Sex and the gender revolution /

Those who have waited long for the appearance of Trumbach's book will not be disappointed. In brief, he argues that a profound alteration in gender relations took place in Western societies during the early 18th century. Before 1700, most males engaged in sexual relations with both women and adolescent boys, but this began to change in the 1690s. By the first decades of the Georgian age, men who desired male sexual partners were presumed to belong only to an effeminate minority. Male identity came to be bound up with an exclusive heterosexuality that deprecated sodomy and found expression in adultery, the use of female prostitutes, and violence in marriage. The book is certain to ignite even more controversy in an already contentious field, but whether Trumbach's thesis prevails or not, his work sets a standard for writing the history of human sexuality. He avoids both the obscurantism of the "queer theorists" and the abstruse sociological jargon that have bedeviled segments of gender research since its inception. At the same time he presents the most complex and sophisticated theoretical concepts in language accessible to scholars and educated general readers alike. Upper-division undergraduates and above. B. R. Burg Arizona State University

Attempting to explain the formation of modern sexual identities, Trumbach (The Rise of the Egalitarian Family) offers a theory of how "heterosexual identity" was produced in the 18th century. He attributes it to the rise of the "Molly," a man exclusively interested in sex with other men, who first emerged in 18th-century London. Previously, he argues, it was normal and acceptable for London men to have sexual relations with both boys and women. After the Molly, Trumbach contends, most men (but not women) reorganized their sexual behavior to demonstrate their heterosexuality. Unfortunately, Trumbach never quite makes the abundance of evidence he marshals speak for this theory. Despite a too-brief section on accusations of sodomy, he never links his many long case studies (based on legal records) of the sexual histories of prostitutes, adulteresses and abandoned wives to his theorized changes in male sexual behavior. And while he insists that the "new heterosexuality" was a primary cause of prostitution, he never establishes that prostitution was any less widespread in earlier periods. Trumbach's book will be useful as a source of empirical information for scholars, but it fails to synthesize the material well enough to appeal to a broader audience, or to become a definitive study. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Trumbach (History/CUNY Graduate Center) ventures to scrutinize the sexual practices of 18th-century Londoners, drawing provocative conclusions from statistical analysis of hundreds of documents, from divorce proceedings to newspaper articles. Trumbach regards the early 1700s as the beginning of a dramatic revolution in sexuality that would affect the distribution of gender roles throughout the modern period. Advancing a controversial but well-substantiated view that heterosexuality and homosexuality are to a large extent social constructs, he traces opposing sexual identities to common origins in the Hellenic world and medieval Europe. Until the 18th century, Trumbach maintains, sodomy was a common part of sexual experience, especially in adolescence, and coming of age meant also a boy's transition to sex primarily with women. At the turn of the 18th century, however, sodomites emerged as a third gender outside the accepted norm. With homosexuals an ostracized minority, additional pressure mounted for men to aggressively assert their heterosexuality, which they did in part through prostitutes, illicit relationships with unmarried girls, and domestic violence. Trumbach pictures women as direct victims of this new male heterosexuality. Among the most outrageous examples of such abuse, he cites cases of men who contracted venereal disease in a whorehouse, infected their wives, and then sought to overcome the disease by raping a prepubescent girl (sex with a virgin was a widespread folk cure for such ailments). Young women who became pregnant out of wedlock found themselves disgraced and relegated to the fringes of society. By the end of the century, however, more and more women began to imitate the male sexual libertinism around them, as demonstrated by an increase in the number of divorces arising after adultery on the part of the wife. A study full of insights that will nevertheless likely remain a reference tool for social and cultural scholars, as it contains more detail about the residents of 18th-century London than the average reader would care to absorb. (3 maps)