Produire, diffuser et contester les savoirs sur le sexe. Une sociohistoire de la sexualité dans la Genève des années 1970 by Sylvie Burgnard (review)

Sylvie Burgnard’s work is situated at the intersection of history and sociology. She puts forward an analysis of knowledge about sexuality at a given time – the 1970s – and place: Romandy, or the French-speaking part of Switzerland, specifically, the city of Geneva. Her analysis is based on public and private archives as well as medical publications, women’s magazines of the time, and a few interviews. She set out to account for four distinct types of discourse on sexuality: sexology, sex education, family planning (in Switzerland, the relevant institution was the Cifern, Centre d’information familiale et de regulation des naissances [Centre for family information and birth regulation]) and activist discourses, both feminist and gay. The first part focuses on the emergence of sexology in this part of Switzerland. Studies of sexuality developed timidly at first and were grounded in gynaecology and psychiatry. But sexology in Geneva was launched by an unexpected event. In 1970, a private citizen named Maurice Chalumeau bequeathed over two million Swiss francs for the creation of a sexology institute in the hope that its researchers would be able to scientifically “legitimate” homosexuality. In fact, the research thus subsidized quickly came to centre on sex in heterosexual couples. The aim was to determine the “proper” sexuality and to encourage it. In terms of practice, this was defined primarily as coitus between spouses; couples were told to avoid abortion, etc. This choice of “legitimate” research subjects enabled the actors in this field to legitimate themselves. Meanwhile, types of sexuality considered “pathological” (homosexuality, sex between young people or between old people, etc.) and that had once between studied medically were gradually neglected.

Brugnard then turns to family planning at the Cifern, particularly the issues of abortion and contraception. She shows how that institution’s vision centred once again on the couple and the promotion of a certain family ideal that had to be preserved. Clearly the institute was not in tune with women’s contemporaneous demands for “freedom” and an improvement in the female condition. One of the Centre’s missions was to keep abortions to a minimum (though the procedure was legal under some conditions), and contraception was understood as a tool for “responsible” couples only. Young women who came to the Centre of their own volition seeking information on contraception for “preventive” purposes were met with astonishment. Here again, the couple, not sexuality, was at the centre of this discourse, especially as the Cifern soon adopted a psychosocial perspective.

The author then turns to sex education, gradually institutionalized from the 1960s to the 1980s. Here the point was to make adolescents aware of their “individual responsibility”, a 180-degree turn from the view at the start of the century emphasizing concern for the community. Sex education classes did present contraception methods (again in the framework of the couple) and the mechanisms of reproduction; no mention was made of pleasure. As the author points out, “sex education in no way derived from the dissident movements that arose out of ’68 or were in favour of ‘sexual liberation’, nor from 1970s feminist battles”. Rather it represented an attempt to limit the effects of such social change, emphasizing as it did both fundamental differences between men and women and the centrality of the couple, put forward as a “prerequisite” to any sexual experience.

In the last part of the book, Burgnard switches perspectives, turning to discourses aimed not to maintain and regulate the social order but to subvert it; i.e., feminist and gay activist discourses. In those discourses, sexuality appears not as a drive to be controlled but rather a social construction...