The long sexual revolution English women, sex, and contraception, 1800-1975 - Cook, Hera (Oxford University Press, 2004)
Includes bibliographical references and index
pt. I: Inventing contraception. Birth rates and women's bodies : reproductive labour -- "Nature is a blind dirty old toad" : the withdrawal method -- "Conferring a premium on the destruction of female morals" : fertility control and sexuality in the early to mid-nineteenth century -- "One man is as good as another in that respect" : women and sexual abstinence -- Mastering the sexual self : contraception and sexuality, 1890s-1950s -- "Physical 'open secrets'" : hygiene, masturbation, bowel control, and abstinence -- pt. II: Sexuality and sex manuals. English sexuality in the twentieth century : ignorance, silence, and gendered sexual cultures -- "The wonderful tides" : sexual emotion and sexual ignorance in the 1920s -- "The spontaneous feeling of shame" : masturbation and Freud, 1930-1940 -- "Thought control" : conjugal rights and vaginal orgasms, 1940s-1960s -- "The vagina, too, responds" : vaginal orgasms, clitoral masturbation, feminism, and sex research, 1920-1975 -- pt. III: The English sexual revolution. Sexual pleasure, contraception, and fertility decline -- "Truly it felt like year one" : the English sexual revolution -- Population control or "sex on the rates"? : political change, 1955-1975 -- "A car or a wife?" : the northern European marriage system and the sexual revolution -- Conclusion: Living through changing sexual mores -- Appendix A: Analysis of the sex manual authors -- Appendix B: List of sex manual authors
Hera Cook traces the path of sexuality in England, and shows how its route was determined by the gradual exertion of control over fertility