ABSTRACT
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the growth of a leisured middle class and the increasing emphasis on the domestic sphere as women's domain encouraged women to orient their social life towards home, church, child-rearing and visiting. It also afforded them the opportunity to develop close relationships with other women in similar circumstances. The Victorian campaign for female suffrage took as its rationale the idea that while women were similar to men in some respects, and there were fundamental differences between the sexes in experience. The historical debates about the nature of sexology and its effects on feminism highlight the contradictory ways new sexual discourses shaped early-twentieth-century Western sexual politics. When it was possible to see women as outside of sexuality they were able to turn this central tenet of Victorian culture into a radical critique of male sexuality and female oppression. Scientific theories brought female relationships into a new light, making them more vulnerable to medical and social regulation.
