Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science: The History of Attitudes to Sexuality

This article discusses the term erotology, which was applied to medieval Islamicate ‘ilm al-bah (the science of coitus), as well as other world traditions of sexual knowledge, by European sexologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who contrasted it with their own forms of inquiry into sexual matters in the modern field of sexual science. It argues that the homogenisation and minimisation of all ancient and non-European forms of medical knowledge about sex, even one as substantial as the ‘ilm al-bah tradition, supported a particular story about the origins of sexology's own emergence as a new and unprecedented biomedical and scientific way of knowing, characterised by an opposition assumed between sexuality and religion, by a view of sexual variations as perversions or pathologies, and by a view of Arabs and Muslims as sexually excessive. The article focusses on French, English, German, Austrian, and Italian sources of the 19th century that discussed the history of sexual medicine, relating these accounts to recent attempts to historicise sexology. It considers how forms of colonial hierarchy and exoticist views of non-European cultures impacted the dismissal of ‘ilm al-bah among European sexual scientists and how they may continue to exert an influence on forms of modern historical inquiry that are not attentive to scholarship on medieval Islamicate sexual medicine.

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A Review of “Geschichte der Sexualwissenschaft (History of Sexual Science)”

Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy ◽

10.1080/00926230903577728 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 36 (2) ◽

pp. 176-179

Author(s):

Brunhild Kring

Keyword(s):

Sexual Science ◽

History Of

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Private Acts/Public Policy: Alfred Kinsey, the American Law Institute and the Privatization of American Sexual Morality

Journal of American Studies ◽

10.1017/s0021875800024889 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 30 (3) ◽

pp. 405-428 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

David Allyn

Keyword(s):

Sexual Behavior ◽

Historical Analysis ◽

Sexual Revolution ◽

Sexual Morality ◽

Social Scientists ◽

Sexual Science ◽

American Law ◽

History Of ◽

The Way ◽

Alfred Kinsey

Alfred Kinsey has long been recognized for his crucial role in the history of American sexual science. Kinsey's massive studies of American sexual behavior changed the way social scientists studied sexuality by breaking from the accepted social hygienic, psychoanalytic, psychiatric and physiological approaches. Scholars have noted that Kinsey's efforts paved the way for the work of Masters and Johnson and contributed to a postwar climate of “openness” about sexual behavior. In effect, Kinsey's studies signaled the final triumph of scientific candor over the nineteenth century “conspiracy of silence.” Furthermore, Kinsey's quantitative approach advanced what Paul Robinson has called the “modernization of sex,” and Kinsey's discussion of homosexuality inspired both the homophile movement of the 1950's and the anti-homosexual moral panic of the same decade. Yet for all of Kinsey's significance, his part in shaping the social policies of the 1950's and the “sexual revolution” of the 1960's has received surprisingly little historical analysis.

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