The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution by Faramerz Dabhoiwala (review)

Faramerz Dabhoiwala's new book, The Origins of Sex, claims that the eighteenth century witnessed the "first sexual revolution." He argues that until that time, churches, the state, and local communities imposed a strict sexual discipline. Then, the breakdown of religious authority during the course of the seventeenth century, and the rise of religious toleration, led to an appreciation of sexual pleasure. Enlightenment thinkers such as Hume and Mandeville criticized the traditional basis for morality and saw sexual pleasure as a private matter or, even in Mandeville's case, as a public good. Scientific thinking also enabled people to question the biblical basis for sexual morality.

In reaction to this, Dabhoiwala points out, societies for the reformation of vice tried to fill in the gaps left by the decline of the church courts to police the streets of London and harass prostitutes and men who had sex with men. He demonstrates that they set a precedent for professionalized policing, and at the same time, he shows that these very professionals blackmailed their targets. Such efforts at reinstating morality failed. The percentage of births out of wedlock (and in wedlock) skyrocketed. Dabhoiwala argues without any evidence that this may have been because there were many middle-class bachelors impregnating poor women—this is a myth that has long since been exploded.

He points out that the celebration of sexual pleasure was only by and for middle-and upper-class white heterosexual men. Increasingly, the older view of women as lustful temptresses was being replaced by a newer view of women as less sexual and more pure; seduced women and prostitutes were regarded as led astray by evil men. This is one of the best chapters, discussing in detail the rise and changes in the Magdalen Institutions that were supposed to reform penitent fallen women. He is particularly interesting on the class divisions within these institutions; in the London Magdalen, separate wings were built for formerly genteel fallen women, former servants, and the insolent and refractory prostitutes. His analysis of cases from the Dublin Magdalen Asylum is fascinating.

The attention to the subtle dynamics of female sexuality is not matched by his discussion of same-sex relations. He says that in libertine circles "it was possible" to think of the "essential innocuousness" of same-sex relations, but does not take into consideration libertine John Wilkes's ferocious hostility to sodomites; he discusses at length the justifications for same-sex desire from Thomas Cannon and Jeremy Bentham but only briefly mentions that Cannon was prosecuted and Bentham never published his thoughts. Not enough weight is not given to the intense prosecution of men who had sex with other men that paralleled the rise of urban subcultures.

Dabhoiwala mentions Thomas Laqueur's provocative hypothesis on the social construction of the medical knowledge about sex, and the debate over the notion that women needed to have an orgasm to conceive. But he does not discuss medical attitudes further than that. The distribution of the popular sex education tract Aristotle's Masterpiece in its many versions would certainly have buttressed his argument since it celebrated female sexual pleasure as essential to fertility. Nor does he mention the many tracts warning against masturbation. This is odd considering one of his main points is that the spread of print culture also spread sexual information and created sexual celebrities.

Overall, Dabhoiwala is correct that religious toleration and Enlightenment attitudes toward rational thinking led to more and more discussion of sexual pleasure as positive and natural. The book is highly readable and boasts impressive research, but Dabhoiwala does not engage in the great theoretical debates about sexuality. In an effort to make the book more popular, he overemphasizes this argument and does not give enough balance to the dynamics of sexual freedom and sexual discipline.