Wealhtheow’s Reviews > Sex in Georgian England: Attitudes and Prejudices from the 1720s to the 1820s > Status Update

"Girls educated in schools...not only adopt sentiments of their own, before they have any right to do so, but they hesitate not to pronounce and defend their opinions in earnest and bitter altercations with their parents, and extend this conduct to the most important affair of life--to the choice of a husband. 'We have a right to chuse and judge for ourselves.' say they". LE GASP!

Man, I would be so pissed if my best chances at porn were books with names like "A Treatise on the Use of Flogging in Venereal Affairs" and "Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplified." Sucked to be a pervert back in the 1700s.

My favorite case of sodomy: in Connecticut, in 1647, one Thomas Hogg was accused of bestiality after a sow bore a deformed foetus which "had a faire&white skinne&head, as Thomas Hogg is". For further proof, they made him fuck the sow and the sow was "immediately aroused whereas another sow, when fondled, was not moved at all." Damning indeed! I love that in order to prove he fucked sows, they made him fuck a sow.

"Buggery comyttid with mankynde or beaste" was made a capital offence in England in 1533, repealed by Queen Mary's Statute of Repeal, and then reinstated in 1562 by Elizabeth. Men were executed for this, esp for sex with animals, but prosecutions for penetration between men were rare (only 1 between 1560-1680 at Chelmsford Assizes, 2 before Somerset Quarter Sessions 1601-1660, etc).

Until the 18th century little importance seems to have been attached to masturbation. Falloppio recommended it as a penis-enlarger in 16th century, in 1669 John Dryden humorously refered to it in a play, and as late as 1749 John Cleland refers to a girl masturbating as a matter of course, in 1760s Robert Wallace described male masturbation as "an agreeable experience." Masturbation=bad reestablished in 1708 in Onania

These snapshots of 18th century crossdressing women are red hot intriguing, from "William Brown" who rose to be captain of the fore-top on the 110-gun Queen Charlotte during the Napoleonic War despite the additional disadvantage of being black, and who concealed her sex for 11 years; Christian Davies who served as dragoon in Marlborough's army at Ramillies, Phoebe Hessel who was an infantry private...

Sex between women seen as wrong (forbidden by St Thomas Aquinas, Council of Paris in 1212 and Rouen 1214 forbade nuns to share beds) but less than sex between men: St Antoninus and St Carlo Borromeo did not count it, with sodomy, as a sin against nature but merely as a sin of lust. St Carlo meted out 2 years penance for lesbian acts but 7-15 for gay acts. Women were still killed for lesbianism, tho...

Essays/literature portray prostitutes as mostly teenagers seduced&abandoned. But actually they were mostly adult women, and they did it out of poverty--by talking about seduction/rape so much, men managed to A)tantalize themselves while pretending to moralize and B)elide over poverty and lack of jobs.

Lord Chief Justice Eldon, later Lord Chancellor, told the House of Lords in 1800: "Suppose a poor helpless girl was robbed of her innocence, what would a private man say? Why, that he was very sorry for it: but what did the law say? That she was to be regarded as a prostitute--Why? that others should be deterred from following her example." I want to go back in time purely for the purpose of strangling this guy.

The corollary of social acceptance of men guilty of sexual assaults was communal hostility against persons involved in prosecuting rapists. In 1817, a mob of 200 gathered outside a rape victim's house, throwing stones and exhibiting effigies.