Sex, Reality, and the State (Via Clasically Liberal)
Mar 28th, 2025 by Jessica Gold Haralson
From the blog Classically Liberal:
Below is an interesting press release from the University of Leeds. A new Ph.D. thesis by Jenny Skipp “examined, catalogued and categorised every known erotic text in eighteenth-century Britain.” Ms. Skipp was rather surprised to discover how vast a quantity of pornography was circulating in England at that time.
Not only was there a huge amount of it but it was far more widely available and consumed than previously known. As the University press release notes, “much of this work was cheap and widely available.” It was not restricted to just the upper classes as was widely assumed in the past (an assumption I myself have held erroneously before as well).
I find this interesting because the more fields I study the more I am convinced that the the bulk of Westerners (Americans in particular but not exclusively) have been rather wrong about many assumptions regarding sexuality. It is a myth of a gigantic proportions to assume that past Western generations were generally chaste and somewhat puritanical. That has never been the case. Even in Puritanical Massachusetts, under the Pilgrim, there was widespread debauchery. Enough to make the local bishop blush especially when he wasn’t directly involved.
Fundamentalist Christians, who in reality are very guilt ridden about sex and very anti-sexual (despite protestations to the contrary), have claimed that their view of sexuality was the dominant one and that in the 1960s evil “liberals” came along with the “sexual revolution” and introduced “Godless immorality” to the West. Having grown up with those people, and attending their schools, one thing I quickly realized is that if you were to assume the opposite of everything they say you have a very high chance of being right. They bamboozle themselves and others.
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