Historical Views of Women and Sex

The historical influences on western women’s views of themselves and their sexuality still affect women today. The predominately heterosexual bias reflects patriarchal dominance and is steeped in the viewpoint of what a ‘man’ needs. Women’s sexuality has been considered unimportant. Throughout history this has made being a heterosexual woman difficult let alone those who consider themselves to be lesbians or bi-sexual.

In ancient times, and until the industrial revolution, women’s autonomous sexuality was something men were afraid of and therefore had to be strictly controlled. Many of the fears were focused on ideas about women who lived independently. Men in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went so far as to accuse women of witchcraft. Many women lost their lives during this period of time.

In the nineteenth century, popular fiction and the Church presented women as sexless. Women were to submit to sexual intercourse only in order to conceive or for the sake of their husband’s satisfaction. There was little chance for women, although sexual feelings did of course exist, to express their sexual feelings. Women were perceived as mothers, virgins or whores.

As the twentieth century progressed, perceptions of women’s sexuality continued to be challenging. Women were seen as having no autonomous sexuality and sex was considered something they had to be taught to enjoy. Their sexual feelings were believed to be only a response to a man’s and could only be awakened by him. The heterosexist and sexist assumptions behind these theories were not challenged for many years.

The first sex manual by and for women was written by Helena Wright in 1930. (http://www.star-dot-star.net/si/004984.html) Even though this was an attempt to publicly find a way to express women’s plight, she could not find a way to get beyond it being a wife’s duty to enjoy sex.

The so-called ‘sexual revolution’ in the 1960s greatly changed women’s expectations and behavior around sex. Pre-marital sex, “trial marriages, “sleeping around” and the emergence of homosexuality became visible.

Women began to expect to enjoy sex. One theorist who was influential by considering that women needed to be liberated was Wilhelm Reich, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich) a pupil of Freud. His ideas on sexual freedom remain radical today, even though they deal only with heterosexuality. Even though Reich’s views were ahead of his time, they still were strongly based on the so-called ‘double-standard’ for men and women.

Such myths were designed to keep women sexually and emotionally dependent on men. For many, these ideas still persist. Men and women are still considered sexual opposites, and the sexual revolution is widely seen as having failed women by encouraging them to have sex on men’s terms.

While the 1960’s encouraged women to behave more like men by actively seeking out sex (usually within some kind of relationship), it did little to change men’s behavior or level of understanding. (http://www.amazon.com/Surpassing-Love-Men-Friendship-Renaissance/dp/0688133304) It was seen by many to be a sexual revolution for men but not for women. Women were criticized by both men and women for sexual behavior which was considered traditionally male. This was true of the attitudes of men and male behaviors in many other areas of life.

For many people, the period of the sexual revolution was as repressive as any other. The freedoms of the 1960s and 1970s were profoundly questioned and reassessed in the 1980s. Sexual liberation, and women’s liberation seemed to some women to be undermining women’s traditional place without giving them a positive alternative. Hedonism and sexual ‘permissiveness’ as well as sexual choice reached only a small part of the population, while others actively campaigned to counter it.

It is unlikely that we will ever go back to the ‘age of innocence’ and heterosexual exclusivity that has been encouraged throughout history. For women, both heterosexual and homosexual sex is an idea that is still promoted as wrong and dangerous, and monogamous marriage between heterosexual partners is still considered as the only option.

It is no wonder that finding our way as lesbians has had its difficulties in the social climate that comes from such a dominantly heterosexual background. We can only hope that women will be able to find and express their sexuality in the future with more support than in the past.