Maybrey, Catherine R. (Author)
Loyola University of Chicago
Gilfoyle, Timothy
Edition Details: Advisor: Gilfoyle, Timothy
Physical Details: 172 pp.
Language: English
This study examines the changing perceptions and meanings of masturbation in the United States from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth century. The project analyses autoeroticism's evolution from a male health issue to a tool for controlling female sexuality. The dissertation argues that the medical profession influenced the anti-masturbation movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but withdrew from the debate over autoeroticism in the twentieth century, as psychiatrists became the dominant voice in the dialogue. As masturbation originally fell within the domain of the clergy and physicians, its history remains strongly connected with religion, science and the condition of the medical community in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus, the first two centuries covered in this study explore attempts at professionalization and conflict with the clergy for authority, and will place masturbation within the larger history of medicine in America. Chapters on the nineteenth century serve to bridge the ideological gap between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, and include analysis of social history and gender construction. Research on the twentieth century demonstrates the longevity of myths spawned from centuries of misinformation, and explains how masturbation became associated with the struggle for female equality. This comprehensive treatment of autoeroticism will not only add to the understanding of sexuality, but will contribute to the debate over American exceptionalism and to changing concepts of gender. Sources for the dissertation allow for the discussion of masturbation in multiple settings. Lawsuits, medical cases, health reports, prescriptive literature, and sexological and psychological studies help to explain how Americans perceived masturbation. These materials support my analysis of those groups which contested autoeroticism and shaped gender roles regarding sexuality. Interpretation of this type of evidence will follow the constructionist model present in recent sociological studies of science and medicine. This framework, combined with the more traditional approach of the long dure , places the issue of masturbation within historical context and demonstrates the ways in which sexual and gender ideologies are constructed and reconstructed over time.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 66/05 (2005): 1927. UMI pub. no. 3175768.
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