Nancy Rousseau's Analysis
Several of the fundamental shifts in the ideas about the sexual nature and sexual differences occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries. During this period the acceptance of new scientific knowledge concerning biological sex, gender, and sexuality in society leads to the emergence that men and women are biologically different. As the acceptance of this discovery grew it creates a new cultural system of proper behavior for men and women, and new constructions of gender. Through the change in the gender/sex system, Rousseau’s ideas about what makes men and women different and the evolution of homosexuality, and the codification of specific behaviors as proper in the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries is made clear. In the seventeenth-century
…show more content…
Nancy Cott's article " Passionlessness: An Interpretation of Victorian Sexual Ideology, 1790-1850" speaks to the internalization of these ideas in society, and how it affects the behaviors and norms of women and their sexual lifestyles. The connection between the ideas of what is natural for women, to be pious and pure, and an alteration of female behavior to fit those traits is another way ideas about sexual natural differences of the body lead to modern ideas about appropriate gendered behavior. Cott says, " by elevating sexual control highest among human virtues the middle-class moralists made female chastity the archetype for human morality" (Cott 1978, 223). Chastity, or at least the illusion of chastity, became a requirement for women during this time period because it is a women's 'natural' state. The creation of gendered spheres, such as the cult of domesticity, where women are shielded from the immoral and irrational public world that can harm their superior and fragile moral nature from which their chastity is derived. The acceptance of women's natural purity changes the way by which men and women practice courtship, engage in marriage and sexual activity, redefining what is appropriate at the time. The belief that women are naturally pure is one way to examine how this change in the understanding of what comprises female nature creates behavioral and societal …show more content…
The creation of vibrant gay subcultures illustrates how specific actions that society deems as immoral or unjust must take place outside of the mainstream culture (Lecture 10/6/15). Moreover, the fear about publicizing homosexuality highlights an important element that proves how ideas about the sexual nature of the body influence the sanction of certain actions. First, the presence of homosexuals illustrate that not all men are sexually active and not all women are sexually passive, according to the definitions of active and passive of the time. Sodomites are too passive and lesbians are too active for the definitions of how men and women act based on nature. A growing knowledge of homosexuality and an understanding of the actions homosexuality implies would undermine the entire Victorian system that places men in public and women in private on the basis of their natural differences of active and
Nancy Cott's article " Passionlessness: An Interpretation of Victorian Sexual Ideology, 1790-1850" speaks to the internalization of these ideas in society, and how it affects the behaviors and norms of women and their sexual lifestyles. The connection between the ideas of what is natural for women, to be pious and pure, and an alteration of female behavior to fit those traits is another way ideas about sexual natural differences of the body lead to modern ideas about appropriate gendered behavior. Cott says, " by elevating sexual control highest among human virtues the middle-class moralists made female chastity the archetype for human morality" (Cott 1978, 223). Chastity, or at least the illusion of chastity, became a requirement for women during this time period because it is a women's 'natural' state. The creation of gendered spheres, such as the cult of domesticity, where women are shielded from the immoral and irrational public world that can harm their superior and fragile moral nature from which their chastity is derived. The acceptance of women's natural purity changes the way by which men and women practice courtship, engage in marriage and sexual activity, redefining what is appropriate at the time. The belief that women are naturally pure is one way to examine how this change in the understanding of what comprises female nature creates behavioral and societal …show more content…
The creation of vibrant gay subcultures illustrates how specific actions that society deems as immoral or unjust must take place outside of the mainstream culture (Lecture 10/6/15). Moreover, the fear about publicizing homosexuality highlights an important element that proves how ideas about the sexual nature of the body influence the sanction of certain actions. First, the presence of homosexuals illustrate that not all men are sexually active and not all women are sexually passive, according to the definitions of active and passive of the time. Sodomites are too passive and lesbians are too active for the definitions of how men and women act based on nature. A growing knowledge of homosexuality and an understanding of the actions homosexuality implies would undermine the entire Victorian system that places men in public and women in private on the basis of their natural differences of active and