Sexuality And Gender Roles In The 18th Century

Sexuality is defined as one’s sexual character which possesses the structural and functional traits of sex. In the Renaissance, this definition was accompanied with ideologies of gender. This incorporated knowledge led to their notions of the female being inferior to the male based on what was

have looked at the history of sexuality since the 18th century in what Foucault calls

In present day all around the world, society has certain expectations for the actions and behaviors of males and females. There are many factors in our everyday lives that contribute to the gender norms that society has set. This essay will discuss how situations in life can play a part in how people treat other people based on their gender. It is believed that males are the leaders of our world, but in present day woman can do as much as men can do. From The Journal of Marriage and Family, Hu states, “Differentiated gender roles in adulthood are rooted in one’s gender role socialization. In order to understand the persistence of gender inequalities in the domestic sphere, we need to examine the gendered patterns of children’s housework time.”(2015, P.1). Gender roles are society’s expectations of the proper behavior, attitudes, and activities of males and females that they must be taught. These roles define how females and males are viewed in society, their household, and workplace. In The Journal of Sports behavior by Hardin, he states, “Although gender role differences from biological and “Natural” exists in popular consciousness, research has long demonstrated that instead, many are long time socially constructed… Individuals understand their gender because they are given names and treated in particular ways, such as dress in pink for girls and blue for boys, that reflect social construction of gender. Bandura's social cognitive theory is key in understanding the factors in socialization”(2009, P.3). Bandura's theory of of social cognition is that behavior, environmental events, and cognitive factors are the main keys that shape attitudes and actions of an individual. Although, gender roles play a very big part in our society, specific genders are treated differently while dealing with peer influence, media influence, as well as employment.

The book Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others written by Ruth Mazo Karras introduces the reader to a fresh new way of analyzing sex and gender related topics in the Middle Ages. The book takes on an argumentative approach as it explains the differences in sexual identity as defined by society today versus the way it was defined in a traditional medieval society. The book covers a range of topics in the study of sexual identity in the years between the fifth century and the fifteenth century. It is important to explore sex and gender issues in the Middle Ages because it is where many opinions held today originated from. The book delves into the differences in the way we experience gender and sexuality today and in the way it

The American family has continuously been changing over the years and has been shaped by changing ideas about gender, sexuality, race, and class. The institution of the family has changed but it has also remained the same in some aspects. Society’s acceptance of changes in gender and sexual norms have reshaped representations of the family. Betty Friedan, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Dorothy Sue Cobble have written articles that pertain to the changing of the institution. As the American society changes its views on gender and sexual norms, sometimes through movements, it has informed representations of the family.

In the early 1800’s Victorian True Love was a union of non-erotic actors (men and women) that viewed sex as a form of procreation. True Women were defined by their distance from lust and True Men who were less in control of their lusts, aspired the same freedom from sexual desires (Ferber, Jimenez, O'Reilly Herrera, & Samuels, 2009). In 1892, heterosexuals were defined as individuals that had abnormal urges in both sexes, while

The repression of sex started from Victorian bourgeoisie. Sex was “carefully confined”: there were a lot of taboos, silence became the rule, and sex was considered as serious function of reproduction. (3) Sex had to be repressed because “it is incompatible with a general and intensive work imperative”.

In the Victorian era there existed an intolerance towards women and sexuality. The common attitude was that women were essentially sexless, as if their sex drive differed from males. Women were thought to only have desire to satisfy man 's needs and take care of family. As perfectly summed up by Askin

This was the environment the led to the culture I witnessed in Kinsey and adults who were terrified of sex and had dangerous misunderstandings. This history of sex cover in the material from Foucault, Chauncey and the movie Kinsey help us to understand the multiple and diverse sex forms of sexual expression we find in the culture of the early twenty first century. Foucault is an excellent starting point to help understand the historical reason for the taboo nature of sex and the impacts that the lack of meaningful public discourse on the topic of sex. I say it is an excellent starting point because his work took us back a little further to the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Foucault actually traces the lack of sexual discourse to the seventeenth century and the rise of the bourgeoisie and capitalism.

In The Introduction to the History of Sexuality, Foucault explains how during the 19th century with the raise of new societies, the discourse or knowledge about sex was not confronted with repulsion but it “put into operation an entire machinery for producing true discourses concerning sex” (Foucault 69). In fact, this spreading of discourse on sexuality itself gives a clear account of how sexuality has been controlled and confined because it was determined in a certain kind of knowledge that carries power within it. Foucault reflects on the general working hypothesis or “repressive hypothesis,” and how this has exercised power to suppress people’s sexuality. It has power on deciding what is normal or abnormal and ethical or unethical

Throughout history, definitions of sexuality within a culture are created and then changed time after time. During these changes, we have seen the impact and power one individual or group can have over others. In the Late Nineteenth Century into the Early Twentieth Century, we see multiple groups of people and or authorities taking control over the idea of sex and how they believe society is being impacted by sex. At this point in time, society had groups of people who believed they had the power to control how society as whole viewed and acted upon sex. Those particular groups and ideas changed many lives and the overall definition of sexuality within that culture.

Known as the Two Sex theory, devised by historian Thomas Laqueur, female sexuality would be characterized purely by a woman’s reproductive potential, where the concept of an innate maternal instinct would become the new prioritized ideal. The female orgasm was renounced by a new essence of masculine superiority. This notion can be asserted with the Phallocentric inclination of the late 18th century, examined by historian Tim Hitchcock, as period characterized by penetration and precedence of the phallus. This “both encouraged and made possible the denigration of female sexuality and perceived passivity.” Consequently this caused the de-emphasis of female sexual pleasure and desire. However, female sexual identity would reemerge with potency, attributed to social flux, the emerging field of sexology and disposition of the interwar years.

First, Farley offers Michael Foucault’s theory on the historical construction of desire. Foucault indicates experience changes moral attitudes and norms which shaped historical views of sexuality. The changes in power, especially for women, transforms sexual structures. Second, Catherine MacKinnon’s theory of historical silences and gendered violence is outlined. There is “no accurate analysis of sex and power, and indeed no real history of sexuality (23).” The third theory is how evolution and the economy has historically influenced sexuality. A historical perspective of sexual ethics in the West have been influenced by other religious and cultural traditions. Ancient Greece and Rome’s general attitudes and practices to Judaism and Christianity are important for Farley to address in finding origins or past “answers” to issues facing sexuality

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian, social theorist, philologist and literary critic whose work had a tremendous impact on several disciplines. He was not a sociologist by training, but he worked diligently on sociological issues and otherwise had significant influence on the work of other sociologists. One of his most famous works is the The History of Sexuality, in which he examines the emergence of "sexuality" as a discursive object and separate sphere of life. According to Foucault, the idea that everyone has a sexuality is relatively a recent development in the West. In Volume 1, Foucault discusses the relationship between sex and power in a historical context. He states that the ways in which humans think about sexuality is primarily shaped by the "repressive hypothesis," which claims that Western society had suppressed sexuality from the 17th to the mid-20th century, and this was due to the rise of capitalism and the bourgeois society. There are several key concepts in this book that will be discussed in this paper include repressive hypothesis, sexuality, power, and discourse. This paper will seek to show the ways in which sexuality is a discursive object, and how sexuality was linked to power throughout history.

The more women were restricted from men and sex, the more they wanted any man for sex: “Fleshes like weeds / Sprout in the light / So much flesh in the world / Wanders at will / Some behind curtains / Throbs to the night / Bait to the stars” (Loy 22). Their flesh has been covered for a long time, so when women finally gain the freedom to leave the home, by escaping the home or by marriage, they will want to lots of sex. Their bodies have been throbbing and yearning for it as they create impure images and scenarios in their head about what it will be like to finally have sex with a man. Women’s confinement to the home played into her role as a female. Not only was she supposed to be chaste, but when women finally did marry, they were confined to their husband’s home and their children as a mother.