In 21st century post-industrial social settings, sex and pleasure are synonymous. Heterosexual pleasures are rated at the pinnacle of all forms of sexual expression, and the responsibility of maximizing sexual pleasure both for self and partner is a cultural obligation. The primacy given to erotic proficiency in Western cultures has a chequered history (see Hawkes: 2004). Across the centuries, the 'uses of pleasure' have helped to identify sexuality as at least potentially socially problematic. This has been the case whether pleasure was valued or demeaned.
In the nineteenth century pleasurable sex for women was conflated with mental disorders and physical enervation in the same way as early Christianity equated sex with sin. The legacy was a high level of ignorance and fear about their sexual bodies among women that was brought into sharp relief as they approached marriage. In this presentation I want to illustrate the transition from what might be called a ‘sex-negative’ to a ‘sex-positive’ discourse in the first half of the twentieth century.
I will be using library-based research of professionally authored texts from 1930s to 1960s that were directed towards reversing the ignorance and fear among a generation of women born in the Edwardian period. I will be offering an account of the ‘re-pleasuring of sex’ at an historical juncture where women were required for the first time to perform as efficiently in the bedroom as they did in the kitchen. By examining this historical snapshot I hope to illustrate the role that sexual pleasure played and still plays in the wider social order.
Conflict of Interest: None disclosed
Financial Support/Funding: None disclosed
Recorded: Sydney, Australia, April 2007
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