SOC 633 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Sexual Repression, Heterosexuality
8 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
The idea of heterosexuality is a modern invention, dating to the late 19th century. Before heterosexuality: early victorian true love (1820-1860) start of the 19th century. Middle-class white americans idealized a true womanhood, true manhood, and true love, all. The heterosexual did not exist characterized by purity the freedom from sensuality. Presented mainly in literary and religious texts, this true love was a fine romance. Early victorian true love was only realized within the mode of proper procreation, marriage, the legal organization for producing a new set of correctly gendered women and men. The actors in this sexual economy were identified as manly men and womanly women and as procreators, not specifically as erotic beings or heterosexuals. True women/men were defined by their distance from lust, though men were thought to live closer to carnality and be in less control of it. No hetero-erotic desire was thought to be directed exclusively and naturally toward the other sex.
