lissa – right on! You are obviously more informed than I am.
Help me out here, kids. Wasn’t there a stir some years ago about letters from Eleanor Roosevelt to a female friend? Sounded sexy, but were just the style of the times?
Yes there was. Her letters to Lorena Hickock, a reporter who followed her and reported on her day-to-day activities, can raise eyebrows today. “I wish I could lie down beside you tonight & take you in my arms,” she wrote. Hickock wrote to Eleanor: “Only eight more days . . . Most clearly I remember your eyes, with a kind of teasing smile in them, and the feeling of that soft spot just north-east of the corner of your mouth against my lips . . .” Eleanor wrote on Hicock’s birthday: “Hick darling . . . Oh, I want to put my arms around you. I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and think she does love me, or I wouldn’t be wearing it.”
Blance Wessen Cook, author of a two-volume biography of Eleanor is pretty blunt about letting readers know that she believes a lesbian relationship did exist between the two women, but, of course, there’s no way of proving it now, one way or the other.
In the Saga of Gisli, one character slanders his enemies by commissioning a statue of them, “with one standing close behind the other.”
I think it’s much simpler that that. It’s from that basic human instinct that:
“You are different / a minority / strange to me, therefore I must persecute / hate / minimize you”
Someone once said that all evil begins with a lack of empathy. History shows that we destroy things that are different from us, our beliefs, or the majority.
Just my 2 cents.
Daylon
Perhaps one factor, also, is the tendency to think of all touching and affection as sexual. People weren’t oblivious to sex and sexuality, but in recent decades advertisers and motion picture directors have served up so many doses of “sex is happening here” presentations that I believe we think “sex” whenever we see anything pertaining to bodies or touching or affectionate gestures, or more so than was the case before.
Oh, golly, AHunter3, I think you’ve got it! Remember that little boy who was kicked out of pre-school for “sexual harrassment” when he kissed the little girl??? But then female Air Force cadets are disciplined for reporting rape! We really are sending mixed messages.
My favorite sex thing (to read about, not to do) is the Victorian bit about it being improper to sit in a chair just vacated by a member of the opposite sex. I’m sure Lissa can tell us more about this. Edith Wharton is also a wonderful source for Victorian/Edwardian aberrations of this sort.
I’d like to know if Lissa agrees with me that we are the most sexually aware, or self-conscious (obsessed) modern society since the Victorians. And I mean that in a bad way.
Male and femal “spheres” were much more seperated in the Victorian era. Actually, chairs were sex-segregated. A “ladies’” chair was lower to the ground than the men’s, and had low or no arm rests at all. The back of a ladies’ chair also sloped backwards more than a man’s because when a lady sat in a chair, her back was never supposed to rest against the back of the chair. Men’s chairs were more “throne-like” and comfy. (The concept was along the lines of “king of the castle.”)
Men and women did not socialize freely as they do today. A man could not “call” on a married woman; he could only officially visit with her husband. Nor could a lady call on a man. In social situations, ladies and gentlemen met for dinner or dancing, but then seperated according to gender. The ladies would go into the parlor for tea and gossip, and the men would go into the den for cigars and brandy. Courtship rituals also dictated that the couple not be completely alone with one another until the ring was safely on the bride’s finger.
The Victorians were prudish, but not quite as bad as we sometimes think. The British teased us a bit for our straight-laced manners at the time. (Some scholars have speculated that America’s youth as a nation led to behavior becoming “super-refined” to prove that we were indeed civilized.) The antecdote about the lady making pantalettes for her table legs actually originated in a book written by a Bristish lady tourist who was making fun of American manners. (The Victorian Americans really just loved lacy fabric and covered every inch of furniture with it.)
I have even heard that sex-segregation extended to some library’s shelving practices, but can’t fully verify it. One tale I have heard said that a certain library would not shelve books by ladies next to those by men unless the authors were married.
Of course, some terms did become taboo, such as “leg” and “breast” even when referring to chicken parts. (Which is where we get the terms “white meat” and “dark meat” when referring to poultry.) There was actually a “Family Bible” published which deleted all of the juicy parts and substituted “naughty” words for more appropriate ones, like “leg” into “limb.”
Bodily functions and sex were also forbidden subjects. The Victorians felt that sexual innocence should also include sexual ignorance (which probably led to a lot of surprised brides on their wedding nights.) There was complete denial in some sectors that women even had sexual urges. One prominant doctor wrote a book that most women are “thankfully unbothered by sexual desires.” A proper lady was instructed by books on marriage that she should just submit passively. Passion was for tramps and whores. I have actually seen letters which women wrote expressing concern and panic about enjoying sex with their husbands. Were they hussies? they wondered.
Bodily functions were actually somewhat of a problem for Victorian ladies. (Try peeing while wearing six or more layers of clothing.) Ladies’ pantalettes were crotchless to try to facilitate nature’s call, but most ladies were too embarassed to excuse themselves to use the outhouse. This led to severe urinary problems in some women. Doctors wrote books complaining about women harming their urinary systems because of modesty.
The denial of female sexuality is one reason why it wasn’t seen as odd for women to have passionate friendships which involved kissing and caresses. They weren’t expressing sexual feelings because everyone knew that they didn’t have any to begin with.
(Of course, prudishness and ettiquette mainly applied to the well-off. The poor couldn’t afford the “manners” of the rich.)
To some extent, yes. We have become much more open about sex, but unfortunately, we’ve made it “dirty” and shocking. When compared with the ease and naturalness of the European attitude toward sex, we seem like a bunch of fourteen-year-old boys snickering in the locker room. I also tend to think that our attitudes toward sex contribute in a way to our rates of sexual violence.
It’s always been my opinion that we never truly shed the Victorian attitudes and taboos of sex. The 1920s and 1960s were cultural efforts to shed ourselves of that prudishness, but wars and economic turmoil pushed us back into conservatism.
Lissa – this old Eng. Lit. major could hang with you all day. Have we strayed too far from the OP? Maybe.
Homophobia is probably more rampant/obvious/violent in a society that not only acknowledges everyone’s sexuality but is open talkative about it. The other night a friend (nice woman, not a jerk) & I were idly watching ice skating on tv & chatting. When a male skater appeared, she asked casually, “Is the Russian still bonking the widow? Do you know?”
Undoubtedly she’d have made the same kind of off-hand, non-judgemental remark about a gay athlete’s affair. It’s the open acceptance of these things that gets moralists and homophobes going, I’d guess.
Read a newspaper article about the Pink Pistols – gays who like & own guns & spend time at the firing range. The article quoted some straight gun-lovers as saying that if these guys like guns they’re okay by us. TGWATY – do you think the Pink Pistols have discovered the cure for homophobia?
I’m on the Pink Pistols’ mailing list (www.pinkpistols.org) and sometimes go shooting or to political events with them. I found it hard to believe at first, but they have encountered almost NO resistance or discrimination from the firearms community. (In person anyway, naturally there are a few people who make stupid remarks on messageboards.) Even those who don’t think gays should have the right to marry etc. respect them for standing up for their right to self defense.
I suppose politics makes for strange bedfellows 
Granted gunowners* do tend to be more civil than average, but I still find it interesting that the Pink Pistols have gotten much more flak from gay organizations.
*of course I’m refering to members of the gun subculture, not any criminal etc. who happens to own a gun
Lissa that was a very interesting post, but I find it pretty hard to swallow. Not that I can’t get it down, but only with effort and a big glass of water. What time period are we talking about? Concord of the 1860s as seen in Little Women – although innocent enough – doesn’t exhibit the extremes you describe.
My great-grandmother was born c 1890. My mother tells me that in the late 60’s when she was having some physical difficulty, my mother suggested she wear pants. Her proud reply: “I have never had a pair of pants on in my life!” 
This is indeed straying, though. Interestingly, when I first read AHunter3’s post, I thought, yeah, that makes sense. But then it seems to contradict yours. What are your thoughts on that?
summerbreeze, I do think that demolishing the myth that gay men are not real men in other respects would go a long way towards removing fear of gays, but not the fear-of-being-gay or fear-of-being-thought-gay that I am addressing here.
If you’d like, we can start a thread about this subject, and I can suggest some books on the subject.
Remember that Alcott didn’t mention a lot of ettiquette norms because she assumed that her audience was deeply familiar with them. She was writing to her contemporaries, not a audience 100 years in the future. (Also, Alcott was a bit of an odd duck.)
**summerbreeze, ** thanks! I love talking about history! That’s why I work in a musuem!
Lissa – please do start a thread! My daughter has worked in several museums, including Smithsonian. She’s a military historian, intimidates boyfriends who take her for a drive in the country by telling them how to capture that hill over there. No interest in social/manners history.
By the way, how many of you – women, esp. – have heard your mother or grandmother say, “Your generation thinks you invented sex!”