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
there was acceptance of the one sex-two gender system. According to Thomas Laqueur's article " Orgasm, Generation, and the Politics of Reproductive Biology", which speaks to the decline of the Galenic one sex-two gender system, states that, "Men and women are, in this model, not different in kind but in configuration of their organs" (Laqueur 1986, 4). This means that there is only one human body and the arrangement of its parts creates the different genders of male and female. Under this system men are hierarchically better than women, as the perfect beings (Laqueur 1986). This however was no longer the dominant belief in the eighteenth century. Randolph Trumbach's article " Sex, Gender, and Sexual Identity in Modern Culture: Male Sodomy and Female Prostitution in Enlightenment London" illustrates a new model as of 1750: the two sex, three gender system. Under this configuration, there are two bodies, male and female, and there are three genders, male, female, and sodomite (Trumbach 193). This change in the sex/gender system created a new construction of gender for the population of Enlightenment London. This model, which explains the sexual nature of the body, quickly became ingrained into society to an extent by which social and political regulations of the population occur in accordance with this system. The emergence of Molly-Houses during this time illustrates how the change in ideology around the sexual nature of the body also influenced societal norms and behaviors in the eighteen-century. The expectation of men who were Mollies was that they would play a feminine role within the Molly-House, but conduct life in public as a man (Trumbach 190). This dynamic illustrates how the creation of strong gender identities and norms persuaded sodomites to adhere to proper behavior of the time period, despite their sexual desires or gender. Trumbach explains that sodomites and me biologically look the same and therefore are held to the standards of men in society, even though they are socially less than men (190). Society under the hierarchy created by this system, views specific behaviors, such as sodomy and prostitution, as improper because they go against the defined roles of men as sexually active and women as sexually passive. In addition to the emergence of the third gender, the Enlightenment idea that pleasure is natural and therefore good profoundly impacted the sexual nature of the body (Clark, Desire, Chapter 7). The definition of sexual nature can concern the biological body; it can also in this case define to the desires created due to our inherent sexuality. Under the principle that pleasure is natural, sexual desire is an element that enhances the human experience and people should act upon it. This idea is a vastly different societal take on human sexuality than the previously dominant code of the Catholic Church (Clark, Desire, Chapter 7). This however was not the beginning of a sexual liberation, only specific types of sex, in appropriate places and times, are considered to align with natural or good forms of sex (Lecture 9/18/15). For example, Enlightenment ideology considers sodomy as unnatural and wrong (Lecture 9/18/15), female pleasure without the presence of a man is feared and sexual fantasies created from the imagination for masturbatory purposes are also frowned upon (Clark, Desire, 106-107). These regulations concerning acceptable desire create limits on appropriate behavior for men and women. The introduction of sexual pleasure as natural was just one piece of Enlightenment thought that shapes behavior. Another way to analyze the influence of new ideas in the eighteenth-century is through Rousseau's distinctions between male and female. Rousseau says that the differences between men and women are due to biologically determined. Particular differences are vitally important, such as the idea that men are active, capable of abstract thought and rational, because the determination of proper behavior came from these 'natural' differences. The justification for the exclusion of women from public life came from Rousseau's ideas that women were incapable of abstract thought, naturally passive and irrational. Rousseau bases his male-female comparison off of the sexual nature of the biological body, illustrating how the transformation of ideas concerning the sexual differences of the body influences proper behavior for men and women. Rousseau's system was also the basis of the gendered spheres and behaviors that dictate nineteenth-century life. During this time period piousness, purity, and moral superiority are the characteristics of women.
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
transformations. Unlike the beliefs of the early eighteenth-century that reformation is possible for women who defy the social acceptable forms of female sexuality, such as prostitutes, such "fallen women" are no longer viewed as savable in the nineteenth-century (Lecture 10/2/15), due to the new ideas about purity. This distinction plays an important role in how the middle class obsession with respectability promotes specific behaviors for men and women. Social reputation and personal honor dictate the life of women in the nineteenth-century. The perception of women are engaging in premarital sex, or who are overly sexual, or out in public too often, is that they are defying their feminine nature. In the seventeenth-century women are thought to be overly sexual, and in the eighteenth-century prostitution was a necessary evil (Trumbach). However, by the nineteenth-century society relies on the sexual chastity and passivity of women in order to maintain a new system of behavior based on respectability, and women who are naturally more moral, thanks to Rousseau, must adhere to and preform this form of femininity in order to maintain the societal structure. The growing fear of male and female homosexuality during this period (Lecture 10/6/15) illustrates how the consideration of what is natural for men and women deeply shape the behaviors deemed appropriate.
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
passive. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries the ideas about the sexual nature and sexual differences of the body in relation to the sex/gender system, the innate sexual drive of men and women and their general morality and purity evolved. These transformations in both scientific and cultural understandings of what constructs men and women differently, greatly impacts the behaviors of this time. This is seen thought the gender hierarch, the ideas about male activeness and female passivity and purity, and the fear of homosexuality. The connection between these changes and the alterations to gendered behavior illustrates the vital role human sexuality plays in shaping history.