Science, Sexual Difference and the Making of Modern Marriage in American Sex Advice, 1920–40 (2023)
This article considers discussions of sexual difference in a range of popular prescriptive texts published between 1920 and 1940 in order to explore the relationship between science and American marital advice literature. It demonstrates the particular role science played in shaping, legitimising and enforcing changing discussions about what ‘good sex’ should look like in contemporary advice – supporting a hierarchy of sexual activities and desires that privileged a particular version of marital heterosexual expression. Through this, it also interrogates the ‘popular’ version of sexual science being consumed by the American public at this time. In addition to adding new perspectives to our understanding of contemporary advice and its relationship with science and medicine, it will also act as a provocation for further research into the ways the public engaged with sexual science in early twentieth-century America.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Jordan-Young, Rebecca M.;
(2010)
Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences
Article
Ha, Nathan Q.;
(2011)
The Riddle of Sex: Biological Theories of Sexual Difference in the Early Twentieth-Century
Thesis
Redick, Alison;
(2004)
American History XY: The Medical Treatment of Intersex, 1916--1955
Article
Shen, Yubin;
(2015)
Too Young to Date! The Origins of Zaolian (Early Love) as a Social Problem in 20th-Century China
Chapter
Marie Walin;
Alain Giami;
Sharman Levinson;
(2021)
“Lack of Clarity” and “False Premises”: Partnership and Translations in Impotence-Related Petitions for Marriage Annulment in Nineteenth-Century Spain
Article
Sarah Bull;
(2021)
More Than a Case of Mistaken Identity: Adult Entertainment and the Making of Early Sexology
Thesis
Kibbe, Tina M.;
(2012)
In “Fitness” and in Health: Eugenics, Public Health, and Marriage in the United States
Article
Boddice, Rob;
(2011)
The Manly Mind? Revisiting the Victorian “Sex in Brain” Debate
Article
Hubbard, Thomas K.;
(2008-9)
The Paradox of “Natural” Heterosexuality with “Unnatural” Women
Article
Cuomu, Mingji;
(2011)
Sexual Differentiation in Tibetan Medical and Buddhist Perspectives
Book
King, Helen;
(2013)
The One-Sex Body on Trial: The Classical and Early Modern Evidence
Article
Chiang, Howard Hsueh-Hao;
(2008)
The Conceptual Contours of Sex in the Chinese Life Sciences: Zhu Xi (1899--1962), Hermaphroditism, and the Biological Discourse of Ci and Xiong, 1920--1950
Article
Mary McAlpin;
(2019)
Denis Diderot and the Masturbating Girl
Book
Klöppel, Ulrike;
(2010)
XX0XY ungelöst: Hermaphroditismus, Sex und Gender in der deutschen Medizin; eine historische Studie zur Intersexualität
Article
Carstens, Lisa;
(2010)
Unbecoming Women: Sex Reversal in the Scientific Discourse on Female Deviance in Britain, 1880--1920
Book
Fausto-Sterling, Anne;
(2000)
Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality
Essay Review
Bunzl, Matti;
(2002)
Sexual Modernity as Subject and Object
Article
Miller, Fiona Alice;
(2006)
“Your True and Proper Gender”: The Barr Body as a Good Enough Science of Sex
Thesis
Chiang, Howard Hsueh-Hao;
(2012)
Why Sex Mattered: Science and Visions of Transformation in Modern China
Article
Kingsland, Sharon E.;
(2007)
Maintaining Continuity through a Scientific Revolution: A Rereading of E. B. Wilson and T. H. Morgan on Sex Determination and Mendelism
Be the first to comment!