History Of Sexuality – Patterns

· From social control to individual sexual choice

· From a focus on reproduction to a focus on intimacy and pleasure

· From sexual archetypes to sexual diversity

· From religious to secular

· Now using sexuality for political gain

· Shifts in culture, technology, and ecology

Reactions to:

· Growth of cities

· Outbreak of utopian sexual communities during the early to late 19^th century (Shakers, Oneidans, Mormons)

· The new mass media and availability of contraception and abortion info

· Birth of the public health movement

· Shakers: get red of sexuality and its tragedies and heartbreak- have crazy dancing instead

· Oneidans: wanted the pleasure of sex without consequences (pregnancy, romance)

· Mormons: specific attack on monogamy; but gave up polygamy for statehood

· Merry Mount: blatantly free community founded by Thomas Morton- free love, free sex

· Puritans: see New England/Plymouth

Public Health Movement/Mass Media/Contraception Boom and Legality

· Anthony Comstock (1880s-1920s) – known for Comstock Laws in 1929 that presocuted thousands for circulating birth control information; there were also obscenity laws for even talking about sex

· Margaret Sanger – created the Planned Parenthood movement, but she was part of the “contagion” group and eugenics movement- lots of immigrants were coming and she didn’t believe we needed their genes to be mixed in the woodpile

· In the South: Jim Crow laws, Miscegenation Laws (laws against people of mixed races producing offspring), Mann Act (against traveling over state lines for immoral purposes); there was a fear of racial/ethnic sexuality