Fern Riddell

Coming at this as someone who has an interest in gender and sexuality but has not studied it academically, I found Riddell’s approach to the history of sex and sexuality to be eye opening. Using repeated examples throughout the book Riddle debunked my attitude towards Victorian sensibilities and laid out the fact that we are not as modern in our attitudes as we think we are. Her focus on LGBT aspect of history was also a welcome relief when our stories are often a footnote in other books or left out all together.

The themed chapters worked well – as much as they can when trying to outline a long complicated history – I particularly liked her chapters on Contraception, and Sex Work. Both areas deal with the policing of women’s bodies in one way or another and reading this you can see how our current attitudes developed. Her chapter on Rape was again eye-opening and depressing in how the legitimacy of rape claims are often weighted on ‘respectability’ of the women involved irrespective of the era.

I found the final chapter on The Future of Sex somewhat jarring and quite negative to begin with compared to previous chapters but it becomes evident that this is deliberate – perhaps a warning shot that we must learn from our history in order to forge a brighter future.

All told I would highly recommend for this an enjoyable and enlightening delve into our past.… (mehr)

Sexuality is learnt?

I think sexuality is learnt, in a sense. For example, you hear stories of brothers and sisters growing up apart, meeting as adults and being sexually attracted to each other. Brothers and sisters growing up together generally aren't sexually attracted to each other. (Yes, it does occasionally happen, I know; vide Eça de Queiroz’s “Os Maias”. Is this because we know the "rules" and unconsciously adapt our behaviour to comply with them? Would more people be attracted to the same sex if no-one had ever taught them that generally people are supposed to be attracted only to the opposite sex? The society that you live in tells you how to behave sexually, and you choose how to behave within those mores. There are broad 'rules' e.g. in the Western world it is usual to be monogamous, and cheating is frowned upon, and in a narrower sense current fashion dictates that young people tend to shave their pubes. The majority of people in Portugal don't object to homosexuality; in many other countries it is a punishable crime, and the majority in those countries will probably agree with that. Sexuality as a social concept changes over time, and as such sexual attitudes are learnt by each generation, in whatever form it is in their time. Evolutionary psychology is what explains why men can have erections when just being read to about sexual scenes? Or that it is the only explanation for why women (and men) have any feelings of care and love towards their children? Or why infants focus on their parents more than on others?

Not making any excuses for men behaving like arseholes: whatever evolutionary psychology tells us about our evolutionary inheritance, it is no reason for us men not to be completely on board with feminism, intersectionality and so on. I try, but I at least recognise that at times it goes against what I might call "instinctive" notions, but isn't that what morality is about? Knowing what you want to do, but doing something moral instead? It is peculiarly human, and I love it, but it is not the point that this book and its author is making.

We might want to define what is meant by "sexuality" before we start laughing about how somebody has used the word. That the definition of sexuality is not clearly and uniquely defined might indicate that it is conceptually not very clear. It could mean, for example, how we have sex or that we have sex depending on context (although I still believe that the dominant meaning is related to how.) Do you express yourself the same way when you walk as when you have sex? Because if you having sex and walking are for you functionally similar you probably have a very prosaic sex life or perhaps you walk a lot. The way a person walks is a beacon of their sexiness or a shroud drawn over it. They're intimately connected. Our arses and crotches are right there in the middle of the walk - the arch and suspension of it, whether hunched and hidden or slippy and slinky.

I do believe sexuality is learnt as I’ve said above. Sexuality is what describes our whole sexual behaviour, and humans are animals who learn how to behave (or are taught). The sexual need, the urge, that is one thing, which is the physiological need for sex to happen, you could call it the need for penetrative sex. But beyond that, we have developed a series or sexual rituals, craves and needs that are psychological in nature and that is where sexuality kicks in. Sexuality dictates what's taboo, what's acceptable, what's kinky, what turns off and what turns on. Sexuality is that complex mechanism that controls and regulates sex beyond it's mechanical in and out frictions. And it is learnt.

Looking forward to Dominatrix the Gaul next.… (mehr)

Reads a bit too much like someone's dissertation rather than a historian's analysis of Kitty Marion and the violent acts of the suffragists. It's filled with extensive quotes and paraphrasing of Marion's unpublished memoirs, as well as rants about the lack of historical examination of both suffragette violence and the early birth-control movement that seems to show the author's research to have been rather sketchy in these areas. It's worth reading but I would much have preferred the author to just have published the actual memoir.… (mehr)

This is a really accessible account of one woman's militant career in the suffrage movement in the UK, how she got there and what she did next. Kitty Marion wasn't anyone's idea of a stereotypical campaigner: she was an actress, born in Germany and in her forties by the time the campaign ended in 1914. Her life offers a detailed insight into the different motivations women brought to the suffrage movement, and the way in which personal relationships were so important to all those involved. Kitty bombed buildings, went on hunger strike and (by her own account) even saw Emily Wilding Davison trampled by the King's horse. Yet in later years, Riddell suggests, her memories were edited out by suffrage leaders, more interested in preserving a version of events which stressed the movement's focus on avoiding hurting individuals. Here it is more luck than judgement that more people weren't seriously hurt or killed by the bombs. They may also have wished to distance themselves from her work in the 1920s campaigning with Margaret Sanger for birth control.
"It was Kitty's experience as a suffragette, in combination with her experiences as a music hall actress, that pushed her not to reject birth control but to embrace it. She was one of the earliest sex-positive feminists; she understood how power could be abused, but she also acknowledged that not every sexual relationship or encounter was about a power imbalance. In a world so often concerned with black and white - men bad, women good - Kitty and others like her saw all the many shades of grey. Women's enjoyment of sex should never be a threat to their independence. It should never be something that resulted in their abuse or manipulation. But Kitty's connection to the birth control movement and her refusal to shy away from the actions she had carried out on the orders of the WSPU was clearly viewed by middle-class suffragettes as so damaging as to compel those who created the suffragette legacy to ignore or abandon her story."
I got a bit annoyed by some sections where Riddell employs 'she must have felt' style (eg when Marion is waiting for the police to arrest her) to fill in the gaps when there is not a record of how she felt. For me the story was powerful enough without this. However, a relatively minor quibble in a book which has a lot to offer in terms of thinking about how the history of suffrage militancy continues to be discussed, particularly in terms of attitudes to women's sexual relationships, and is written in an engaging way that connects Kitty Marion's experience to #MeToo and other campaigns for equality.… (mehr)