Riotous Flesh

Women, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice in Nineteenth-Century America

April R. Haynes

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780226284620, 9780226284590
• eBook ISBN: 9780226284767
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Nineteenth-century America saw numerous campaigns against masturbation, which was said to cause illness, insanity, and even death. Riotous Flesh explores women's leadership of those movements, with a specific focus on their rhetorical, social, and political effects, showing how a desire to transform the politics of sex created unexpected alliances between groups that otherwise had very different goals.

As April R. Haynes shows, the crusade against female masturbation was rooted in a generally shared agreement on some major points: that girls and women were as susceptible to masturbation as boys and men; that "self-abuse" was rooted in a lack of sexual information; and that sex education could empower women and girls to master their own bodies. Yet the groups who made this education their goal ranged widely, from "ultra" utopians and nascent feminists to black abolitionists. Riotous Flesh explains how and why diverse women came together to popularize, then institutionalize, the condemnation of masturbation, well before the advent of sexology or the professionalization of medicine.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The Gender of Solitary Vice
• 2. Licentiousness in All Its Forms
• 3. Making the Conversation General
• 4. A Philosophy of Amative Indulgence
• 5. Flesh and Bones
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index