Women, Gender, And Sexuality Studies WGSS 240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Heterosexuality, Sexual Intercourse
13 Sep 2016
School
Department
Professor
Document Summary
3:03 pm: claim that marriage is disintegrating under the impact of the machine age. Technological development drove men and women apart by separating home from work. Husband and wife had few common interests to bind them together. Both sexes internalized mechanical values, so they became cold rather than compassionate: state uses marriage as an index to the state of the union, manuals urged modern husbands and wives to eroticize their differences. Mutual sexual pleasure was indispensable to a successful marriage. Strong marriages = strong nation: normal people had to have erotic self-control and sensitivity. Agrarian world was shared work and made people feel connected. Machine world is impersonal and self-seeking: frontier couple always white. Right to marriage only available to white people in the nineteenth century: modern frontier couple implicitly white. Explained how to run one"s emotional and sexual life.
