suggests that the more ferocious the words, the more powerful and effective the spell.</p>
<h2>Love potions</h2>
<p>Most ancient evidence attests to men as both professional magical practitioners and their clients. There was a need to be literate to perform most magic (most women were not educated) and to be accessible to clients (most women were not free to receive visitors or have a business). However, some women also engaged in erotic magic (although the sources on this are relatively scarce).</p>
<p>In ancient Athens, for example, a woman was taken to court on the charge of attempting to poison her husband. The trial was recorded in a speech delivered on behalf of the prosecution (dated around 419 BC). It includes the woman’s defence, which stated that she did not intend to poison her husband but to administer a love philtre to reinvigorate the marriage. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/elite-companions-flute-girls-and-child-slaves-sex-work-in-ancient-athens-89306">Elite companions, flute girls and child slaves: sex work in ancient Athens</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>The speech, entitled Against the Stepmother for Poisoning by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antiphon-Greek-writer-and-statesman">Antiphon</a>, clearly reveals that the Athenians practised and believed in love potions and may suggest that this more subtle form of erotic magic (compared to the casting of spells and the making of enchanted dolls) was the preserve of women.</p>
<h2>Desire between women</h2>
<p>Within the multiplicity of spells found in the Greek Magical Papyri, two deal specifically with female same sex desire. In one of these, a woman by the name of Herais attempts to magically entreat a woman by the name of Serapis. In this spell, dated to the second century AD, the gods <a href="http://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/anubis.html">Anubis</a> and <a href="https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net/gods/hermes/">Hermes</a> are called upon to bring Serapis to Herais and to bind Serapis to her.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224804/original/file-20180625-19390-103o6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224804/original/file-20180625-19390-103o6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224804/original/file-20180625-19390-103o6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224804/original/file-20180625-19390-103o6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224804/original/file-20180625-19390-103o6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224804/original/file-20180625-19390-103o6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224804/original/file-20180625-19390-103o6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224804/original/file-20180625-19390-103o6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Statue of a young seated Hermes (the Greek messenger god) at rest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the second spell, dated to the third or fourth century AD, a woman called Sophia seeks out a woman by the name of Gorgonia. This spell, written on a lead tablet, is aggressive in tone; for example:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Burn, set on fire, inflame her soul, heart, liver, spirit, with love for Sophia …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gods and goddesses were regularly summoned in magic. In the spell to attract Serapis, for example, Anubis is included based on his role as the god of the secrets of Egyptian magic. Hermes, a Greek god, was often included because as a messenger god, he was a useful choice in spells that sought contact with someone. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224805/original/file-20180625-19385-1iu5bng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224805/original/file-20180625-19385-1iu5bng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224805/original/file-20180625-19385-1iu5bng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224805/original/file-20180625-19385-1iu5bng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224805/original/file-20180625-19385-1iu5bng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224805/original/file-20180625-19385-1iu5bng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224805/original/file-20180625-19385-1iu5bng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224805/original/file-20180625-19385-1iu5bng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anubis depicted as a jackal in the tomb of Tutankhamen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The tendency to combine gods from several cultures was not uncommon in ancient magic, indicative of its eclectic nature and perhaps a form of hedging one’s bets (if one religion’s god won’t listen, one from another belief system may).</p>
<p>Deities with erotic connections were also inscribed on gems to induce attraction. The Greek god of eroticism, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eros-Greek-god">Eros</a> was a popular figure to depict on a gemstone, which could then be fashioned into a piece of jewellery. </p>
<p>The numerous erotic spells in antiquity – from potions to dolls to enchanted gems and rituals – not only provide information about magic in the ancient Mediterranean world, but the intricacies and cultural conventions around sexuality and gender. </p>
<p>The rigid system of clearly demarcated gender roles of active (male) and passive (female) partners, based on a patriarchy that championed dominance and success at all costs, underpinned the same societies’ magical practices. Yet it is important to note that even in magic featuring people of the same sex, aggressive language is employed because of the conventions that underlined ancient spells.</p>
<p>Still magic remains, in part, a mystery when it comes to erotic practice and conventions. The two same-sex spells from the Greek Magical Papyri, for example, attest to the reality of erotic desire among ancient women, but do not shed light on whether this type of sexuality was condoned in Roman Egypt. Perhaps such desires were not socially approved; hence the recourse to magic. Perhaps the desires of Sarapammon for Ptolemais were also outside the bounds of acceptability, which led him to the surreptitious and desperate world of magic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marguerite Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Erotic spells were a popular form of magic in ancient Greece and Rome. Ancient spells were often violent, brutal and without any sense of caution or remorse.Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/878582018-04-22T19:12:23Z2018-04-22T19:12:23ZIn ancient Mesopotamia, sex among the gods shook heaven and earth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215719/original/file-20180420-75123-92p1gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The "Burney Relief," which is believed to represent either Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, or her older sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the underworld (c. 19th or 18th century BC)</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Museum_Queen_of_the_Night.jpg">BabelStone</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/sexual-histories-series-47407">sexual histories series</a>, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Sexuality was central to life in ancient Mesopotamia, an area of the Ancient Near East often described as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/nov/10/ancient-world-mesopotamia">cradle of western civilisation</a> roughly corresponding to modern-day Iraq, Kuwait, and parts of Syria, Iran and Turkey. It was not only so for everyday humans but for kings and even deities. </p>
<p>Mesopotamian deities shared many human experiences, with gods marrying, procreating and sharing households and familial duties. However when love went wrong, the consequences could be dire in both heaven and on earth. </p>
<p>Scholars have observed the similarities between the divine “marriage machine” found in ancient literary works and the historical courtship of mortals, although it is difficult to disentangle the two, most famously in so-called “sacred marriages”, which saw Mesopotamian kings marrying deities. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-epic-of-gilgamesh-73444">Guide to the classics: the Epic of Gilgamesh</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Divine sex</h2>
<p>Gods, being immortal and generally of superior status to humans, did not strictly need sexual intercourse for population maintenance, yet the practicalities of the matter seem to have done little to curb their enthusiasm. </p>
<p>Sexual relationships between Mesopotamian deities provided inspiration for a rich variety of narratives. These include Sumerian myths such as <a href="http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr121.htm">Enlil and Ninlil</a> and <a href="http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.1.1&charenc=j#">Enki and Ninhursag</a>, where the complicated sexual interactions between deities was shown to involve trickery, deception and disguise. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215723/original/file-20180420-75126-vclet3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215723/original/file-20180420-75126-vclet3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215723/original/file-20180420-75126-vclet3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215723/original/file-20180420-75126-vclet3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215723/original/file-20180420-75126-vclet3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215723/original/file-20180420-75126-vclet3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215723/original/file-20180420-75126-vclet3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215723/original/file-20180420-75126-vclet3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The goddess Ishtar as depicted in Myths and legends of Babylonia & Assyria, 1916, by Lewis Spence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Myths_and_legends_of_Babylonia_and_Assyria_%281916%29_%2814801964123%29.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In both myths, a male deity adopts a disguise, and then attempts to gain sexual access to the female deity — or to avoid his lover’s pursuit. In the first, the goddess Ninlil follows her lover Enlil down into the Underworld, and barters sexual favours for information on Enlil’s whereabouts. The provision of a false identity in these myths is used to circumnavigate <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/05/how-marital-infidelity-became-americas-last-sexual-taboo/276341/">societal expectations of sex and fidelity</a>.</p>
<p>Sexual betrayal could spell doom not only for errant lovers but for the <a href="http://wsrp.usc.edu/information/REL499_2011/Nergal%20and%20Ereshkigal.pdf">whole of society</a>. When the Queen of the Underworld, Ereshkigal, is abandoned by her lover, Nergal, she threatens to raise the dead unless he is returned to her, alluding to her right to sexual satiety. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-legend-of-ishtar-first-goddess-of-love-and-war-78468">goddess Ishtar makes the same threat</a> in the face of a romantic rejection from the king of Uruk in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWppk7-Mti4">Epic of Gilgamesh</a>. It is interesting to note that both Ishtar and Ereshkigal, who are sisters, use one of the most potent threats at their disposal to address matters of the heart. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-legend-of-ishtar-first-goddess-of-love-and-war-78468">Friday essay: the legend of Ishtar, first goddess of love and war</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The plots of these myths highlight the potential for deceit to create alienation between lovers during courtship. The <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/books/the-course-of-love-by-alain-de-botton-review-a3230851.html">less-than-smooth course of love</a> in these myths, and their complex use of literary imagery, have drawn scholarly comparisons with the works of <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2010/03/shakespeare-and-sex/">Shakespeare</a>. </p>
<h2>Love poetry</h2>
<p>Ancient authors of Sumerian love poetry, depicting the exploits of divine couples, show a wealth of practical knowledge on the stages of female sexual arousal. It’s thought by some scholars that this poetry may have historically had an educational purpose: to <a href="https://theconversation.com/lets-talk-about-sex-teaching-teens-to-negotiate-sexual-intimacy-34983">teach inexperienced young lovers</a> in ancient Mesopotamia about intercourse. It’s also been suggested the texts had religious purposes, or possibly <a href="http://cis.uchicago.edu/oldsite/outreach/summerinstitute/epidemics/readings/farber_witchcraft.pdf">magical potency</a>. </p>
<p>Several texts write of the courtship of a divine couple, Inanna (the Semitic equivalent of Ishtar) and her lover, the shepherd deity Dumuzi. The closeness of the lovers is shown through a sophisticated combination of poetry and sensuousness imagery - perhaps providing an edifying example for this year’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/23/bad-sex-award-2017-shortlist-the-contenders-in-quotes">Bad Sex in Fiction</a> nominees. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214678/original/file-20180413-566-862hnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214678/original/file-20180413-566-862hnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214678/original/file-20180413-566-862hnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214678/original/file-20180413-566-862hnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214678/original/file-20180413-566-862hnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214678/original/file-20180413-566-862hnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214678/original/file-20180413-566-862hnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214678/original/file-20180413-566-862hnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ancient Sumerian cylinder seal impression showing Dumuzid being tortured in the Underworld by the galla demons.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumuzid#/media/File:Dumuzi_aux_enfers.jpg">British Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one of the poems, elements of the female lover’s arousal are catalogued, from the increased lubrication of her vulva, to the “trembling” of her climax. The male partner is presented delighting in his partner’s physical form, and <a href="https://www.rd.com/advice/relationships/compliments-for-spouse/">speaking kindly to her</a>. The feminine perspective on lovemaking is emphasised in the texts through the description of the goddess’ <a href="http://www.health.com/sex/sexual-fantasy-meaning#01-sex-fantasies-why-intro">erotic fantasies</a>. These fantasies are part of the preparations of the goddess for her union, and perhaps contribute to her <a href="https://verilymag.com/2017/11/gender-roles-millennial-generation-millennial-parents-moms-men">sexual satisfaction</a>. </p>
<p>Female and male genitals could be celebrated in poetry, the presence of dark pubic hair on the goddess’ vulva is poetically described through the symbolism of a flock of ducks on a well-watered field or a narrow doorway framed in glossy black <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/afghanistans-beautiful-link-to-da-vincis-450-million_us_5a132ac0e4b010527d677f42">lapis-lazuli</a>. </p>
<p>The representation of genitals may also have served a religious function: temple inventories have revealed votive models of pubic triangles, some made of clay or bronze. Votive offerings in the shape of vulvae have been found in the city of Assur from before 1000 BC.</p>
<h2>Happy goddess, happy kingdom</h2>
<p>Divine sex was not the sole preserve of the gods, but could also involve the human king. Few topics from Mesopotamia have captured the imagination as much as the concept of sacred marriage. In this tradition, the historical Mesopotamian king would be married to the goddess of love, Ishtar. There is literary evidence for such marriages from very early Mesopotamia, before 2300 BC, and the concept persevered into much later periods. </p>
<p>The relationship between historical kings and Mesopotamian deities was considered crucial to the successful continuation of earthly and cosmic order. For the Mesopotamian monarch, then, the sexual relationship with the goddess of love most likely involved a certain amount of <a href="https://theconversation.com/on-love-and-politics-24304">pressure to perform</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215721/original/file-20180420-75095-1e84x3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215721/original/file-20180420-75095-1e84x3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215721/original/file-20180420-75095-1e84x3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215721/original/file-20180420-75095-1e84x3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215721/original/file-20180420-75095-1e84x3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215721/original/file-20180420-75095-1e84x3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215721/original/file-20180420-75095-1e84x3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215721/original/file-20180420-75095-1e84x3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In ancient Mesopotamia, a goddess’ vulva could be compared to a flock of ducks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some scholars have suggested these marriages involved a physical expression between the king and another person (such as a priestess) embodying the goddess. The general view now is that if there were a physical enactment to a sacred marriage ritual it would have been conducted on a symbolic level rather than a carnal one, with the king perhaps sharing his bed with a statue of the deity. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/date-sex-in-mesopotamia/">Agricultural imagery</a> was often used to describe the union of goddess and king. <a href="https://theconversation.com/give-bees-a-chance-the-ancient-art-of-beekeeping-could-save-our-honey-and-us-too-51322">Honey</a>, for instance, is described as sweet like the goddess’ mouth and vulva. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.2.4.4.2#">love song from the city of Ur</a> between 2100-2000 BC is dedicated to Shu-Shin, the king, and Ishtar: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the bedchamber dripping with honey let us enjoy over and over your allure, the sweet thing. Lad, let me do the sweetest things to you. My precious sweet, let me bring you honey.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sex in this love poetry is depicted as a pleasurable activity that enhanced loving feelings of intimacy. This sense of increased closeness was considered to bring joy to the heart of the goddess, resulting in good fortune and abundance for the entire community — perhaps demonstrating an early Mesopotamian version of the adage “<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/video/new-study-confirms-happy-wife-happy-life-330048067667">happy wife, happy life</a>”. </p>
<p>The diverse presentation of divine sex creates something of a mystery around the causes for the cultural emphasis on cosmic copulation. While the presentation of divine sex and marriage in ancient Mesopotamia likely served numerous purposes, some elements of the intimate relationships between gods shows some carry-over to mortal unions. </p>
<p>While dishonesty between lovers could lead to alienation, positive sexual interactions held countless benefits, including greater intimacy and <a href="https://www.rd.com/advice/relationships/afterglow-from-sex/">lasting happiness</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87858/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Pryke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sex was central to life in ancient Mesopotamia. And the authors of Sumerian love poetry, depicting the exploits of divine couples, showed a wealth of practical knowledge about the stages of female sexual arousal.Louise Pryke, Lecturer, Languages and Literature of Ancient Israel, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/878592018-02-22T19:12:08Z2018-02-22T19:12:08ZFriday essay: the erotic art of Ancient Greece and Rome<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205459/original/file-20180208-180808-1btn8tj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A fragment of a wall painting showing two lovers in bed from the House of L Caecilius Jucundus in Pompeii, now at Naples National Archaeological Museum</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our sexual histories series, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<p>Rarely does L.P. Hartley’s dictum that “the past is a foreign country” hold more firmly than in the area of sexuality in classical art. Erotic images and depictions of genitalia, the phallus in particular, were incredibly popular motifs across a wide range of media in ancient Greece and Rome. </p>
<p>Simply put, sex is everywhere in Greek and Roman art. Explicit sexual representations were common on Athenian black-figure and red-figure vases of the sixth and fifth centuries BC. They are often eye-openingly confronting in nature.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196595/original/file-20171128-2046-16fj3r9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bronze tintinnabula in the shape of flying phalluses, Pompeii, first century AD.
Gabinetto Segreto del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Romans too were surrounded by sex. The phallus, sculpted in bronze as <em>tintinnabula</em> (wind chimes), were commonly found in the gardens of the houses of Pompeii, and sculpted in relief on wall panels, such as the famous one from a Roman bakery telling us <em>hic habitat felicitas</em> (“here dwells happiness”). </p>
<p>However these classical images of erotic acts and genitalia reflect more than a sex obsessed culture. The depictions of sexuality and sexual activities in classical art seem to have had a wide variety of uses. And our interpretations of these images - often censorious in modern times - reveal much about our own attitudes to sex. </p>
<h2>Modern responses</h2>
<p>When the collection of antiquities first began in earnest in the 17th and 18th centuries, the openness of ancient eroticism puzzled and troubled Enlightenment audiences. This bewilderment only intensified after excavations began at the rediscovered Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. </p>
<p>The Gabinetto Segreto (the so-called “<a href="http://www.museoarcheologiconapoli.it/en/room-and-sections-of-the-exhibition/3490-2/">Secret Cabinet</a>”) of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli best typifies the modern response to classical sexuality in art – repression and suppression.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://cir.campania.beniculturali.it/museoarcheologiconazionale/Musei/marcheo/thematic-paths/in-museum/P_RA12">secret cabinet</a> was founded in 1819, when Francis I, King of Naples, visited the museum with his wife and young daughter. Shocked by the explicit imagery, he ordered all items of a sexual nature be removed from view and locked in the cabinet. Access would be restricted to scholars, of “mature age and respected morals”. That was, male scholars only. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196596/original/file-20171128-2021-15g95xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Erotic terracotta sculptures in a showcase in the Gabinetto Segreto at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Found in a Samnite sanctuary in the old town of Cales (Calvi Risorta).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Pompeii itself, where explicit material such as the wallpaintings of the brothel was retained <em>in situ</em>, metal shutters were installed. These shutters restricted access to only male tourists willing to pay additional fees, until as recently as the 1960s. </p>
<p>Of course, the secrecy of the collection in the cabinet only increased its fame, even if access was at times difficult. <a href="https://archive.org/details/ahandbookfortra41firgoog">John Murray</a>’s Handbook to South Italy and Naples (1853) sanctimoniously states that permission was exceedingly difficult to obtain: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Very few therefore have seen the collection; and those who have, are said to have no desire to repeat their visit.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The cabinet was not opened to the general public until 2000 (despite protests by the Catholic Church). Since 2005, the collection has been displayed in a separate room; the objects have still not been reunited with contemporary non-sexual artefacts as they were in antiquity. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=3jLjZvb9fxQC&pg=PA175&dq=Philip+Lawton+for+the+gentleman+and+scholar&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjd-MjruuDXAhXMjJQKHawICxQQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=Philip%20Lawton%20for%20the%20gentleman%20and%20scholar&f=false">Literature also felt the wrath of the censors</a>, with works such as Aristophanes’ plays mistranslated to obscure their “offensive” sexual and scatalogical references. Lest we try to claim any moral and liberal superiority in the 21st century, the infamous marble sculptural depiction of Pan copulating with a goat from the collection <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/pan-having-sex-with-goat-_n_2866615">still shocks modern audiences</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196612/original/file-20171128-2089-sayvis.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marble statue of Pan copulating with goat, found the Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum. first century AD.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The censorship of ancient sexuality is perhaps best typified by the long tradition of <a href="http://www.neatorama.com/2011/10/18/the-pathology-of-classical-sculpture/">removing genitals from classical sculpture</a>.</p>
<p>The Vatican Museum in particular (but not exclusively) was famed for altering classical art for the sake of contemporary morals and sensibilities. The application of carved and cast fig leaves to cover the genitalia was common, if incongruous. </p>
<p>It also indicated a modern willingness to associate nudity with sexuality, which would have puzzled an ancient audience, for whom the body’s physical form was in itself regarded as perfection. So have we been misreading ancient sexuality all this time? Well, yes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196620/original/file-20171128-2077-1tq6550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marble statue of Mercury in the Vatican collection. The fig leaf is a later addition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ancient porn?</h2>
<p>It is difficult to tell to what extent ancient audiences used explicit erotic imagery for arousal. Certainly, the erotic scenes that were popular on vessels would have given the Athenian parties a titillating atmosphere as wine was consumed. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196624/original/file-20171128-2004-1yb39rg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Athenian red-figure kylix, attributed to Dokimasia Painter, c. 480 BC. British Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Trustees of the British Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These types of scenes are especially popular on the <em>kylix</em>, or wine-cup, particularly within the <em>tondo</em> (central panel of the cup). <em><a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/%7Egrout/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/hetairai/hetairai.html">Hetairai</a></em> (courtesans) and <em><a href="https://womeninantiquity.wordpress.com/2017/03/18/hetaira/">pornai</a></em> (prostitutes) may well have attended the same symposia, so the scenes may have been used as a stimuli.</p>
<p>Painted erotica was replaced by moulded depictions in the later Greek and Roman eras, but the use must have been similar, and the association of sex with drinking is strong in this series.</p>
<p>The application of sexual scenes to oil lamps by the Romans is perhaps the most likely scenario where the object was actually used within the setting of love-making. Erotica is common on mould-made lamps.</p>
<h2>The phallus and fertility</h2>
<p>Although female nudity was not uncommon (particularly in association with the goddess Aphrodite), phallic symbolism was at the centre of much classical art. </p>
<p>The phallus would often be depicted on Hermes, Pan, Priapus or similar deities across various art forms. Rather than being seen as erotic, its symbolism here was often associated with protection, fertility and even healing. We have already seen the phallus used in a range of domestic and commercial contexts in Pompeii, a clear reflection of its protective properties. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1833&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196606/original/file-20171128-2004-fd2yho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1833&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marble Herm, from Siphnos, Greece. c. 520 BC. National Archaeological Museum, Athens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A herm was a stone sculpture with a head (usually of Hermes) above a rectangular pillar, upon which male genitals were carved. These blocks were positioned at borders and boundaries for protection, and were so highly valued that in 415 BC when the <em>hermai</em> of Athens were vandalised prior to the departure of the Athenian fleet many believed this would threaten the success of the naval mission.</p>
<p>A famous fresco from the House of the Vetti in Pompeii shows Priapus, a minor deity and guardian of livestock, plants and gardens. He has a massive penis, holds a bag of coins, and has a bowl of fruit at his feet. As researcher <a href="http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=uhf_2006">Claudia Moser</a> writes, the image represents three kinds of prosperity: growth (the large member), fertility (the fruit), and affluence (the bag of money).</p>
<p>It is worth noting that even a casual glance at classical sculptures in a museum will reveal that the penis on marble depictions of nude gods and heroes is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24369184">often quite small</a>. Classical cultural ideals valued a smaller penis over a larger, often to the surprise of modern audiences.</p>
<p>All representations of large penises in classical art are associated with lustfulness and foolishness. Priapus was so despised by the other gods he was thrown off Mt Olympus. Bigger was not better for the Greeks and Romans.</p>
<h2>Myths and sex</h2>
<p>Classical mythology is based upon sex: myths abound with stories of incest, intermarriage, polygamy and adultery, so artistic depictions of mythology were bound to depict these sometimes explicit tales. Zeus’s cavalier attitude towards female consent within these myths (among many examples, he raped Leda in the guise of a swan and Danae while disguised as the rain) reinforced misogynistic ideas of male domination and female subservience.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196602/original/file-20171128-2025-ineyrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mosaic depicting Leda and the swan, circa third century AD, from the Sanctuary of Aphrodite, Palea Paphos; now in the Cyprus Museum, Nicosia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The phallus was also highlighted in depictions of Dionysiac revelry. Dionysos, the Greek god of wine, theatre and transformation was highly sexualised, as were his followers - the male satyrs and female maenads, and their depiction on wine vessels is not surprising.</p>
<p>Satyrs were half-men, half-goats. Somewhat comic, yet also tragic to a degree, they were inveterate masturbators and party animals with an appetite for dancing, wine and women. Indeed the word <em>satyriasis</em> has survived today, classified in the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) as a form of male hypersexuality, alongside the female form, <em>nymphomania</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196604/original/file-20171128-2038-667j4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detail of an Athenian red-figure psykter (cooler) depicting a satyr balancing a kantharos on his penis, painted by Douris, c. 500-490 BC. British Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The intention of the <em>ithyphallic</em> (erect) satyrs is clear in their appearance on vases (even if they rarely caught the maenads they were chasing); at the same time their massive erect penises are indicative of the “beastliness” and grotesque ugliness of a large penis as opposed to the classical ideal of male beauty represented by a smaller one. </p>
<p>Actors who performed in satyr plays during dramatic festivals took to the stage and orchestra with fake phallus costumes to indicate that they were not humans, but these mythical beasts of Dionysus.</p>
<p>Early collectors of classical art were shocked to discover that the Greeks and Romans they so admired were earthy humans too with a range of sexual needs and desires. But in emphasising the sexual aspects of this art they underplayed the non-sexual role of phallic symbols.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87859/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Barker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From phallus-shaped wind chimes to explicit erotica on lamps and cups, sex is everywhere in ancient Greek and Roman art. But our interpretations of these images say much about our own culture.Craig Barker, Education Manager, Sydney University Museums, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/898582018-02-13T19:06:27Z2018-02-13T19:06:27ZSex and the sisterhood: how prostitution worked for women in 19th-century Melbourne<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206094/original/file-20180213-58318-w6vydr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Little Lonsdale Street in the 1870s: a number of brothels were located in the area known as 'Little Lon'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of New South Wales.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sex work was one of the major ways poor women could earn a reasonable income in the 19th century. Especially unmarried women with babies. But we don’t hear people say “my great-great-grandmother was a sex worker”. Nor do we often meet these women in our history books. Social stigma belies the importance of prostitution in providing an independent living, and even property ownership, for numerous women in this period.</p>
<p>Prostitution is often lumped together with crime and slums in the historical imagination, but it wasn’t illegal in gold rush Victoria. Nevertheless neighbours in the “respectable” suburbs complained if women danced in the streets or appeared without a bonnet or showed their petticoats, so the police tried to confine sex workers to particular areas. </p>
<p>“These women must live somewhere”, the police said in the superintendent’s 1874 report, and that “somewhere” was the <a href="https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/articles/31">Little Lon</a> district in Melbourne CBD’s north east corner, where the “dressed girls” were kitted out and lived in the “flash brothels” under the supervision of madams, and the less expensive street-walkers took their customers to the “short-time houses” and timber cottages in the back lanes.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most famous inhabitant of this patch was <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/meet-the-real-madame-brussels-dubbed-the-wickedest-woman-in-melbourne/news-story/0dd971e5767923978db6d73d49baac12">Madame Brussels and her Bellevue-Villa</a>, still commemorated today with a bar of the same name on Bourke Street.</p>
<p>Clientele came from everywhere and every class, but proximity to the all-male enclave of parliament and treasury was a distinct advantage for these fancy brothels. Despite being legal, though, women had to keep quiet or risk arrest and imprisonment under laws against “disorderly behaviour” and “vagrancy”.</p>
<p>The area has been extensively excavated by a series of archaeological projects over the last 30 years, and our recent intensive research on the artefacts recovered (held at Museum Victoria and Heritage Victoria) is revealing much more about the brothels and the women who owned them that had disappeared from memory. </p>
<h2>Mrs Bond’s flash brothel</h2>
<p>The brothel owned by one Mrs Bond on Lonsdale Street was so quiet that no-one knew it was there until archaeologists dug up her back yard in 1988. The excavators speculated that the site had been a brothel and our work on the artefacts has confirmed it.</p>
<p><a href="https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=320293533963920;res=IELAPA">Alicia Bond arrived</a> in Little Lon from Ireland as a widow but with a de facto husband suffering from tuberculosis. In 1862 she had three young children to support, and when her son attacked her de facto husband <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5714099?searchTerm=John%20Sheridan&searchLimits=exactPhrase%7C%7C%7CanyWords%7C%7C%7CnotWords%7C%7C%7CrequestHandler%7C%7C%7CdateFrom=1862-04-30%7C%7C%7CdateTo=1862-04-30%7C%7C%7Cl-advstate=Victoria%7C%7C%7Csortby">she reported at the trial</a> that “she could not see her children starve”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203697/original/file-20180129-100929-1l9viik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203697/original/file-20180129-100929-1l9viik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203697/original/file-20180129-100929-1l9viik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203697/original/file-20180129-100929-1l9viik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203697/original/file-20180129-100929-1l9viik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203697/original/file-20180129-100929-1l9viik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203697/original/file-20180129-100929-1l9viik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203697/original/file-20180129-100929-1l9viik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Absinthe bottle recovered from Mrs Bond’s rubbish pit (Museum Victoria collection)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bronwyn Woff</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She “had at first taken in washing”, she said to the court, “and then had to keep a brothel to support the family”. She started by renting a back lane cottage for a brothel, and eventually bought her own house on the main street and opened a grocery shop. She then poured her earnings into buying cottages which she rented out to other sex workers.</p>
<p>This cover was very effective and the only reason we know about her brothel is because the artefacts recovered included an uncommonly large number of bottles (champagne (77), imported spirits (4) and <a href="https://www.chemheritage.org/distillations/magazine/the-devil-in-a-little-green-bottle-a-history-of-absinthe">absinthe</a> (10)) amongst the rubbish in her back yard, together with over 300 oyster shells. Archaeological evidence shows Melburnians often ate oysters at this time, but they seemed particularly popular at brothels.</p>
<p>Such luxury items were typical of the higher class brothels, where the selection of dinner services and drinking glasses <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/25616131?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">projected middle class status in order to create a familiar environment</a> and attracted a wealthier clientele than the back lane cottages. Mrs Bond’s brothel was not in the class of Madame Brussels’, but it had at least eight rooms and a prominent Lonsdale Street frontage. </p>
<h2>Mary Williams’s disorderly house</h2>
<p>Around the corner and down a side street, Mary Williams rented two very basic, detached two-room cottages from Mrs Bond. Rubbish discarded in her cesspit indicates a very different class of brothel. There were no imported champagne or absinthe bottles here, only beer/wine bottles (90), two gin/schnapps bottles, one cognac bottle and 165 oyster shells.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206119/original/file-20180213-44654-7ckkk8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206119/original/file-20180213-44654-7ckkk8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206119/original/file-20180213-44654-7ckkk8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206119/original/file-20180213-44654-7ckkk8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206119/original/file-20180213-44654-7ckkk8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206119/original/file-20180213-44654-7ckkk8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206119/original/file-20180213-44654-7ckkk8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206119/original/file-20180213-44654-7ckkk8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mary came from Ireland via a brief marriage in Adelaide, but in 1870, when she was still in her twenties, she left South Australia with George Williams and found herself in Little Lon. Within months George was in prison for theft and in 1872 Mary was described by a policeman as a “drunkard” running one of the most disorderly houses in the lane. She had two babies while she was there, but both died in infancy. </p>
<p>Mary Williams’ brothel doubtless attracted less well-to-do clients than Mrs Bond’s and Madame Brussels’, but sex work provided her with a better standard of living than domestic service or factory work could have done.</p>
<h2>A working community</h2>
<p>Sex work in the Little Lon district was fraught with dangers, but it also had its upside. Women worked on their own, with friends, or in brothels run by madams (not by men). There was a community of support around the women, often including relatives and the publicans, pawn brokers, grocers and dressmakers they patronised.</p>
<p>Both sides of the coin are evident in the story of Mary Murray, who rented one of Mrs Bond’s cottages. She died after being badly beaten by a client, but it was a friend who took her to hospital. The women relied on each other and there are many other stories of support. For example, when Mary Williams went into labour, she was attended by a neighbour.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203700/original/file-20180129-100926-1ancvp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203700/original/file-20180129-100926-1ancvp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203700/original/file-20180129-100926-1ancvp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203700/original/file-20180129-100926-1ancvp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203700/original/file-20180129-100926-1ancvp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203700/original/file-20180129-100926-1ancvp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203700/original/file-20180129-100926-1ancvp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bond family tombstone, Melbourne General Cemetery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Barbara Minchinton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For some women in this era, sex work was about survival, but for others it was a way of life that offered a rare measure of income and independence. Wages for the kind of domestic work available to women with children (like Mrs Bond) were extremely low, and even lower for girls. In 1878 two young women earning 12 shillings a week as domestic servants told a policeman their wages “wouldn’t keep them in boots”, and they earned more from street work on their nights off. </p>
<p>After her de facto husband’s death, Mrs Bond raised her three sons on the proceeds of her brothel. At the same time, she poured her earnings into property, living and running her grocery/brothel in one house, and renting others to sex workers like Mary Williams and Mary Murray. When Mrs Bond died <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14490854.2017.1286704">her property portfolio would have been the envy of many</a>. </p>
<p>This era of relative independence for female sex workers was not to last. The idea of “respectability” was growing and groups like the Salvation Army and the church missions saw prostitution as primarily a moral issue rather than an economic one.</p>
<p>Soliciting in the streets was criminalised in 1891, and the <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/59718604">Police Offences Act 1907</a> made it illegal for landlords and madams to profit from prostitution. This effectively put the flash brothels out of business and sent Victoria into an era of protection rackets and women working under the surveillance and control of men.</p>
<p><em>Are you an academic with an idea for our sexual histories series? Please contact suzy.freeman-greene@theconversation.edu.au if so.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89858/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Hayes receives funding from Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barbara Minchinton receives funding from Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Rubbish excavated from brothels sheds light on sex workers’ lives in the 19th century. Despite the dangers, prostitution offered an independent living free of male control.Sarah Hayes, Research Fellow in Archaeology and History, La Trobe UniversityBarbara Minchinton, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/889432018-01-28T18:07:53Z2018-01-28T18:07:53Z‘I didn’t know that world existed’: how lesbian women found a life in the armed forces<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204127/original/file-20180130-38190-1npk5ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Queer women were allowed to serve openly in Australia's defence force from 1992. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaimeperez/35228562500/in/photolist-VF2AhC-dugc8b-eNYgBb-9f6Bwh-ankpSJ-dP6LeN-6AmdSS-dUNnQU-dideh1-nS5326-4G1vWx-8d6ChB-TxQP7S-VK6TXR-T2tBCA-WUcddy-75nwv4-aSbBte-8hftFB-okuJhW-88QjAG-8hpeBH-qrr6Ng-aZ2ARx-cNdbL-52JLKM-nCtg1G-2cWNX-89aF9e-8ANxnj-W3fRVR-6CQYKo-d2N561-7LXcYr-snpd5y-WdtpGc-o585ek-ogXEUn-6w8FPb-nECobn-VrK7NU-mFeuRk-cXrEdU-dhUyp7-oZGg3d-2ZQAr-t542-hDaEn-o8AWeM-didgDi">Jaime Pérez</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our ongoing sexual histories series, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<p>Jennifer, who signed up to the Women’s Royal Australian Army Corps (WRAAC) in 1979, told me that “until I joined the Army, I had no awareness of gay people. I had no awareness that I was gay, I didn’t know that world existed.” </p>
<p>This changed dramatically within a number of days of her service. She laughed as she recalled that as soon as she got to the barracks she realised she was “attracted to” women. Moreover, it was clear that the possibilities to meet other women who were like her were abundant within the military.</p>
<p>Until the ban on homosexual service in the Australian Defence Force was lifted in 1992, gay and lesbian personnel faced persecution, punishment and discharge if their sexuality was <a href="https://theconversation.com/witch-hunts-and-surveillance-the-hidden-lives-of-queer-people-in-the-military-76156">revealed</a> to officials. </p>
<p>But as Jennifer’s experience shows, prior to 1992, the military served as a highly significant space where identities could be realised and romantic, sexual and social connections between women could be forged. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/witch-hunts-and-surveillance-the-hidden-lives-of-queer-people-in-the-military-76156">Witch-hunts and surveillance: the hidden lives of queer people in the military</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Covert love</h2>
<p>Historians such as <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/a-secret-history-of-sexuality-on-the-front-20121220-2bp9m.html">Yorick Smaal</a>, Ruth Ford, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/a-secret-history-of-sexuality-on-the-front-20121220-2bp9m.html">Graham Willett</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/laying-wreaths-for-australians-who-once-served-in-silence-40570">Noah Riseman</a> have found that the military attracted substantial numbers of gay and lesbian men and women many decades before the ban on their service was officially lifted.</p>
<p>I have interviewed more than 25 lesbian women who served in branches of the Australian military between the 1960s and the present as part of a <a href="http://www.lgbtimilitaryhistory.com.au">project examining LGBT Australians in the military</a>. Many of these women have told me of how they realised and acted on their sexuality while in the military. </p>
<p>Julie, who served in the Women’s Royal Australian Army Corps (WRAAC) in the 1960s, remembers first feeling attraction and then love for another woman in the military environment. She then went on to form relationships with other women who were also serving.</p>
<p>While her sexuality had to be concealed in certain environments, it was through her service that she was able to find and connect with other women who desired women and enjoyed a lesbian subculture. Ultimately though, once her sexuality was exposed to her superiors, she was forced out of the WRAAC within days.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/belles-in-battle-how-queer-us-soldiers-found-a-place-to-express-themselves-in-wwii-88019">Belles in battle: how queer US soldiers found a place to express themselves in WWII</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Upon leaving, despite the way she had been treated, Julie refused to accept the official military edict that her homosexuality was a medical “problem”. Instead, she carried with her the knowledge of who she was and that there were many other similar women in the wider world. </p>
<p>Yvonne, who served in the 1980s, also came to realise her sexuality while she served in the WRAAC. In an interview, she describes being 23 when she “fell in love with another female soldier and I thought, ‘oh we can’t tell anyone’”. </p>
<p>She told me how she felt at the time:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m in the military and I’m a gay lady in the military. Hm, we’re not allowed to be gay in the military. So constantly looking over your shoulder, making sure you weren’t doing anything that was going to get you booted out I supposed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Like Julie before her, Yvonne was also forced out of the military when her sexuality was exposed. </p>
<p>The life of secrecy that serving lesbians were compelled to live was not markedly different from the way many lesbians outside of the military also had to live. As historian Rebecca Jennings notes in her book, Unnamed Desires: A Sydney Lesbian History, many women risked losing jobs, homes, friends and families by publicly acknowledging their sexuality. </p>
<p>Jennings explains that the 1960s was a pivotal decade for lesbians in the civilian world. While private friendship networks remained the primary means by which lesbian women socialised with each other, a more public lesbian social scene was also emerging. </p>
<p>This scene included social groups, which also ran dances, along with a mixed bar scene. This emerging scene required some degree of connection with other lesbian and gay people. The military, while ostensibly an entirely heterosexual institution, allowed women who did not have these connections to forge bonds with other lesbians. </p>
<h2>Becoming visible</h2>
<p>One of the difficulties facing lesbian women in Australian society in preceding decades was the way mainstream culture rendered their desire invisible. For women who were not aware of homosexuality or those who did not have access to lesbian social networks, the lesbian subculture that existed in the services after the second world war provided opportunities to express their desire for other women, albeit covertly.</p>
<p>Military service also presented an opportunity for women to escape societal expectations around the behaviour and expectations, career choice and marriage, that were so dominant between the 1960s and 1980s.</p>
<p>During the 1970s and 1980s, as <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-books/history/Living-out-Loud-Graham-Willett-9781864489491">historians such as Graham Willett</a> have outlined, the LGBT political movement became more visible and reform began to be reflected in the lives of gay and lesbian civilians. The military still remained a popular career option for lesbian women, despite the ban on LGBT service personnel remaining and continuing to impact on the lives of lesbian servicewomen. </p>
<p>When the ban was finally lifted in 1992, Australia was an international leader. For those lesbian servicewomen who were still in the military at this time, the removal of the ban allowed them to live openly and reconcile their personal lives with their professional military lives. </p>
<p>In one interview, a woman I spoke to became emotional when she talked about being able to take her female partner to an official military function after the ban was lifted. She no longer had to negotiate the perils of official exposure. Finally, it was possible to show what she knew to be true - that love between women existed and sometimes even thrived within the military.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88943/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shirleene Robinson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>While lesbian women were technically banned from serving in the Australia Defence Force until 1992, many before then found that military life was a place to express their love and desire for the first time.Shirleene Robinson, Associate Professor and Vice Chancellor's Innovation Fellow, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/893062017-12-20T19:05:27Z2017-12-20T19:05:27ZElite companions, flute girls and child slaves: sex work in ancient Athens<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199640/original/file-20171218-27562-9ksj6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A painting depicting a debate between Socrates and Aspasia, by Nicolas André Monsiaux, circa 1800.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our sexual histories series, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<p>When the Athenian politician <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/pericles/">Pericles</a> delivered his famous Funeral Oration at the end of the first year of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Peloponnesian-War">Peloponnesian War</a> (431-404 BC), commemorating those who had fallen during the course of the year, a rumour emerged that his companion, <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/%7Egrout/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/hetairai/aspasia.html">Aspasia</a> was the real author. The claim was made by no other than Socrates, whose testimony was recorded by Plato. This assertion may not be that difficult to believe in view of Aspasia’s role in Athenian society.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199631/original/file-20171218-17878-18jy3ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199631/original/file-20171218-17878-18jy3ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199631/original/file-20171218-17878-18jy3ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199631/original/file-20171218-17878-18jy3ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199631/original/file-20171218-17878-18jy3ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199631/original/file-20171218-17878-18jy3ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199631/original/file-20171218-17878-18jy3ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199631/original/file-20171218-17878-18jy3ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bust of Aspasia, identified through an inscription. Marble, Roman copy after an Hellenistic original. From Torre della Chiarrucia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Aspasia (c. 460-400 BC) was a <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/%7Egrout/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/hetairai/hetairai.html">hetaira</a>, an elite companion or courtesan trained in the arts of pleasing wealthy, upper-class men. This training included acquiring musical skills, developing the art of conversation and, of course, being able to sexually satisfy clients. </p>
<p>While Aspasia may not have been a typical hetaira, but rather an exceptionally successful and fortunate one, there is ancient evidence to attest that this class of women was educated in literary arts, philosophy, and rhetoric. In this sense, they could converse with men in a way that traditional wives could not, owing to the limited access to formal education afforded Athenian girls and women of citizen families.</p>
<p>Yet Aspasia may not have born into the trade. From a wealthy family from Miletus (in modern-day Turkey), she seems to have acquired her extensive education through virtue of their prominence and her father’s decision to allow her tuition. The circumstances behind her arrival in Athens are debated, although as a resident alien, Aspasia had little options once there. She could not legally marry an Athenian citizen, nor could she seek legitimate work.</p>
<p>Other hetairai, like Neaira, were put into the trade as children and trained for a life of satisfying wealthy clients. There are comparatively extensive records for Neaira, who lived in Athens in the 4th century BC, owing to her involvement in a court case on charges of illegally marrying and passing off her daughter as a legitimate Athenian. Through the course of the proceedings, Neaira’s life was detailed, and it tells a very different tale to the comparatively glamorous accounts of Aspasia’s time with Pericles.</p>
<p>As a little girl, Neaira was sold to a woman by the name of Nicarete and trained as a sex worker in her brothel in Corinth (in southern Greece). Accounts of her life as a child reveal that she was working for Nicarete, along with six other girls purchased at the same time, before she had come of age (before puberty). As she matured, Neaira was sold, passed around, and finally found herself in court on charges of illegally marrying.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199636/original/file-20171218-27541-17q3ne0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199636/original/file-20171218-27541-17q3ne0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199636/original/file-20171218-27541-17q3ne0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199636/original/file-20171218-27541-17q3ne0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199636/original/file-20171218-27541-17q3ne0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199636/original/file-20171218-27541-17q3ne0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199636/original/file-20171218-27541-17q3ne0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199636/original/file-20171218-27541-17q3ne0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kylix with a hetaira holding a large cup playing kottabos (a drinking party game where men flicked the dregs of their wine at a target), circa 500 BC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Modifying girls to please men’s tastes</h2>
<p>The lives of other girls and women reveal the hardships they faced. In addition to hetairai, there were those who worked their whole lives (until they were of no further use) in brothels. The price of women varied according to their age and condition and the quality (or lack thereof) of the business. As the hetairai were trained in the skills required to please men, women in brothels were sometimes modified to suit certain male tastes.</p>
<p>In an extract preserved from a comic play from the 4th or 3rd century BC, the lengths to which a pimp would go to alter the appearance and behaviour of new girls is recorded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One girl happens to be small? Cork is stitched to the sole of her<br>
delicate shoes. One girl happens to be tall? She wears a flat slipper,<br>
and goes out drooping her head on her shoulders, thus<br>
taking away some of her height. One girl doesn’t have hips?<br>
She puts on a girdle with padded hips under her clothes so that<br>
men, on seeing her beautiful derriere, call out to her.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Comedies, which regularly dealt with what society deemed as the less salubrious aspects of life, have provided historians of sex with significant evidence of brothel life. The passage continues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One girl has red eyebrows? They paint them with lamp soot.<br>
One girl happens to be black? She anoints herself with white lead.<br>
One girl is too white-skinned? She smears on rouge.<br>
One part of her body is beautiful? She shows it naked.<br>
Her teeth are pretty? She must, of necessity, smile so that<br>
the men present may see what an elegant mouth she has.<br>
But if she does not enjoy smiling, she must spend the day<br>
indoors and, like something positioned by a butcher<br>
when selling goats’ heads,<br>
she must hold upright between her teeth a thin stick of myrtle;<br>
that way, in time she will show off her teeth whether she likes to or not.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In another comedy from the same era, the playwright describes the women on display in brothels. They are depicted as “sun-bathing” with their “breasts openly displayed” and “naked for action and lined up in rows.” As with the modification of the women described above, this passage also discusses the variety of women available:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>From them you may select one for your pleasure:<br>
thin, fat, round, tall, short,<br>
youthful, antique, middle-aged, or overly ripe …<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The passage also includes a statement that explains the popularity of paying for sex in ancient Greece; namely the safety-net it afforded men who could not even look at freeborn women for fear of reprisals.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199637/original/file-20171218-27595-1p6xbq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199637/original/file-20171218-27595-1p6xbq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199637/original/file-20171218-27595-1p6xbq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199637/original/file-20171218-27595-1p6xbq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199637/original/file-20171218-27595-1p6xbq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199637/original/file-20171218-27595-1p6xbq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199637/original/file-20171218-27595-1p6xbq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199637/original/file-20171218-27595-1p6xbq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Courtesan and her client. Tondo of a red-figure cup, circa. 510-500 BC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Did temple prostitutes exist?</h2>
<p>As a woman aged, the chances of being able to access a means living through sex work became decidedly more difficult. Turning to a comic play once more, there is a description of an aged hetaira called Lais and the difficulties and humiliations facing her, which is evoked by the lines: “it is easier to get an audience with her than it is to spit”. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.bible-history.com/links.php?cat=48&sub=4166&cat_name=People+-+Ancient+Greece&subcat_name=Lais+of+Corinth+">Lais</a> was an actual person who lived around the same time as Aspasia, and was reputed to have been a stunningly beautiful hetaira. Once courted by elite men, and described as having a haughty disposition, the aged Lais is depicted in this comedic passage as roaming the streets, taking on any client she could get, and having become “so tame … that she takes the money out of your hand.”</p>
<p>The existence of so-called “temple prostitution” in Greek, Italian and Near Eastern antiquity has been recorded by several ancient authors, including <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Strabo">Strabo</a> in his Geography, written in the first century BC, which details “temple slaves” in the precincts of <a href="https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net/goddesses/aphrodite/">Aphrodite</a> at Eryx (Sicily) and Corinth. Some sources, including Strabo, imply that the women were dedicated as votive offerings to the goddess, and that they serviced clients as a form of “<a href="https://www.historyonthenet.com/sacred-marriage-and-sacred-prostitution-in-ancient-mesopotamia/">sacred sex</a>.”</p>
<p>Nevertheless, some scholars now question the practice, offering several alternative explanations, including the possibility of brothels having been associated with such temples but not strictly related to them, and the confusion over accounts of women donating to temples of those goddesses under whose divine ordinance they practised their work.</p>
<p>In addition to hetairai, lower-grade sex workers who populated brothels from the slave and resident alien classes and possibly, temple slaves, there were also young men who serviced clients. Like their female equivalents, young men worked in the ergasterion (workshop) and the porneion (brothel) at the bottom end of the market, which were were dismal environments for the porne (harlot) and pornos (rent-boy) alike. </p>
<p>The word hetairos (male companion) is also attested in some sources but rarely in its reference to sexual activity. As with females, youthful men were the most desired, with a preference for those between the ages of 12 to 17. These young men also worked alongside the women often referred to as “flute girls” at the male gatherings called <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/symp/hd_symp.htm">symposia</a>. At these social events, young sex workers would entertain the guests, serve them food and wine, and if required, service them.</p>
<p>Outliving Pericles by almost 30 years, Aspasia was said to have become the companion of another politician, <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0104:entry=lysicles-bio-1">Lysicles</a>. She was a survivor and experienced an exceptionally long life as a hetaira. As such, she was a rarity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89306/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marguerite Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In Athenian society, it appears some elite courtesans were better educated than traditional wives. Other sex workers were sold into the role as children.Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/892392017-12-19T19:24:10Z2017-12-19T19:24:10ZFrom the 16th-century to men’s rights activists, why ‘cuckold’ is the worst thing you can call a man<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199618/original/file-20171218-17857-1c2wx0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">French engraving of a cuckolded husband</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.mariage.uvic.ca">University of Victoria</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>These days the <a href="http://www.bodyforwife.com/this-one-word-defines-how-mens-rights-activists-see-women/">greatest insult</a> a so-called men’s rights activist can hurl at another man is the word “cuck”, shortened from cuckold, the term for a man whose wife is cheating on him. The word has entered the mainstream, particularly after Donald Trump’s presidential victory saw an alt-right backlash against the achievements of feminism. </p>
<p>But the ideas and language are nothing new; in fact, it was during the Renaissance, from the 16th to the 18th centuries, that Europe had a cultural obsession with cuckoldry. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199617/original/file-20171218-17889-v5kbtt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199617/original/file-20171218-17889-v5kbtt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199617/original/file-20171218-17889-v5kbtt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199617/original/file-20171218-17889-v5kbtt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199617/original/file-20171218-17889-v5kbtt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199617/original/file-20171218-17889-v5kbtt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199617/original/file-20171218-17889-v5kbtt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199617/original/file-20171218-17889-v5kbtt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">French engraving about the ‘Confraternity of Cuckolds’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.mariage.uvic.ca">University of Victoria</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Back then, it was widely believed that women were more lustful than men, largely because they were subject to the whims of their “wandering womb”. The womb, it was believed, could move independently around a woman’s body, causing her to lose control. Thus, if a man were married, his wife was obviously cheating on him. </p>
<p>This infidelity would cause the poor husband to grow invisible horns, the ultimate symbol of cuckoldry, and the comic figure of the horned cuckold made its way into fictional songs, engravings, and theatre. It eventually became so ubiquitous as to give the impression of a “brotherhood of cuckoldry” wherein all wives were adulterous, and all husbands their hapless fools. </p>
<p>In Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, a play all about love, marriage, and deception, Benedick jokes about never getting married because it means instant cuckolding:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull’s horns and set them in my forehead, and let me be vilely painted, and in such great letters as they write ‘Here is good horse to hire,’ let them signify under my sign ‘Here you may see Benedick the married man’.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What’s with the horns?</h2>
<p>The animal symbolism connected with cuckoldry is complex. The basis of the word “cuckold” is found in the cuckoo, a bird which lays its eggs in other birds’ nests, forcing the unsuspecting bird to raise offspring which are not its own. The anxieties around paternal lineage due to a cheating wife are obvious in this naming. </p>
<p>Cuckoos, of course, don’t have horns. Countless explanations have been offered for the link between horns and cuckoldry, such as in the 18th-century German print “Hanrey Begrabnusen” (“Cuckolds’ Graveyard”), which suggests a whole panoply of horned animals as the bestial source. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199619/original/file-20171218-17842-1ahqcfb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199619/original/file-20171218-17842-1ahqcfb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199619/original/file-20171218-17842-1ahqcfb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199619/original/file-20171218-17842-1ahqcfb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199619/original/file-20171218-17842-1ahqcfb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199619/original/file-20171218-17842-1ahqcfb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199619/original/file-20171218-17842-1ahqcfb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199619/original/file-20171218-17842-1ahqcfb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘Cuckolds Graveyard’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Museum</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ox - a castrated bull - alludes to the impotence of the wronged husband; while the stag suggests that the cuckolded husband has relinquished his status as a virile sexual pursuer and has become instead his wife’s “prey”. </p>
<p>The theory that intrigues me, however, is the one of the capon (castrated cockerel). This refers to the formerly prevalent practice of cutting off the spurs from the legs of a castrated cock and engrafting them on the root of the excised comb, where they could grow and become horns, sometimes several inches long. </p>
<p>Capons, lacking in sexual hormones, grow fat due to their lack of activity and were prized (and still are) for their moist, tender meat. Their lack of aggression also meant that they could be kept with other hens and roosters. The practice of grafting a spur on their heads served to distinguish them from the other, fully-sexed birds. </p>
<p>This theory certainly fits with the traditional depiction of cuckolded husbands in the early modern period as older, impotent and often overweight men whose wives seek out younger, more virile and more attractive partners, as in many plays by the French writer Molière. </p>
<h2>Playing the fool</h2>
<p>The mockery of cuckolds also links these men to the character of the fool. In the following 16th-century German woodcut, called On Adultery, a woman places a fools’ cap (or Narrenkappe - literally, fool’s hood, giving rise to the term “hoodwink”) on her husband’s ears and rubs his head with a foxtail, another symbol of foolishness.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199620/original/file-20171218-17884-18wokc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199620/original/file-20171218-17884-18wokc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199620/original/file-20171218-17884-18wokc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199620/original/file-20171218-17884-18wokc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199620/original/file-20171218-17884-18wokc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199620/original/file-20171218-17884-18wokc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199620/original/file-20171218-17884-18wokc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199620/original/file-20171218-17884-18wokc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The German woodcut On Adultery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As well as plays and prints, ballads also mocked the cuckold as a hen-pecked husband who was overly submissive to his wife. This 17th-century ballad summoned all cuckolds to meet at Cuckolds-Point, an area on the Thames in East London, to repair the footpath that their wives would take with their lovers to Horn-Fair, a carnival-like parade that took place every October: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here is a Summons for all honest Men,<br>
belonging to the Hen-peck’d Frigate;<br>
And I will tell you the place where and when,<br>
both Gravel and Sand for to dig it;<br>
To mend the ways, ‘tis no idle Tale,<br>
remember your Foreheads adorning, <br>
At Cuckolds-Point you must meet without fail,<br>
by seven a Clock in the morning.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although this song seeks solidarity in the brotherhood of cuckoldry, others are less kind. The following French song gossips about a cuckold’s torture at the infidelity and sexual voracity of his wife. They can no longer go to a public place because of his inability to control her, and the shame is so great he eventually commits suicide whereupon she follows him to Hell:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is a man in our town <br>
who is jealous of his wife. <br>
He is not jealous without cause, <br>
but he is cuckolded by everybody.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The 16th-century musician Thomas Whythorne claimed that public knowledge of one’s cuckolded status doomed a man to social failure: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>for he that is known to be a notorious cuckold cannot be taken upon quests, and is barred of diverse functions and callings of estimation in the commonwealth as a man defamed, so that you may see what a goodly thing it is when a man’s honesty and credit doth depend and lie in his wife’s tail.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That reference to “his wife’s tail” as the (animalistic) thing that decides a man’s worth in his community makes it clear for how long men have valued women only in sexual terms. </p>
<p>And it also shows that men have been ridiculing each other in terms of sexual inadequacy for a very long time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Una McIlvenna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>‘Cuck’, short for cuckold, is the favoured insult of men’s rights activists today. But the term has a long history: from the 16th to 18th centuries it reflected a deep anxiety about women’s sexual appetites.Una McIlvenna, Hansen Lecturer in History, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/880192017-12-18T19:14:24Z2017-12-18T19:14:24ZBelles in battle: how queer US soldiers found a place to express themselves in WWII<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199586/original/file-20171218-29277-18ltoi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">War was not always about fighting, and in times of relaxation soldiers were able to indulge many other activities. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Queensland</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our sexual histories series, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<p>Armies make men. Routine, order and discipline bring out the greatest masculine characteristics. Uniforms transform young males just beginning their lives from nobody to somebody. Sacrifice, courage and loyalty among fighting men build nations. </p>
<p>Or so our histories tell us. </p>
<p>The forces also foster other personal and collective identities at odds with public displays of military macho. Usually considered unlikely soldiers, queer personnel have made a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes">valuable contribution to war</a> since antiquity. Their efforts are rarely acknowledged. </p>
<p>My research on queer lives and loves in the South Pacific reveals how US servicemen created vibrant and visible subcultures at home and abroad in World War II. Men confirmed identities they had already explored in civilian life or discovered exciting new possibilities. Models of sexuality in the 1940s were largely but not exclusively based on gender. Gay men embraced feminine self-presentation as a crucial part of their identity. Many “normal” or masculine men had sex with their effete comrades.</p>
<p>US commanders in the 1940s were worried about the effect that homosexuality and gender inversion had on morale and morality. These anxieties have been persistent. Most recently in the US the policy of “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_ask,_don%27t_tell">don’t ask, don’t tell</a>” haunted a generation of personnel for almost 20 years at the turn of the millennium. It was repealed in 2011.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump’s remarks in <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890196164313833472">2017 about trans personnel</a> are the latest missive in a long culture war over American sexual citizenship and the right to serve. </p>
<h2>Ring the alarm</h2>
<p>Women, non-white combatants and queer personnel are only ever bit actors in sweeping stories of great battles and national victories. They are confined to the margins of official war narratives and cast aside from popular memory. Their exclusion from service and its remembrance for much of the 20th century have left a dark underbelly of misogyny, racism and homophobia.</p>
<p>The female form and ethnicity were easy enough for commanders to identify and preclude. Homosexuality, on the other hand, was nebulous and shadowy, a behaviour and an identity type difficult to pinpoint with any accuracy but potentially devastating to the efficacy of all-male forces. It required special policy attention. The best preventatives allegedly involved hard training and exercise, regular leave and recreation. Serious cases faced court-martial and discharge. </p>
<p>Anxieties about homosexuality reached fever pitch in the second world war with the rising influence of psychology and its promise to make better armies. Australia, Canada and Great Britain all heeded “expert” warnings of the imminent dangers homosexuality posed, but the US rang the alarm louder than anyone else. From early 1943, for instance, “confirmed sodomists” fronted a Board of Officers to determine whether they should be discharged as “mentally unfit” for service.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199583/original/file-20171218-17884-s2dlmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199583/original/file-20171218-17884-s2dlmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199583/original/file-20171218-17884-s2dlmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199583/original/file-20171218-17884-s2dlmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199583/original/file-20171218-17884-s2dlmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199583/original/file-20171218-17884-s2dlmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199583/original/file-20171218-17884-s2dlmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199583/original/file-20171218-17884-s2dlmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">American soldiers aboard the U.S.S. Republic on the way to Brisbane, 1941.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://onesearch.slq.qld.gov.au/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?tabs=detailsTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=slq_digitool319429&indx=4&recIds=slq_digitool319429&recIdxs=3&elementId=3&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=&vl(D45500790UI0)=any&rfnGrpCounter=2&frbg=&mulIncFctN=facet_topic&dscnt=0&scp.scps=scope%3A%28BLOGS%29%2Cscope%3A%28SLQEC%29%2Cscope%3A%28FH_COMBINED%29%2Cscope%3A%28SAW%29%2Cscope%3A%28IC%29%2Cscope%3A%28SLQ%29%2Cscope%3A%28DT%29%2Cscope%3A%28QS%29%2Cprimo_central_multiple_fe&rfnIncGrp=1&vl(103760602UI1)=all_items&vl(1UIStartWith0)=contains&mode=Basic&fctV=images&vid=SLQ&rfnGrp=2&tab=default_tab&srt=rank&fctN=facet_rtype&dum=true&vl(freeText0)=american%20soldiers&fctIncV=World+War%2C+1939-1945&dstmp=1513554585835">State Library of Queensland</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Out in the open</h2>
<p>Occasionally historians strike it lucky in the archives and stumble upon quite extraordinary evidence which compels us to re-evaluate what we think we know about gay life in the forces. My discovery of an official investigation into a large effete subculture among American sailors in New Caledonia in 1943 is a case in point. The islands were home to some 40,000 US troops in the war making it the largest base in the South Pacific outside Australia. Scores of self-described “belles” (men who adopted feminine social roles) there created textured and colourful circles of friends and lovers. </p>
<p>Sailors went by queer personas like “Seabiscuit” and “Canteen Mary” and used feminine pronouns. When new folk arrived on base, they introduced to others by their female names: “Mary, this is Kate” and “Ella, this is Gertrude”. </p>
<p>Others “dished” gossip and certain personnel “carried on” in the company of their friends, an expression referring to practices of public mockery and flamboyant spectacle. They cruised for sex in parks and hotels and lemonade stands. Men fell in love. Others were heartbroken. Some sailors necked in public.</p>
<p>This indiscreet behaviour led to rumours. Scuttlebutt sparked the interest of naval commanders. It all came crashing down when one sailor’s diary fell into the wrong hands. The authorities pounced. Investigators interviewed sailors at length in a months-long operation. Many men were forced to resign. </p>
<h2>A different way of being gay</h2>
<p>Armies offered much more than male-only sex. Confidently queer personnel inducted comrades like James Lord, documented in his memoir <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7628143-my-queer-war">My Queer War</a>, into new ways of doing and being gay on the home front in Boston. Fellow writer and airman Edward Field summed it up nicely in his short memoir when he noted the American army had a “gay world built into it”, even if it was very different to the gay identities with which we are familiar today.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199584/original/file-20171218-17889-hi8wfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199584/original/file-20171218-17889-hi8wfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199584/original/file-20171218-17889-hi8wfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199584/original/file-20171218-17889-hi8wfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199584/original/file-20171218-17889-hi8wfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199584/original/file-20171218-17889-hi8wfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199584/original/file-20171218-17889-hi8wfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199584/original/file-20171218-17889-hi8wfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">My Queer War by James Lord, 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Goodreads</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many self-identifying gay men embraced woman-like identities and a receptive sex role. This feminine presentation is alien to contemporary queer cultures that valorise muscles and machismo. Field’s introduction to 1940s gay life occurred while he was stationed in Oklahoma City. Two uniformed soldiers at a downtown movie theatre “both whipped out powder puffs from their regulation shirt pockets and flamboyantly powdered their noses” much to his delight. </p>
<p>Field joined his camp comrades seeking out butch (masculine) soldiers for sex and companionship. As one American sailor stationed in New Caledonia explained to naval authorities in 1943 “it is more of the feminine trait to want something that is masculine … It is the thrill of having a [butch] man, and not another [effeminate] homosexual”. </p>
<p>Queer men and the worlds they created flourished in an institution lauded for its masculine credentials. Indeed, the war provided a massive boost to gendered identities as manly troops with no other form of release proved receptive to feminine behaviour patterns.</p>
<h2>Relaxed rules</h2>
<p>The war relaxed the rules around sex. Young men segregated together and facing possible death took their pleasure where they could find it. Millions of men freed from the conventional expectations of society suddenly found themselves far from home with only other young males for company. Sex was easily available for those who wanted it. </p>
<p>Ty Carpenter, an actor with the US Special Services, recalled just how free and easy loving could be in his memoir <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5387671-stars-without-garters">Stars without Garters!</a> He and his partner enjoyed an open relationship seizing the opportunities the war brought with it. On troop trains and ships, in dorms and at dances, on and off base, soldiers in and out of uniform away from wives and girlfriends were receptive to sexual advances by other men. Even the War Office acknowledged in 1943 that soldiers might be tempted by their comrades especially under the influence of alcohol or at morally lax postings overseas.</p>
<p>Queer lives like those of “Mary” and “Kate” are often subsumed within accounts that emphasise furtive, transient and situational encounters between men in war. But accounts like those from New Caledonia suggest that war allowed men to express their sexuality and gender much more freely.</p>
<p>For those queer soldiers coming of age in the 1940s, an abundance of masculine men allowed them to embrace feminine lives and inclinations on a scale not always possible in the civilian world. The armies that made men equally emboldened womanlike comrades.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88019/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yorick Smaal receives funding from the Australian Research Council for his current project on boys, sex and crime.
Some research on queer identities and the Second World War was conducted with Graham Willett and funded in part by the Australian Army History Unit and the Palm Center at the University of California.
</span></em></p>Our histories tell us armies make men, but in World War II, conflicted provided a rare and surprisingly open space for men to experiment with their femininity and sexuality.Yorick Smaal, ARC DECRA Research Fellow and Historian, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/878522017-12-17T19:22:28Z2017-12-17T19:22:28ZFrom reproducers to ‘flutters’ to ‘sluts’: tracing attitudes to women’s pleasure in Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196585/original/file-20171127-2038-157mb6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Titian's 1583 painting Venus of Urbino: historically, pleasure was not the only, or even the main, expectation from sex for women.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our sexual histories series, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<p>In our contemporary world, the idea that sex is pleasurable is rarely questioned: pleasure is a key way of understanding what sex is and what it means. Yet this was not always so. Historically, pleasure was not the only, or even the main, expectation from sex for women, and there were significant changes across the 20th century.</p>
<p>When Australia federated in 1901, women were imagined largely as reproducers, rather than lovers. As the prominent Melbourne gynaecologist <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/balls-headley-walter-2926">Walter Balls-Headley</a> had professed a few years earlier, “the raison d’etre of women’s form” was “the propagation of the race, the production of the ensuing generation”.</p>
<p>Sexual reproduction and pleasure were split. When sex was discussed in the public world, it was rendered meaningful through concepts of family, reproduction and population. Sex was procreation with an emphasis on order, morality and virtue.</p>
<p>That individual women could feel pleasure should have been self-evident. But the procreative model remained powerful, even dominant, because it was tied neatly to the way gendered bodies were culturally, politically and scientifically constructed. White women were encouraged to breed for the good of the new white nation.</p>
<p>Pleasure – if it occurred at all – was to stem from either the reproductive or maternal aspect of a woman’s sexuality, or at the most from her feelings for an individual man. So too, female same-sex desire remained hidden, and lesbians were unnamed.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Egon Schiele’s 1913 painting Friendship.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimeda Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women who felt too much pleasure were suspect, perhaps unnatural. This was a particular risk in the hot climates of Australia: women were believed to reach puberty earlier and more violently, rendering them more open to pathology, even nymphomania.</p>
<p>There were practical reasons, too, why a woman may not have felt pleasure, or attempted to curb her desire. Heterosexual women were constrained by the ever-present fear of pregnancy, a powerful inhibitor against women’s erotic thought. </p>
<p>Ex-nuptial pregnancies and hurried marriage show that many young women did have sex before marriage, yet the palpable shame, fear and scandal of an unplanned pregnancy almost certainly impacted on their enjoyment of sex. For married women, too, the fear of yet another pregnancy – yet another child – meant many avoided sex as much as possible, whatever their desire.</p>
<p>None of this means, of course, that individual women did not enjoy sex, or seek it out for recreation or release, or find comfort in love and sex with men or women.</p>
<h2>Hints of sexual feeling</h2>
<p>The historical record has left us only the vaguest hints of early 20th century women’s sexual feeling. The poet <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cross-zora-bernice-may-5828">Zora Cross</a>, for instance, gave voice to a passionate, libidinal woman: here, we find an erotic subject. At the most, she even hinted to orgasm:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was a little breathing thing,<br>
Half-clay, half-cloud,<br>
Fluttering a feeble wing.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zora Cross.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hers was an active sexuality, a woman who sought and found pleasure. But this record was unusual, and most women left no trace of their sexual feelings, fears, desires, or thoughts on sex or reproduction.</p>
<p>By the 1920s, ideas from the British birth controller <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Stopes">Marie Stopes</a> were well established in Australia, including her promotion of the “companionate marriage”. Increasingly, convention allowed for female pleasure and desire, but only within the bounds of legitimate heterosexual marriage. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marie Stopes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Before marriage, girls were expected to have no natural, physical sexual feelings (boys, in contrast, were expected to feel desire). But after marriage, as Stopes established, it was expected that a women would not only endure her conjugal duties, but enjoy them. To do so was seen as central to a happy married life.</p>
<p>The second world war momentarily disrupted conventional ideas of marriage and family in Australia. For a brief time, young girls and women sought pleasure before marriage, often with the <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/homefront/us_forces">American soldiers</a> who visited Australian shores. There was dancing and romancing, and sometimes sexual encounters. Pleasure took on new forms, and while young women did not always have sex, they flirted, socialised and drank with men in ways unknown to previous generations. </p>
<p>Such fun was, however, short-lived. By the 1950s – perhaps as a response to the freedom of the war years – pleasure was once again relegated to marriage.
<a href="http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/changing-face-of-modern-australia-1950s-to-1970s">The 1950s</a> was a notoriously conservative decade in Australia. Gendered attitudes to women and sexuality remained strong. Before marriage, society demanded girls remained pure and virginal. Married women, on the other hand, were expected to enjoy marital sex after their wedding night.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Family group Everton Park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Queensland State Archives</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Any wife who did not experience pleasure - and the elusive mutual orgasm from penetrative sex - was seen as a problem: a frigid woman whose lack of sexual response threatened her marriage and the wider social order.</p>
<h2>The pill and popular culture</h2>
<p>Attitudes towards heterosexual pleasure shifted considerably after the introduction of the <a href="http://www.nma.gov.au/online_features/defining_moments/featured/the_pill">contraceptive pill</a>, which reached Australia in 1961. The pill took some time to be widely available, and especially to trickle down to the young and the unmarried. Nonetheless, it went some way to reshaping the sexual landscape, in a time of broader social and sexual revolutions. <a href="http://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0139b.htm">Women’s liberation</a>, <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/topics/sexuality/agenda/article/2016/08/12/definitive-timeline-lgbt-rights-australia">gay and lesbian liberation</a>, and the increasing libertarianism opened up many possibilities for pleasure for young women.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Model of a contraceptive pill, 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ready availability of the pill meant women were increasingly expected to be sexually available to men. Yet at the same time, the pill opened up opportunities for sexual pleasure. Without the fear of pregnancy, and with social taboos about sex and marriage changing, many women were relatively free to experiment sexually and follow their desires in a range of relationships beyond the bonds of matrimony. Pleasure, perhaps more than ever, was intimately tied to sexual experience.</p>
<p>As this brief romp across the 20th century has shown, ideas of female pleasure are complicated, and often relate more to social and cultural conditions than to experiences of the body itself. We might think of women’s pleasure as static, but it was and is shaped by society and culture. </p>
<p>Today, almost 50 years after the sexual revolutions of the 1970s, young women’s sexual behaviour (and sexual pleasure) is still scrutinised, moderated and open for discussion - in the school ground and on social media.</p>
<p>Young women are subject to multiple and conflicting views on female pleasure: on one hand, popular cultures urges young women to be sexually attractive, willing, and open to experimentation. But on the other hand, they can still readily be constructed as “sluts” and, at worst, vulnerable to rape cultures. </p>
<p>Female pleasure remains at the forefront of the public imagination of teenage girls, but at the same time, young women’s own feelings and desires are all too often stifled. Concepts of women’s sexuality remain mediated by a broader culture that continues to be uncomfortable or troubled by female desire and sexual pleasure.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87852/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Featherstone receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC DP150101798). </span></em></p>Australian women were once largely seen as reproducers, rather than lovers: sexual pleasure was suspect. Attitudes have changed, yet our culture is still troubled by female desire.Lisa Featherstone, Senior Lecturer in Australian History and the History of Sexuality, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/883972017-12-14T19:15:52Z2017-12-14T19:15:52ZFriday essay: the myth of the ancient Greek ‘gay utopia’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199131/original/file-20171214-27588-k1plth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Fall of the Titans, Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, circa 1590</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cornelis_Cornelisz._van_Haarlem_-_The_Fall_of_the_Titans_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our sexual histories series, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<p>In recent years, we have seen significant advances won for LGBT rights through hard-fought legal cases and well-targeted political campaigns. Yet it is worth remembering that for decades, recourse to such methods was not available to LGBT people. The law-court and the parliament were deaf to their pleas. For many, it was only in their dreams that they could escape oppression.</p>
<p>One should not underplay the importance of such fantasies. They provided succour and hope in a grim world. It was comforting to imagine a time before Christianity told you that the acts of love that you committed were a sin or the law pronounced that your public displays of affection were acts of “gross indecency”. The persistent dream of a “gay utopia” is one of the constants in gay and lesbian historical imaginings over the last 200 years.</p>
<p>One place in particular attracted the longings of gays and lesbians. This was the world of ancient Greece, a supposed gay paradise in which same-sex love flourished without discrimination. It was a powerful, captivating dream, one which scholars of ancient Greece have started to pull apart, revealing a culture in which homosexuality was much more regulated and controlled than previously thought.</p>
<p>Oscar Wilde tapped into this longing for a time and place free from moral censure in his famous “Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name” speech. The occasion of the speech was his criminal trial in April 1895 when Wilde was asked to explain the meaning of the seemingly incriminating phrase “the love that dare not speak its name”, a phrase which was found in the poetry of his companion, Alfred Douglas. Was this a coded reference to indecent passions, asked the prosecutor. Wilde’s response has become a classic of homosexual apologia:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The love that dare not speak its name” in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect … It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so the world does not understand. The world mocks it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198738/original/file-20171212-9426-1hzikcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198738/original/file-20171212-9426-1hzikcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198738/original/file-20171212-9426-1hzikcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198738/original/file-20171212-9426-1hzikcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198738/original/file-20171212-9426-1hzikcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198738/original/file-20171212-9426-1hzikcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1255&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198738/original/file-20171212-9426-1hzikcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198738/original/file-20171212-9426-1hzikcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1255&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oscar Wilde in 1882.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde#/media/File:Oscar_Wilde_Sarony.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this spirited defense of same-sex love, Wilde created a genealogy of historical moments in which homosexual love had blossomed. He rewrote straight history and offered a different version of the past in which his own 19th-century passion joined a continuous tradition that stretched back to the very foundation of European civilization. </p>
<p>He sought to recover a love that time and prudish censors had tried to erase. From the days of the Old Testament through to the flourishing of culture in Greece and the Renaissance, Wilde sought to bear witness to a gay past of free romantic expression. </p>
<h2>All roads lead to Greece</h2>
<p>According to contemporary newspaper accounts, Wilde’s speech was greeted with loud and spontaneous applause from the courtroom’s gallery. Yet for all its brave defiance and elegant phrasing, there is little in it that is truly original. The rhetoric Wilde advanced had been in circulation for decades. Any educated homosexual in the 19th century could have given you a speech along much the same lines, citing the same canonical figures and possibly a few more. Wilde was tapping into a shared gay fantasy about the past, a fantasy in which one culture stood out above all others, the world of Classical Greece.</p>
<p>It is hard to overstate the affection with which 19th-century homosexuals like Wilde viewed the Greek world. Here was the utopia that they dreamed about – a place in which homosexuality was not only accepted, but celebrated. The legacy of this tradition was so potent that many felt even when visiting modern Greece that it was still possible to feel the traces of this passion.</p>
<p>In the warmth and light of the Mediterranean, numerous 19th- and early 20th-century gays and lesbians sought to fleetingly recapture visions of this lost paradise and recreate it amongst its ruins. Photographers such as Wilhelm von Gloeden and his cousin, Guglielmo Plüschow, working in Sicily staged local youths with props and poses that were designed to evoke this lost world. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199124/original/file-20171213-27568-1bddu3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199124/original/file-20171213-27568-1bddu3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199124/original/file-20171213-27568-1bddu3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199124/original/file-20171213-27568-1bddu3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199124/original/file-20171213-27568-1bddu3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199124/original/file-20171213-27568-1bddu3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199124/original/file-20171213-27568-1bddu3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199124/original/file-20171213-27568-1bddu3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hypnos, Wilhelm von Gloeden, circa 1900.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gloeden,_Wilhelm_von_(1856-1931)_-_n._1744_-_Hypnos.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Looking at these images today, it is hard not to be struck by their sense of desperate, wilful escapism and rejection of the contemporary world and all that it offered, even as they used the latest photographic techniques in creating these tableaux. Quite what their Italian models thought of these odd Germans and their desire to dress them up in wreaths, togas, and splay their bodies on leopard skin rugs remains a mystery. </p>
<p>In a similar vein, numerous lesbians travelled to the Greek island of Lesbos. For many this was an act of pilgrimage arising from a desire to visit the home of Sappho, the archaic poet whose passionate, lyrical evocations of female same-sex desire became so famous in antiquity and beyond that women who were sexually attracted to other women came to be named after her island home - a nomenclature that not even a legal action by outraged inhabitants of the island <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/2445282/Lesbos-islanders-lose-lesbian-ban-court-case.html">can stop</a>.</p>
<p>The Anglo-French poet Renée Vivien and her lover the American heiress Natalie Barney tried to set up an artist’s colony on Lesbos in 1904. It was ultimately unsuccessful. Vivien then retreated to Paris where she held wild salons instead, complete with replica Greek temples and recitations of Sappho’s poetry. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198745/original/file-20171212-9426-z35txa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198745/original/file-20171212-9426-z35txa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198745/original/file-20171212-9426-z35txa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198745/original/file-20171212-9426-z35txa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198745/original/file-20171212-9426-z35txa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198745/original/file-20171212-9426-z35txa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198745/original/file-20171212-9426-z35txa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198745/original/file-20171212-9426-z35txa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Renee Vivien in 1895.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ren%C3%A9e_Vivien_1.png">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This legacy continued well into the 20th century, so much so that the homosexuality of the Greeks probably counts as one of Western culture’s worst kept secrets. Every time that the legal rights of gays and lesbians have been discussed, <a href="https://eidolon.pub/law-v-history-2ccfc296ca80">somebody will evoke the Greeks</a>. </p>
<p>Indeed, the association between Greece and homosexuality is so strong that even anti-same-sex marriage advocates are not above using it to support their arguments. In the US Supreme Court case that legalised same-sex marriage, one of the dissenting judges, Justice Samuel Alito noted that while the Greeks and Romans approved of homosexual relations, they never created an <a href="https://theconversation.com/plato-justice-alito-and-the-institution-of-marriage-42003">institution of same-sex marriage</a>. In his opinion, the only conclusion to draw was that the Ancients must have regarded same-sex marriage as an institution that would cause harm to society. </p>
<p>We have seen the same argument used against same-sex marriage in Australia. Both <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-hermit/ancient-greeks-highlight-gay-marriage-flaws-20150630-gi21sk.html">former senator Bill O’Chee</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-21/dickson-the-same-sex-marriage-post-facebook-deleted/7344990">Dr John Dickson</a>, the founding director of the Centre for Public Christianity have run similar arguments about the absence of same-sex marriage amongst the Greeks.</p>
<h2>Not such a paradise after all</h2>
<p>It goes without saying that the arguments offered by Justice Alito and his followers are deeply flawed. There are numerous institutions which the Greeks and Roman would have resisted (the right of women to vote, for example) that even the most arch conservative must accept are a good idea. Nevertheless, these arguments do point to some of the dangers of relying on an overly romantic view of the Greeks and their attitudes to same-sex love. </p>
<p>The Greek attitude to same-sex attraction was not nearly as permissive or free as many have assumed. Any idealised view of the Greeks falls apart the moment one remembers – and yet how easy it seems to be to forget – that ancient Greece was a society where slave-ownership was prevalent and that slaves were regularly sexually exploited by their masters. Yes, the Greeks tolerated same-sex attraction, but they also tolerated the violent sexual abuse of men and women in a manner that nobody could countenance today. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198912/original/file-20171213-31679-b1xe5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198912/original/file-20171213-31679-b1xe5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198912/original/file-20171213-31679-b1xe5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198912/original/file-20171213-31679-b1xe5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198912/original/file-20171213-31679-b1xe5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198912/original/file-20171213-31679-b1xe5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198912/original/file-20171213-31679-b1xe5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198912/original/file-20171213-31679-b1xe5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sappho, Charles Mengin, 1877.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1877_Charles_Mengin_-_Sappho.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even amongst free-born men, Greek same-sex courtship was highly regulated. Older men pursued younger boys, and it is hard not to see an inherent power imbalance in such relationships, even if the older man is completely smitten. There were elaborate protocols regulating the process of seduction. There were rules about the kinds of wooing gifts that could be used. Dried fish and fighting cocks were the ancient homosexual equivalent of flowers and chocolates.</p>
<p>Boys should not appear too eager. For the suitors there was a fine line to walk between looking keen and looking like a besotted fool. Violating these rules lead to social death: slut-shaming seems to be a universal human tendency. We have numerous accounts of same-sex affairs that go badly resulting in murder and suicide. In one case, a disappointed lover hanged himself at the door of the boy who rejected him. In another case, one man tried to murder another over the affections of a slave boy.</p>
<p>We know very little about the lives of same-sex attracted women in Greece. Our best evidence remains the fragments of poems of Sappho that have come down to us. Yet even here, the picture is not entirely rosy. Sappho’s poems are often tinged with melancholy over love rejected or made impossible through forced marriage.</p>
<h2>Love among the gods</h2>
<p>Myths relating to homosexual love also rarely end well. One of the foundational myths for the establishment of same-sex love in Greece concerns the legendary figure of Orpheus. This musician is best known for descending into the underworld in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to retrieve his wife Eurydice from the clutches of death. </p>
<p>What is less well-known is that following this attempt, he gave up entirely on women and instead turned his attention to young men. Indeed, he was so successful in proselytising for homosexuality that he upset the local female followers of Dionysus, the god of wine and drama. Outraged at Orpheus’ rejection of women they tore apart the musician and dismembered his body, throwing his head into the nearby Hebrus river where even in death it miraculously continued to sing.</p>
<p>Passion, jealousy and death are repeated motifs in Greek homosexual myths. The god Apollo’s beloved Hyacinth was killed when a jealous lover, the wind-god Zephyrus, diverted a discus into the skull of the young man. Out of the blood that was spilt grew the first hyacinth. It is a tragic, moving story that deserves to be better known. Oscar Wilde popularised the green carnation as a symbol of homosexuality visibility. It is high time to do the same for the hyacinth and rescue the bulb from its dowdy fusty retirement-home image and make it fabulous again.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198746/original/file-20171212-9392-13hou57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198746/original/file-20171212-9392-13hou57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198746/original/file-20171212-9392-13hou57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198746/original/file-20171212-9392-13hou57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198746/original/file-20171212-9392-13hou57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198746/original/file-20171212-9392-13hou57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198746/original/file-20171212-9392-13hou57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198746/original/file-20171212-9392-13hou57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The death of Hyacinth, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, circa 1723.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_muerte_de_Jacinto_by_Giambattista_Tiepolo.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even being the strongest man in the world can’t ensure the safety of your loved ones. Hercules lost his boyfriend Hylas to some conniving nymphs who drowned the boy in a pool. The hero was so distraught at the loss of his lover that he abandoned the quest for the Golden Fleece. Hercules’ other male lovers didn’t fare much better. Sostratus died young. Abderus was consumed by man-eating horses.</p>
<h2>Love and strife</h2>
<p>These myths point to an ambivalence that runs through Greek society about same-sex attraction. Male same-sex relationships attracted particular care and supervision in the Greek world because the freedoms that men, unlike women, enjoyed meant that there was always greater potential for things to go wrong. If left to get out of control, passions could have tragic consequences. It is little wonder that thinkers like Plato turn out to have an ambiguous relationship towards same-sex relationships. </p>
<p>Sometimes Plato seems to regard same-sex couples as the very pinnacle of the ideal relationship. In Plato’s Symposium, one of the speakers, Aristophanes, sketches out a vision of same-sex love which closely approximates modern notions of companionate relationships, a place where equals meet and their love completes each other. It is a beautiful vision, but one that seems to be more of a thought-experiment than a reflection of lived reality in ancient Athens. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199127/original/file-20171213-27580-ldkc1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199127/original/file-20171213-27580-ldkc1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199127/original/file-20171213-27580-ldkc1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199127/original/file-20171213-27580-ldkc1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199127/original/file-20171213-27580-ldkc1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199127/original/file-20171213-27580-ldkc1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199127/original/file-20171213-27580-ldkc1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199127/original/file-20171213-27580-ldkc1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Out of Hyacinth’s spilled blood grew the first hyacinth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At other points, such as in his Laws, Plato is dismissive of same-sex relations, regarding them as unnatural and not fit for proper society. </p>
<p>The picture of same-sex relations that we get from Greece is a complicated one. Nevertheless, all the efforts undertaken by the Greeks to regulate these relationships does challenge us to consider why societies are so frightened by love, not only gay, but straight desire also. What is it about this emotion that causes a culture to attempt to reign it in through complicated systems of courtship or invent a series of myths to scare you about committing yourself too completely to someone? </p>
<p>Studying attitudes to same-sex love amongst the ancient Greeks is a salutary reminder that there is a difference between history and nostalgia, and it is dangerous to confuse them. No longer looking at the Greeks through the rose-coloured lens of escapist wish-fulfillment reveals a culture that is complex and diverse in its attitudes and behaviours. The Greeks become a little more disappointing, but also more real. There are lessons to be learnt, but they do not come from imitation. A gay utopia may be possible, but it is a project for the future, not a lost relic of the past.</p>
<p><em>Monday: From reproducers to ‘flutters’ to ‘sluts’: tracing attitudes to women’s pleasure in Australia</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88397/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alastair Blanshard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The dream of a “gay utopia” is a constant in gay and lesbian historical imaginings over the last 200 years. But the Greek attitude to same-sex attraction was not nearly as permissive as many have assumed.Alastair Blanshard, Paul Eliadis Chair of Classics and Ancient History Deputy Head of School, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/873282017-12-13T19:07:24Z2017-12-13T19:07:24ZBetween innocence and experience: the sexualisation of girlhood in 19th century postcards<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194246/original/file-20171112-29374-1c71nia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">French postcard of Lili (before 1904), 'playing around'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our sexual histories series, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<p>We often hear that we are living in a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3347564/The-generation-of-damaged-girls.html">corrupting, visually saturated, consumer culture</a>, which threatens the innocence of girlhood. But representations of young girls in the European postcard trade at the turn of the 20th century cast doubt on this notion of an ideal, more innocent past.</p>
<p>From the mid-1890s until the first world war, Europeans had a love affair with collecting postcards. Created in 1874, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union">Universal Postal Union</a> established standardised postal regulations at accessible rates for its member nations; this greatly contributed to the postcard craze. In bigger cities, cards needed just a few hours to arrive at their destinations. The world was at one’s fingertips.</p>
<p>Rival publishers vied for attention with collectors’ competitions, impressive exhibitions, and artistic innovations. It did not take long for alluring postcards to flourish in the light-hearted social context of the time. European publishers showed great ingenuity in avoiding local censorship. They played with the boundaries of what was socially and legally acceptable. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194245/original/file-20171112-29364-1v5gd6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194245/original/file-20171112-29364-1v5gd6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194245/original/file-20171112-29364-1v5gd6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194245/original/file-20171112-29364-1v5gd6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194245/original/file-20171112-29364-1v5gd6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194245/original/file-20171112-29364-1v5gd6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194245/original/file-20171112-29364-1v5gd6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194245/original/file-20171112-29364-1v5gd6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Postcard (c. 1900), published in Italy by C.R.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet the trend of erotic postcards did not just bring cheeky smiles and cheerful eroticism. A quick look at one Italian postcard (c. 1900) highlights more disturbing aspects. Elevated on a pedestal, a pre-pubescent model is the privileged object of our gaze. Side lightings magnify her blond mane, and sculpt her flawless skin. A neutral backdrop focuses the attention on her statuesque body. This little goddess is a work of art. </p>
<p>Let us study the precise nature of this ideal.</p>
<p>Three eggs hide the sitter’s bosom. They allude to the symbol of fertility, while playing with the visual resemblance between the shape of breasts and eggs. A deftly positioned piece of cloth emphasises her hips thereby defining an inviting triangle. This veil of modesty also denotes the art of teasing in a game of hide and seek. </p>
<p>The artist tainted the model’s lips with a vivid red, a similar hue to the plinth’s velvet. The colour conveys a brazen sexuality immediately contradicted by the candour of the model. What strikes one’s attention is precisely the discrepancy between these sexual innuendos and the sitter’s youthful naivety. She proudly smiles, unaware of the paedophilic gaze she may entice in the adult viewer. The end result is deeply unsettling and exploitative. </p>
<p>In another unattributed French postcard (before 1904), we follow the adventures of Lili who is described as “playing around”. The caption informs us that she has a springtime smile, and that she is ready to wear her bedside wreath. Her white apparel and the laced clothing convey the idea of virginal innocence and freshness.</p>
<p>Still, her inviting pose, coquettish manners, and bare shoulder leave the viewer perplexed. There is an uneasy tension between the artificiality of the setting and the model’s impression of spontaneous cheerfulness. It is difficult not to read in this staged vignette an eroticised performance for adults at the expense of the young model.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194246/original/file-20171112-29374-1c71nia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194246/original/file-20171112-29374-1c71nia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194246/original/file-20171112-29374-1c71nia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194246/original/file-20171112-29374-1c71nia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194246/original/file-20171112-29374-1c71nia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194246/original/file-20171112-29374-1c71nia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194246/original/file-20171112-29374-1c71nia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194246/original/file-20171112-29374-1c71nia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The full postcard of Lili ‘playing around’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The ‘erotic virgin’</h2>
<p>In both postcards, the sitters epitomise the photographers’ quest for both pristine morality and brazen sexuality. The ambivalent girl exemplifies what scholar Hanne Blank names, the “erotic virgin”. </p>
<p>In her book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/225909.Virgin">Virgin: The Untouched History</a>, Blank highlights a recurrent theme in pornographic tropes: “the tale of the skilled ‘conversion’ of resistant virgin into willing wench”. In these coded scripts, virgins hold a dormant sexuality ready to be activated by “the magic of the ‘right’ male wand”. </p>
<p>Blank links the modern fetishising of virginity to the rise of capitalism during the industrial revolution. Young girls left rural areas with the hope of finding better prospects in the city. Economically and socially vulnerable, they were easy prey for unscrupulous employers and brothel owners. The temptation of a pristine body was even greater as venereal diseases were rampant. </p>
<p>The burgeoning mass media culture played a pivotal role in establishing the virgin as an object of sexual lust. As the possibilities of reaching a wider audience increased, so did the virgin’s lucrative potential. By drawing on the dual characterisation of female sexuality as virtuous and vicious, the industry capitalised on fantasies of both innocence and experience.</p>
<p>This new eroticised visual culture drew the attention of legislators, philanthropic organisations, and religious groups. Concerns of child protection reformers ranged from the growing recognition of the child as a vulnerable being in need of protection to a more general fear of moral corruption. </p>
<p>Still, photographs of coquettes were risqué yet charming. Under the celebration of a candid femininity, they catered for both male and female audiences. More than a marginal phenomenon, the sexualisation of girlhood in the social fabric denotes a collective fascination with the young body as a modern ideal of femininity. </p>
<h2>A socially ingrained phenomenon</h2>
<p>The first world war sounded the death knell of the postcards age. During the conflict, <a href="https://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/patriotism-and-nationalism">propaganda postcards</a> had helped feed the nationalistic fervour but overall, demand for postcards plunged. The attraction of youthful femininity though, did not wane. Another medium offered more exciting prospects and creative potential than serialized postcards: the cinema. </p>
<p>Tendentious 19th century postcards, Brooke Shields’s auctioned virginity in Louis Malle’s movie Pretty Baby (1978), and virginity pornography pervasive on the internet, all create the same sexual scenario. Their protagonist has been a little Eve who tempts Adam in the Garden of Eden.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/X11Zlw1NcVo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Though technology evolves constantly, the sexualisation of girlhood is a socially ingrained phenomenon and the commodification of the female being as virgin and whore remains unchanged. </p>
<p><em>Tomorrow: Alastair Blanshard on the myth of the ancient Greek ‘gay utopia’.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elodie Silberstein receives funding from Monash University for a Graduate Research Scholarship.
She is a member of the Darebin Women’s Advisory Committee (DWAC) which provides guidance to the City of Darebin on gender policies.</span></em></p>Eroticised postcards featuring young girls in playful poses were collectables at the turn of the 20th century. These images challenge the notion that childhood was once more innocent than it is today.Elodie Silberstein, PhD candidate in Film, Media and Communications, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/888532017-12-12T19:11:55Z2017-12-12T19:11:55ZThe grim reality of the brothels of Pompeii<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198241/original/file-20171208-11315-1xc8pzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brothels in Pompeii were decorated with murals depicting erotic and exotic scenes: but the reality was far more brutal and mundane.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Pompeii_Brothel_%285949526900%29.jpg/1024px-Pompeii_Brothel_%285949526900%29.jpg">Thomas Shahan/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our series on sexual histories, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<p>Like the anxious men who began excavations at Pompeii in the 18th century and discovered more about the ancient Italians than they had bargained for – such as <a href="https://lavishlife.net/tag/naples/">phallic-shaped lamps</a> – historians of sex are regularly confronted with case studies from the past that challenge their own ethics. Those who worked the streets of Pompeii and served clients in the brothels lived hard lives, yet many of the murals that survive depict the women as erotic and exotic.</p>
<p>Murals from brothels and buildings that served as brothels (such as inns, lunch counters, and taverns) show fair-skinned women, naked (except for the occasional breast band), with stylised hair, in a variety of sexual positions with young, tanned, athletic men. The figures sport on beds that are sometimes ornate and festooned with decorative quilts.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198255/original/file-20171208-11291-q92f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mural from a Pompeii brothel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nikonvscanon/5770535405/in/photolist-9MVv8K-oDZjeq-8QVyhd-864MGy-gjbeyi-oX9Wgb-fkZkug-cDFrrd-peBqrL-pemN8v-peAEXb-c2DCaY-9REt5B-peCAJa-cDFfqJ-peCMGc-peCKWt-cDFmQG-peCyEa-fPWHXT-4wyyyq-pen1BP-7eNE58-oX9p2Y-cDFcey-pYk7J2-cDFjzm-oX8M7o-cDFo3f-oXajxV-oX8km4-peCxon-qdugjo-shwyB-peDqnM-peCDd8-cDFpcU-penkZB-oXa8Eo-9TWM28-Aedm67-wrNLB-g8t6k7-oX9yVf-dN7jG-pemSHH-qdgvy7-pPbaAt-wrMMS-cDFgpU">David Blaikie/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In buildings identified as brothels, the murals may have been intended to arouse clients. They may also have functioned as pictorial menus or even served as instruction manuals for more inexperienced customers. In buildings identified as private residences, the scenes were most likely decorative but also designed, perhaps, for titillation.</p>
<p>Contrary to the idealised images, the brothels themselves provide evidence that the women worked in cells, usually only big enough for a narrow bed. The absence of windows in most attests to the darkness of the cells, as well as limited air flow.</p>
<p>Excavations also suggest that the cells were usually without doors, which implies that the rooms may have been curtained. They have also revealed stone beds. Wooden beds as well as pallets were likely also used, but would have perished in the eruption of <a href="http://geology.com/volcanoes/vesuvius/">Mount Vesuvius</a> in AD 79.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198249/original/file-20171208-11299-h176bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An excavated brothel room in Pompeii.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chriswsn/10630275313/in/photolist-hcmWuR-7cJL9w-m4Fdgk-7eLSWn-7cJL1A-oX8RLT-7HAMkz-hcmXbk-3X9v9B-7cERPr-AuETEY-pcAGJy-oX9D1t-6ZqCX3-oXa7XF-4Z7bPX-BkoDs-3XdHh1-7cJKAU-a4JT51-Bkopd-7jdVh9-pcAGZU-c2DCD5-8QSvCT-dGvrS-92pkM1-a4G334-3X9seV-4Z7krg-cDFyGS-4ZbANf-92xqjE-cDFqj9-hscx4b-92phFY-oX9dg1-uPgsZ-861ACe-pemG5i-uPgsC-uPgsy-pcBCYq-53qrv9-3XThCZ-3XTeaV-pcB3mu-6ZmBTn-hscAab-9B9CXm">Chris Williamson</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The conditions in which the women worked were of no concern to brothel owners, clients or anyone else for that matter, as most sex workers in ancient Italy were slaves. As the ancient attitude towards slaves was one of indifference at best, and violent disdain at worst, the lives of women were no source of empathy to those outside their class.</p>
<p>The sex workers fulfilled a utilitarian function and nothing else. Confined to the premises by (usually) male pimps who provided them with only their most basic needs, the women were essentially cut off from the outside world. This rendered them vulnerable to the whims of both pimp and client alike.</p>
<p>Women who worked the streets in Pompeii often waited around archways and other standard locations such as graveyards and public baths. In larger towns and cities, where control of the sex trade was harder to manage, some of these women may have worked without pimps. Those who made up this percentage of workers were mostly freed slaves and poor freeborn women.</p>
<h2>Stories from graffiti</h2>
<p>The preservation of graffiti on the walls of Pompeii’s buildings also provides historians with details of the sex trade. Most of it is extremely graphic. It includes information on specific services and prices, clients’ appraisals of certain women and their abilities (or lack thereof), and some sexual advice.</p>
<p>Some graffiti are straight to the point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Thrust slowly</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Others are advertisements:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Euplia was here<br>
with two thousand<br>
beautiful men</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or list prices:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Euplia sucks for five dollars*</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Often the names of slaves and, by default, sex workers, had Greek origins. The name “Euplia”, for example, comes from a Greek word meaning “fair voyage”. Sex workers’ names sometimes denoted the function or physical features of the individual in question. In this case, Euplia promised her clients a fair voyage.</p>
<p>Graffiti also attests to male sex workers in Pompeii. As with the writings concerning women, this graffiti lists specific services offered and sometimes prices. As freeborn women were not permitted to have intercourse with anyone but their husbands, the clients who accessed male sex workers were almost exclusively men. The sexual mores of ancient Rome, catered for male-to-male sexual encounters if certain protocols were maintained (a citizen could not be penetrated, for example).</p>
<p>The few literary records that suggest there may have been female clients of sex workers are questionable, as they were usually written for satiric or comedic purposes. Still, it would be naïve to discount instances of wealthy, freeborn women accessing male sex workers or household slaves.</p>
<p>Similarly, it would be naïve to assume that male clients did not seek other men with whom they could participate in acts deemed socially unacceptable (essentially acts in which the citizen male would occupy a submissive role).</p>
<h2>Society and the sex trade</h2>
<p>At the time of the eruption of <a href="http://geology.com/volcanoes/vesuvius/">Vesuvius</a>, Pompeii was a town of modest size, with a population of around 11,000, and a <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/take-tour-pompeii-home-before-9016594">thriving community</a> with sophisticated architecture and infrastructure. Located in Campania, some 23 kilometres southeast of Naples, and near the port of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Pozzuoli">Pozzuoli</a>, it enjoyed robust trade and economy, and had a multicultural demographic.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198266/original/file-20171208-11347-15m5v9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pompeii ruins with Mount Vesuvius in the background.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nikonvscanon/5771074270/in/photolist-9MYgjw-m3piXR-pdhTS6-pAYupC-9Fs1Ej-eivYiK-qb3au1-pjvUCn-pB1gWF-eiwBjB-bNNdM4-gZkkwk-mwRRhH-VYnLe5-dbgc8P-RJPgfe-929Bgv-U45TEh-eTteTS-eThq5P-dbgcun-SYKMER-eTuYwd-SPiHnU-u97bF-eSJRyJ-evYRXv-">David Blaikie/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The prosperity of the town and the continual presence of merchants ensured a strong market for sex. Indeed, the sex trade was integral to the successful functioning of society, particularly marriages. </p>
<p>As marriages, particularly those among the elite classes, were arranged and predominantly for the birth of male heirs, a husband would not seek sexual pleasures from his wife. Rather, out of respect for her, a man would pay for pleasurable sex, especially those acts that were not expected to be performed by a respectable woman.</p>
<p>Indeed, the graffiti attests to five different types of sex for sale: intercourse, cunnilingus, fellatio, active anal sex, and passive anal sex. Thus the sex trade performed a type of social and moral policing of the institution of marriage, as well as the preservation of an adult male’s reputation and masculinity. As
sex work was not illegal (being predominantly structured around slavery) but adultery was outlawed, this was another reason for paying for sex.</p>
<p>The layers of volcanic materials that covered Pompeii and most of its population to a depth of 25 metres left extensive evidence of the ancient Italians, their lifestyles, and their environments. Ironically, the eruption that trapped the inhabitants in both time and place has bestowed a strange immortality upon them. </p>
<p>These people whisper to us, and their tales are varied, joyous and sad. Their stories are sometimes shocking and even heartbreaking, but, like the lives of the sex workers, worthy of remembrance. </p>
<p><em>*Five dollars is a rough conversion of the value of ‘five asses’: the currency in the original graffiti.</em></p>
<p><em>Tomorrow: the sexualisation of girlhood in 19th century postcards.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88853/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marguerite Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Though their activities were depicted alluringly in murals, the sex workers of Pompeii were slaves who lived hard lives.Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/883212017-12-11T19:14:13Z2017-12-11T19:14:13ZDebauchery on the fatal shore: the sex lives of Australia’s convicts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198490/original/file-20171211-27693-1i0hadv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A chain gang of convicts in Hobart</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of NSW</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Welcome to our series on sexual histories, in which our authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In 1787, when Arthur Phillip was preparing to lead the First Fleet to establish the British colony in New South Wales he wrote to his superiors to sort out what powers he would have over convicts and the soldiers sent to guard them. At one point, he addressed his power of life and death. Only two offences, he thought, deserved the death penalty – murder and sodomy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For either of these crimes I would wish to confine the criminal until an opportunity offered of delivering him to the natives of New Zealand, and let them eat him. The dread of this will operate much stronger than the fear of death.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It might not look like it, but Phillip was expressing a rather liberal point of view here. In Britain at this time, there were hundreds of offences that attracted the death penalty. In reducing his list to two he was flying in the face of all common sense. But it is striking that sodomy is on his little list.</p>
<p>While the administration took a dim view of same-sex desire, sex between men and between women flourished in Australia’s convict system - and thanks to the watchful eye of the colonial government, we know much about it. </p>
<h2>Crime and punishment</h2>
<p>Phillip’s views on sodomy were not an unreasonable position at the time. The Christian Bible was very clear that men who lay with men as with women were deserving of death; and the law – which had been instituted by Henry VIII, that great defender of the nation’s morals – agreed.</p>
<p>As it happened, Phillip, who served as governor until 1792, never got to put his policy into practice. There were no executions for sodomy; nor was anyone shipped off to New Zealand. Watkin Tench, a First Fleeter, opined that there were few “crimes of a deep dye” in the first four years of the colony and that “murder and unnatural sins rank not hitherto in the catalogue of [the convicts’] enormities”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198496/original/file-20171211-27689-1p7iz8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198496/original/file-20171211-27689-1p7iz8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198496/original/file-20171211-27689-1p7iz8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198496/original/file-20171211-27689-1p7iz8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198496/original/file-20171211-27689-1p7iz8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198496/original/file-20171211-27689-1p7iz8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198496/original/file-20171211-27689-1p7iz8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198496/original/file-20171211-27689-1p7iz8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The convict ruins at Port Arthur.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first prosecution only came in 1796 when Francis Wilkinson, a labourer, was charged with “that most horrid detestable and sodomitic crime (among Christians not to be named) called Buggery”. We don’t know his fate. The first execution for sodomy that we know of was of Alexander Brown in 1828. This execution is perhaps the first sign of a coming storm. Historian Robert French estimates that about 20 men were executed as sodomites between 1828 and 1863.</p>
<p>By the 1830s, the free settlers in NSW were desperate to put an end to the transportation of convicts to the colony. There were many reasons for this, but one most forcefully put was that it was undermining the moral development of the colony. In the thinking of the time, criminality, including sodomy, was seen as a physical degeneracy passed from generation to generation. So convicts were seen by very nature to be poor stock with which to colonise the country.</p>
<p>And the disproportion of men to women was seen as leaving the convict classes prey to the temptation of sodomy. The Chaplain of Fremantle Prison wrote in 1854,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What will ensue when we have thousands of men cooped up in the colony without wives and unable to seek them elsewhere. Evil will be the result – too humiliating for the mind to dwell upon– too revolting to name. … That moral evil of far greater magnitude, which has of old brought down the signal judgment of Heaven, will result.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Love in plain sight</h2>
<p>But if the anxieties of the authorities had unleashed a wave of debate and discussion about the dangers of debauchery, it is important to be aware that there is another way of looking at this – recognising that sodomy was also part of the lived experience of convict men and women, and that their experience was not at all the same as that of the horrified authorities. </p>
<p>Where respectable colonists saw filth and moral evil, there is evidence that convict women and men experienced companionship, affection and attachment, which included sexual love. Consider this letter, written by a convict in 1846 on the eve of his being hanged:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I hope you wont forget me when I am far away and all my bones is moldered away I have not closed an eye since I lost sight of you your precious sight was always a welcome and loving charming spectacle. Dear Jack I value Death nothing but it is in leaving you my dear behind and no one to look after you … The only thing that grieves me love is when I think of the pleasant nights we have had together. I hope you wont fall in love with no other man when I am dead and I remain your True and loving affectionate Lover.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198492/original/file-20171211-27683-a2ksbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198492/original/file-20171211-27683-a2ksbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198492/original/file-20171211-27683-a2ksbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198492/original/file-20171211-27683-a2ksbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198492/original/file-20171211-27683-a2ksbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198492/original/file-20171211-27683-a2ksbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198492/original/file-20171211-27683-a2ksbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198492/original/file-20171211-27683-a2ksbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The convicts’ barracks at Hyde Park in Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/adam_jones/11215659254">Adam Jones/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We know quite a lot about love between convicts because they were being constantly monitored by the authorities. In 1841 there was an inquiry into a riot at the Launceston female factory (prison/workhouse) which discovered that sexual relationships between women were common – “depraved” behaviour, “unnatural connection” and the like. </p>
<p>One witness identified six female couples by name; others suggested there were anything from eight to 30 such couples. It was said that there were cases where a woman, sent out of the factory and into private service, would reoffend, so as to be sent back to where her lover was. When the authorities tried to break up couples, women would refuse to leave their cells, or even riot.</p>
<p>The medical superintendent of the Ross female factory – who habitually intercepted the women’s letters – reported on “warmth and impetuosity of the feelings excited in women towards each other, when allied in such unholy bonds”. (It is highly likely that he used the term “unholy bonds” having in mind the “holy bonds” of matrimony, suggesting that these women saw themselves as married).</p>
<p>An 1837 British parliamentary inquiry into the transportation system heard much evidence of the extent of debauchery among the convicts. The inquiry came to be believe there was a semi-underground subculture (a “demi-monde”) in existence. </p>
<p>New arrivals at the Hyde Park barracks, including younger men, put themselves selves under protection of older men – and adopted names such as Kitty, Nancy, Bett. On Norfolk Island, Robert Stuart reported as many as 150 male couples, who referred to themselves openly as “man and wife”. (Same-sex marriage is not as new as we might think).</p>
<p>Relationships among the convicts were of course many different things: situational – a desire for sexual outlet in the absence of the other sex - or coercive, expressing power over someone lower down the pecking order. </p>
<p>They may have been about the more desirable trading sex and affection for protection and advancement. All of these applied, of course, just as much to heterosexual relationships. But as with these, love between men or between women was often enough just that – love.</p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88321/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Graham Willett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Governor Arthur Phillip regarded sodomy as one of the worst offences that convicts under his charge could commit. But sex between men and between women flourished in convict Australia.Graham Willett, Honorary Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/885542017-12-10T19:10:49Z2017-12-10T19:10:49ZA nursery of unconventional ideas – sex radicalism in Australia<p><em>Welcome to our series on sexual histories, in which our authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In functioning democracies, yesterday’s radicalism is often today’s orthodoxy. Same-sex marriage was barely on the political agenda in the early years of this century. What a difference a few years can make.</p>
<p>But sometimes yesterday’s radicalism can still disturb the peace today. William Chidley was Australia’s most famous sex radical of a century ago. Chidley wandered the streets of Sydney in a thin tunic selling his booklet, The Answer, for a small fee and preaching his message to anyone willing to listen.</p>
<p>In The Answer, Chidley criticised “the crowbar method” – a none-too-subtle reference to a male erection – of intercourse. He argued that sex between and man and woman should occur only in the spring, when the woman’s vagina would act as a vacuum, drawing the flaccid penis inside. The present unnatural method of coition, Chidley argued, was ruining civilisation. His own method would save it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197686/original/file-20171204-23009-1hk1m7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197686/original/file-20171204-23009-1hk1m7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197686/original/file-20171204-23009-1hk1m7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197686/original/file-20171204-23009-1hk1m7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197686/original/file-20171204-23009-1hk1m7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197686/original/file-20171204-23009-1hk1m7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197686/original/file-20171204-23009-1hk1m7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197686/original/file-20171204-23009-1hk1m7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A banner promoting one of Chidley’s talks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of New South Wales</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Chidley was persecuted by officialdom, declared insane, condemned by doctors, and locked up in jail and an asylum. </p>
<p>But there was also a popular campaign in support of him. Feminists endorsed Chidley’s message of gentleness. Liberals approved his right to speak. Socialists detected a plot to suppress a fellow radical. Still the persecution continued until his death late in 1916.</p>
<p>When in 2013, an innovative young historian in the ABC’s social history unit, Catherine Freyne, made a radio documentary about Chidley, she hired an actor to dress up like him and once again declaim The Answer. How would Sydney react this time round?</p>
<p>Unlike the original Chidley, this one was not arrested. Indeed, among the preoccupied shoppers in the Pitt Street Mall, he attracted little attention at all. But Speakers’ Corner at the Domain was livelier. While the audience was apparently torn between puzzlement and amusement, Chidley was soon being <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/hindsight/good-sex---the-confessions-and-campaigns-of-w.j.-chidley/4597570">roundly abused</a> by an audience member. </p>
<p>Chidley was not the only sex radical in Australia, although he was, for a time, the most famous. Indeed, Australia has been something of a nursery of unconventional sexual ideas. Rosamund Benham was an early female graduate in medicine from the University of Adelaide who wrote pamphlets grappling with how modern couples could enjoy sex without the harmful effect of male “animal passion”. </p>
<p>In Sense About Sex and Circumvention (credited to “a Woman Doctor”) she turned to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coitus_reservatus">Karezza</a>, or “practicable continence”. A couple, she said, should cultivate their self-restraint by embracing each other in a nude state without actual “sexual connection”.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197702/original/file-20171205-22967-1uzy7i2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197702/original/file-20171205-22967-1uzy7i2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197702/original/file-20171205-22967-1uzy7i2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197702/original/file-20171205-22967-1uzy7i2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197702/original/file-20171205-22967-1uzy7i2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197702/original/file-20171205-22967-1uzy7i2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197702/original/file-20171205-22967-1uzy7i2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197702/original/file-20171205-22967-1uzy7i2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry Havelock Ellis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If they persisted, they would achieve “the highest delight through a thorough exchange of magnetism”. The idea, unsurprisingly, did not catch on, but her husband and one of his comrades were nonetheless prosecuted and sentenced to brief terms of imprisonment in 1906 — later overturned on appeal — for selling the booklets.</p>
<p>The most famous sexual scientist in the English-speaking world in the first half of the 20th century, Henry Havelock Ellis, had earlier spent four years in country New South Wales working as a teacher. By his own account, this was a critical time in his spiritual and intellectual formation. Ellis then returned to Britain to study medicine and make his name as the author of Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897-1910). </p>
<p>Chidley sought his friendship and support via a letter. Ellis responded with characteristic kindness, as well as drawing, for his own writings, on the unpublished autobiography Chidley sent him (eventually published as The Confessions of William James Chidley in 1977). </p>
<h2>A gender continuum</h2>
<p>Australia, meanwhile, continued to produce its own sex radicals, a few of them, like Ellis, globally influential. Norman Haire, a Sydney doctor, went to England in the 1920s and 1930s, making his fortune performing “rejuvenation” operations for wealthy clients, W.B. Yeats among them. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197704/original/file-20171205-22986-1r4plex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197704/original/file-20171205-22986-1r4plex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197704/original/file-20171205-22986-1r4plex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197704/original/file-20171205-22986-1r4plex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197704/original/file-20171205-22986-1r4plex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197704/original/file-20171205-22986-1r4plex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197704/original/file-20171205-22986-1r4plex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197704/original/file-20171205-22986-1r4plex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Norman Haire pictured in the 1940s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Rejuvenation” — which might variously involve a testicle or ovary transplant, x-ray stimulation, or a vasectomy — would supposedly enhance sexual vigour. But Haire was also a pioneering birth controller, sex reformer and prolific author on diverse sexual subjects. He wrote a sex advice column in an Australian’s women’s magazine after returning to Sydney during the second world war.</p>
<p>When the sexual revolution unfolded in the 1960s and 1970s, Australian sex radicals were there again, with British-based expatriates prominent. Richard Neville’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1439793.Play_Power?ac=1&from_search=true">Play Power</a> (1970) celebrated the sexual libertarianism of the international counter-culture while Germaine Greer’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98532.The_Female_Eunuch">The Female Eunuch</a>, published in the same year, was a feminist landmark as well as a work of sexual libertarianism. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198229/original/file-20171207-11325-1jbuchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198229/original/file-20171207-11325-1jbuchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198229/original/file-20171207-11325-1jbuchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198229/original/file-20171207-11325-1jbuchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198229/original/file-20171207-11325-1jbuchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198229/original/file-20171207-11325-1jbuchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198229/original/file-20171207-11325-1jbuchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198229/original/file-20171207-11325-1jbuchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Germaine Greer in 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germaine_Greer#/media/File:Germaine_Greer,_1972_(cropped).jpg">Nationaal Archief Fotocollectie Anefo/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A few of her ideas, while clothed in the blunt and sometimes Anglo-Saxon language of sexual revolution, belong to a lineage that in Australia stretched back at least to Chidley. “The man who is expected to have a rigid penis at all times,” Greer declared in an article in 1971, “is not any freer than the woman whose vagina is supposed to explode with the first thrust of such a penis.”</p>
<p>But it is perhaps with <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/dennis-altman-7746">Dennis Altman’s</a> sex radicalism that we move closest to the preoccupations of our present. Altman, in recent years an academic at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, was the author of the best-selling Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation (1971). It is rightly regarded as a pioneering work of gay scholarship and politics, but it is Altman’s insistence on what we might now call gender fluidity that now seems most striking and prescient.</p>
<p>Liberation, Altman suggested, would allow people to be truly human, instead of being trapped in acting out the roles prescribed by a patriarchal society to “men”, “women”, “heterosexuals” and “homosexuals”. </p>
<p>Drawing on Freud’s concept of “polymorphous perversity”, Altman went so far as to call the final chapter of his book The End of the Homosexual?, arguing provocatively that “the homosexual’s very existence is an affront to the way in which society defines roles, sexuality, and achievement”. In a truly liberated order, he added, “the homosexual as we know him or her may … disappear”. </p>
<p>Here we find, in an earlier form, the notion of a gender continuum that seems so disturbing to modern conservatives. The recent ordeal of the Safe Schools program, and the terms in which the conservative Christian lobby campaigned against same-sex marriage, can be seen in a new perspective once we have this longer history in view.</p>
<h2>Ordinary, open-minded citizens</h2>
<p>One reason the authorities dealt sternly with Chidley was his habit of addressing audiences that included women and children. The fear — whether sincere or concocted — that children would be damaged by exposure to “progressive” or “radical” sexual ideas has been resilient. For many years, it was a pillar of opposition to sex education in schools. It has been at the heart of the anti-Safe Schools campaign and figured in the unlikely context of the marriage equality debate.</p>
<p>The association of sex radicalism with ambitions to transform society has also aroused fear and hostility. The wider implications of Chidley’s scheme for male sexual privilege were one reason he attracted the support of feminists and the hostility of powerful men. Similarly, the Australian Christian Lobby and the Murdoch press mobilised hostility to Safe Schools on the basis that it was supposedly seeking to impose radical changes to the gender order, as well as to advance a radical socialist or Marxist agenda.</p>
<p>What the wider public thinks of these often confusing culture wars is not easy to fathom. A majority clearly rejected the effort to link marriage equality to the corruption of children. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2017/09/moral-panic-101">Benjamin Law has reported</a>, Safe Schools, in one form or another, survives on the life-support offered by state Labor governments. Many schools are taking their own steps – often with the help of the Safe Schools program – to assist students dealing with the challenges of negotiating sexual and gender identity.</p>
<p>A century ago, while officialdom persecuted Chidley, many ordinary Australians supported him as a sincere battler who deserved a hearing. Today, in these matters as in so many other aspects of Australian life, ordinary citizens sceptical of hyperbole and practical in their concerns are often providing more dynamic leadership than those they elect to lead them.</p>
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<p><em>Tomorrow: sex in convict Australia</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88554/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From William Chidley to Germaine Greer Australia has spawned more than its fair share of radical thinkers about sex, and Australians have often embraced their ideas, despite persecution by officialdom.Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.