The management of sexual conduct: are there any villans?

 The philosopher Foucault puts forward the notion that sex and sexuality have had different understandings throughout history. When reading the history of sexuality, it therefore does not exist one history of sexuality, but a multitude of social discussions that are manifested in different ways. This is insight that have become important in my own project, since one of my main challenges is trying to remember that there such thing a villains within history but rather actors who tries to better society from their contemporary problems. 

One such example was my understanding of the victorian age before entering the project. I saw this age as an Other time, where sexuality were merely oppressed as the result of religious and morale doctrines. A couple of months ago I did what I usually do when entering a new project, I simply take a stroll on the library and tries to find monographs that works in the projects favor apart from utilizing tools such as Google Scholar. Whilst on this stroll I found a book named "Testiklarnas Herravälde" (The dominon of testicles) by Hjördis Levin. It is an old book from the 1980s but it still changed my conception of the reason as to why vice had become so important in 19th century. 

In the book Levin puts forward the notion that 19th century England and other parts of Europe had huge problem with forced sex workers. According to Levin the century saw a surge in sado-maschoistic practices at local bordellos. In this bordellos it became possible for men from the upper-classes to get whipped and thus loosing control from their otherwise well monitored life. On the other hand, these bordellos were however also the place for reinforcing the norms of the patriarchy with the men performing sadisctic sexual acts against the prostitutes. One of the most troublesome aspect where in this regard the mens obsessions with virginity, which led to the sexual explotation of minors. In these practices it was important that the girl screamed and suffered whilst making her "sexual debut" (I do not condone the use of the word virginity, but am alware that this is not the same thing as a voluntarily sexual debut). These practice became known through the article series "The maiden tribute of Modern Babylon" W.T Stead which describes a London full of human explotation of children and suffering. 



One of the outcomes of this article was that women and doctors started to organize against prostitution and explotaition of children. In some regard this was humanitarian effort, aiming to liberate the oppressed. However, the women also acted in self intrest due to the sexuality diseases which the men brougth home from the bordellos. Thereby the women risked gaining syphilis which also could transmit to their unborn children. In the end these organisations were according to Levin quite sucessfull, since they managed to launch a morale of sexuality built on vice. Thereby, the need to protect this vice came not only out of religious doctrines, but also the need to keep dangerous and inhumane sexual practices behind lock and bars. 

From this perspective it becomes hard to deny that even though the adversiaries towards sexual reform did oppress sexuality by evil intentions. Rather it shows us that they actually did so out for concern for both themselves and their fellow citizens. Therefore, we might need to talk about the need for balance in the history of sexuality: whilst it might be true that this history is filled of hereos, there are rather few villains.

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