It always seems that there is something wrong with sexuality through the course of time (I sort of exclude the Greco-Roman era in my mind because I appreciate the idea of sex being used as a form of power-mongering). In the Victorian age, many laws were created against illegitimacy. During the Industrial Revolution, the gap between the rich and poor was expanded and many women had to go into prostitution to stay alive (at one point there were 60,000 prostitutes). Increased population growth and unmanageable crime didn’t seem to help the situation. So of course the government created extremely biased laws that disabled more women—especially women who had children out of wedlock. Bastard children were entirely the woman’s responsibility and were considered menaces to society.
If the situation wasn’t already unfair enough, men were granted forgiveness for sexual misdemeanors. The double standard of male heterosexuality existed then: this double standard is that if men have a lot of sex, he is considered a stud; however, if women have a lot of sex, she is considered a promiscuous slut. In Victorian England, men were excused for sexual lapses of judgment—these were termed “twilight moments”.
It’s very typical for heternormative Victorian England to label any sort of “outside” abnormal sexuality as “foreign”, but it’s just funny that they refer to the . That may have an influence on why homosexual males have such a flamboyant and wild; then again, that may just be a French stereotype. However, I appreciate the development of the secret culture of the gay men: signals and indicators and Molly houses. Unsurprisingly enough, homosexual men were also lumped in with promiscuous women as the cause of economic and social decline.
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