The Fascinating Story of the Original Sexual Revolution

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What happened between 1650 and 1800? According to Dabhoiwala, the 1700s saw a “momentous ideological upheaval” when it came to the notion of sexual liberty. The Reformation permanently undermined the authority of religious leaders; if the Catholic Church was wrong about this or that point of faith, then couldn’t  any church also be wrong in its prohibitions against a particular activity or feeling? It was a shift, ultimately, from the belief that outside agencies ought to impose morality on citizens in order to protect the community as a whole from dangerously immoral behavior, to the idea that “public authorities had no business meddling in people’s personal consciences, and that this extended to their moral choices.”

These Enlightenment ideals infused the American Revolution and still animate our discussions of such issues as gay rights. But if they were embraced by many 18th-century intellectuals and wealthy men, they were problematic when it came to women, whom those men preferred to go on treating like property. At the same time, the blossoming of print media — from newspapers to broadsheets and pamphlets to books — gave women writers an unprecedented access to the conversation. They pointed out that women suffered the consequences of men’s sexual liberty, be it in the form of venereal disease, pregnancy or disgrace. From these and other contradiction sprang the relatively new notion that women “naturally” experience much less sexual desire than men and that an imbalance in the erotic economy is the intractable result of rapacious male lust and female sexual passivity.

It’s no surprise, then, that the same period saw a boom in prostitution, or that prostitutes and their fates became a widespread preoccupation. Once viewed as simply wicked, they were now commonly seen as the pitiable (if still sinful) victims of male seducers. A particularly valuable aspect of “The Origins of Sex” is its treatment of the element of class in this equation. Feeling entitled to sexual pleasure when they could get it, high-status men often considered servants and other working-class women as their rightful prey, whether the women were willing or not. The motif of female virtue under assault by a male libertine became the predominant theme of the first English novels; Samuel Richardson’s “Pamela,” for instance, depicts a virginal maid’s heroic resistance to the overtures of her employer.

Meanwhile, the emergence of the first real mass media made celebrities out of fashionable courtesans like Kitty Fisher, whose doings, outfits and witty remarks were avidly covered by the press. When Fisher fell off her horse and was aided by a “gallant” in a London park, the incident was recounted in engravings and humorous verse. The term “pornography,” or “the writings of prostitutes,” emerged at this time because many of these women wrote and published their own accounts of their lives and loves. (And sometimes they made a little on the side by taking bribes from customers who wanted their names left out.)

The Enlightenment was a complex social and philosophical phenomenon and of course the old views of sexual morality never entirely went away. Yet, as Dabhoiwala observes, in general the Western conception of sexuality as something uniquely personal, a key element of one’s identity and a matter of private, rather than public conscience, was born in the 1700s. It has changed far less in the three centuries that followed than it did in that 100-year span. “The Origins of Sex” tracks that momentous shift up to the beginning of the Victorian era. It’s a hugely ambitious book, and one that makes few concessions to, say, the popular appetite for histories constellated around personalities (like Stephen Greenblatt’s “Swerve”). But Dabhoiwala’s writing is lively, his reasoning rigorous and his respect for facts exemplary. And his story is irresistible, a portrait not only of a revolution in sex, but a revolution in the way we view ourselves and our place in the world.