Transcript Slide 1

SEX
(and women)
Back in the Day
• “Hysteria”—a woman’s medical problem,
caused by a “wandering womb”
• Treated, during the 1800s (when women
were believed not to be sexual creatures)
by trips to the doctor.
• Relief (by manual manipulation) was
achieved from the woman’s “paroxysm.”
Thomas Jefferson
• We find amongs blacks “their own
judgment in favour of the whites, declared
by their preference of them, as uniformly
as is the preference of the Oranootan for
the black women over those of his own
species.”
• “They seem to require less sleep.”
• “They are more ardent after their female”
“Notes on the State of Virginia”
• When freed, he is to be
removed beyond the reach
of mixture.
To “wash the African stain from
one’s blood” required…
• 1796: John Stedman: 1/16 African, or
three generations of whites, erased
“blackness”
• 1801: Julien-Joseph Virey: 1/32 still
consituted “blackness”
• Moreau de Saint-Mery (Santo Domingo):
any more than 1/512 African blood
constituted “blackness”
Cult of Domesticity
• Angel in the house
• Associations: the
marketplace vs. the
home
• Slaves as
marketplace invading
the home
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1850:
Little Eva, the ideal woman
• “always dressed in
white”
• Never ”contracting spot
or stain”
• “long golden-brown hair
that floated like a cloud”
• A “deep spiritual gravity”
• “violet blue eyes”
The Thirteenth Amendment
• Freed slaves
• 1865
December 1865
• First meeting of the
Ku Klux Klan
• 1867: Nathan
Bedford Forrest
was sworn in as
the first Grand
Wizard
1880s
• Joseph Mortimer
Granville, a British
physician, invented
an
“electromechanical
vibrator”
• This relieved
doctors of
performing many
hours of tedious
physical therapy
1896
• Plessy v. Ferguson
establishes legal
segregation, declares
constitutional the
widespread “Jim Crow” laws
1920s
• The 19th
Amendment,
granting women
the vote
• “Flappers”: young
women who wore
makeup, short hair,
and NO corsets.
They drank,
smoked, dated,
and “petted.”
• “The Jazz Age”
“The pleasures of youth will throb
within you!”
• Women’s magazines (in the early 1900s) were
filled with ads for mail-order vibrators, promising
• The Sears and Roebuck catalogue featured a
multi-purpose appliance that included a buffer,
grinder and mixer along with the vibrator
attachment.
• “Will be found to be very useful in many ways
around the home!”
The Harlem Renaissance
• 1920-early 1930s
• Growth and popularity for Black artists in the fields of
literature, art, and music.
• Celebrated by American society in general.
• Tan skin becomes popular among whites.
Technology in the 1920s
• The automobile (allowed people to
live far from their jobs)
• Electrified homes (lighting and
appliances)
• Indoor plumbing (new architecture)
• The radio
• The movies
The Jazz Singer (1922)
--the first movie made with sound
Industrial
Revolution
in the Home
Past
vs.Present
Present
Past
vs.
•
•
•
•
“The
Roles
significant
Duties
change…was
the
Duties
Roles
disappearance
of
Jobs
paid and unpaid
Responsibilities
servants…and the
imposition of the
entire job on the
housewife herself”
The Home
• In ads, “she was often the person
being served, or she was
supervising the serving”
Machines
• The
“mechanization of
the household “ in
the 1920s meant
that the housewife
was more often
alone, supervising
machinery rather
than servants.
Also in the 1920s
• These popular appliances began to be used
in “blue movies” (X-rated).
• Doctors, becoming more knowledgeable
about female sexuality, began to recognize
the sexual side of this machinery.
• By 1930, such devices disappeared from
popular catalogs.
1960s
• The invention of the Birth Control
Pill
• The Civil Rights Movement and
desegregation
• The vibrator resurfaces as a
sexual tool