Date: 2003-10-19 04:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tyrsalvia.livejournal.com
It's sorta a joke. It's pretty solidly based on things that were serious in the Victorian era, but for today's women, it is meant as a joke.

Date: 2003-10-19 04:29 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] naath.livejournal.com
It was true in it's day (as in, actuall advice) these days everyone 'knows better'. Then again, I don't like sex. So I would agree with the statement... if I was forced to marry someone I would be dreading having to have sex with them.

Date: 2003-10-19 04:36 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] naath.livejournal.com
Victorians weren't, on the whole, pro empowerment.

But yes, it is a bad thing to tell young girls that 'sex is nasty'. Though, if you convinced them of it then they wouldn't go arround *having* it so much and there would be fewer pregnant teens and less of an STD problem.

Date: 2003-10-19 05:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bummble.livejournal.com
That's like saying anorexia is a good thing because it limits the chances of getting food poisoning.

Date: 2003-10-19 07:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] naath.livejournal.com
Yes. But on the other hand you *need* food to remain alive and healthy. You don't *need* sex to remain alive and healthy, allthough people enjoy having it, it isn't necessary.

Date: 2003-10-19 08:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bummble.livejournal.com
Also true. :-)
Although my health in certain areas (hormonal, etc) is a lot better when I do have a regular sex life (involving someone other than myself, that is....).

Date: 2003-10-19 11:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] futile-efforts.livejournal.com
i don't think that lying to people is a good way to prevent teenage pregnancy and std's.

Date: 2003-10-20 02:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] naath.livejournal.com
I don't think saying that 'some people don't like sex' is lying. Infact, I think the prevelent attitude that 'sex is great, everyone likes sex and it is allways wonderfull' is lying to people. Though, no, I would not advocate telling young people that sex isn't fun just to stop them having it.

Date: 2003-10-19 07:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] isolt.livejournal.com
It can be empowering if marriage, sex, and childbearing are an inescapably expected part of your life. If you don't really want to have children, or at the very least don't want to become a broodmare (since reliable birth control existed at the time, but was quite illegal and taboo), a fear of sex might really be a handy way to take control over your own body. It's known that Victorian women did a lot to limit their childbearing.

Err, see my comment further down the thread. It explains it better. :)

Date: 2003-10-19 04:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pillu.livejournal.com
In its day this was not a joke. It was very serious advice, and nearly every "good" girl would have been given a copy of this before she married. Sex was deemed dirty and horrible by "good" girls back in the victorian era. They didn't understand back then that women had libidos and sex wasn't a horrible thing that had to be "endured". And as for now-a-days, a lot of married women still follow this advice heh. you have the huneymoon period, then you get sex when she feels like it.

Date: 2003-10-19 05:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yafah.livejournal.com
well, maybe it was meant in the way the other posters have described, but also maybe it was to make girls feel better about not wanting to have sex with their husbands. especially young girls who married guys over twice their age that they didn't even like or feel attracted to. i mean, how is a girl to feel if she is expected to not only has to take care of the children and maintain the household but also fulfill the sexual delights of a man she didn't choose/doesn't want?

although i'm sure there were instances where women ended up with men they wanted, and in that case it sucks that they got this kind of message.

Date: 2003-10-19 05:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ink-smudge-smut.livejournal.com
http://www.snopes.com/weddings/newlywed/advice.htm

Date: 2003-10-19 06:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bummble.livejournal.com
Oh good!
Thanks.

hmmm

Date: 2003-10-19 09:33 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cityrah.livejournal.com
"In 1996, a Seattle ombudsman was fired by the city council after forwarding it to a female co-worker."

Date: 2003-10-19 07:24 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] isolt.livejournal.com
Actually, fear of sex on the part of women was rampant in the Victorian period, the reasons for which were twofold:

1) A quite reasonable fear of mortality from pregnancy: There was a period after doctors had pretty much put the midwives out of business, but before they really knew what they were doing (i.e., knew nothing about hygiene because germ theory wasn't around/was slow to take hold), and consequently mortality rates during pregnancy/birth were *very* high.

2) A desire to limit childbearing (for reasons other than fear of mortality during pregnancy). It's known from demographic figures that women began to quite drastically reduce family sizes throughout the 19th century, a trend that also, with the exception of the aberrant 1950s, continued throughout the 20th and now into the 21st.

So, on the one hand, this fear of sex looks horrible and patriarchal, etc, etc. On the other hand, one might also say that women feared sex because they wanted more control over their own bodies, and this was how it manifested itself in a not remotely feminist society.

It should also be noted that women *frequently* had relationships with other women (old school friends and such) that we absolutely in this day and age would have considered lesbian, although at the time they were considered admirably deep friendships, which seems to confirm the idea that the fear wasn't so much of sex or sexuality as it was specifically of procreative sex.

Date: 2003-10-19 07:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mactavish.livejournal.com
http://www.snopes.com/weddings/newlywed/advice.htm (note the date, too -- 1894)

Date: 2003-10-19 09:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] circumspectly.livejournal.com
it said right above it: The following is a reprint of the Madison Institute Newsletter, Fall 1894:

in 1894, those were the prevailing attitudes of the time. today it is ludicrous.

Date: 2003-10-19 10:32 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lindsey-nichole.livejournal.com
If you scroll all the way down it says that it's from 1894, or it could be replicating something similiar.

Thank God times have changed.

Date: 2003-10-19 11:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] infiniteblue25.livejournal.com
i saw this a few years ago and have been seraching for it evr since.. THANKS FOR POSTING it!!!

Date: 2003-10-19 06:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] drowningjuliet.livejournal.com
is there any chance you could forward this to me?
pistol_please@hotmail.com
i know its a lot to ask, but i want to read it. and i'm at boarding school and i cant get to the website because the filter thinks it is porn :\

Date: 2003-10-20 05:38 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] silvertigress.livejournal.com
LMAO. it was written in 1863

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