Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America by John D'Emilio; Estelle B.

Freedman
Review by: Steven Seidman
Journal of Social History, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Winter, 1990), pp. 391-394
Published by: Oxford University Press
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REVIEWS 391

Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. By John D'Emilio and

Estelle B. Freedman (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1988. xx
plus 428 pp.)-

In their introduction, John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman acknowledge that

Intimate Matters was prompted by their experience in the women's and gay
movements. These movements, they say, challenged certain assumptions about
the naturalness of sexuality that were oppressive, in particular, to homosexuals
and women. Feminists and gay liberationists viewed sexuality as a product of
social forces. They proposed that the meaning and social role of sexuality was
inextricably connected to historically specific social conditions. Sexuality was, as
well, viewed as a key site of on-going political struggle. These movements
suggested new, fresh ways of thinking about intimate life.
By the 1980s the women's and gay movements had found expression in
academia in the new history and sociology of sexuality and intimate life. Indeed,
much of this literature is the work of feminists and gay/lesbian scholars. Intimate
Matters, like so much of this revisionist literature, is a work intent on provoking
us not only to view the past and present differently but to rethink the nature of
sexuality itself. It is, inevitably, a book that is implicated in current scholarly as
well as ideological debates about matters intimate and not so intimate.
Intimate Matters is a work of historical synthesis aimed at both scholars and
general readers. Its value lies in the ways it challenges us to rethink our past and
present. Although it draws on a range of primary sources, it relies heavily on
secondary literature, especially recent scholarship. Its originality lies in the
organizing principles and overarching theme that give coherence and dramatic
moment to the narrative.
Three organizing principles guide the analysis. First, the authors chart changes
in the meaning of sex. The assumption here is that the meaning, value and social
role of sex vary historically. Second, sex is, says the authors, always implicated in
a "system of sexual regulation." Every society channels sexual desire and behavior
in socially acceptable ways. The crucial focus here is on those groups (clergy,
physicians, lawyers and judges, scientists) who acquire the authority to define
sexual norms and those institutions that enforce a sexual order. Although we can
recognize in all societies a system of sexual meaning and regulation, it never goes
uncontested. Hence, the third concern: sexual politics. This refers to the struggle
among different groups over a sexual order. The conflict may occur between
classes, races, cultural status groups or between gender groups or generations.
Sexual systems are to be viewed, then, as products of on-going social struggle
involving relations of dominance and social subordination, social empowerment
and oppression, that are as fateful for the contours of individual and social life as
struggles over the economic or educational system. The heightened politicization
of sexuality as well as the sense of its social and moral seriousness is, of course, a
legacy of the women's and gay movement.
Guided by these concerns, D'Emilio and Freedman offer a novel interpretation
of American sexual history. They reject standard Whiggish histories that relate
tales of progress. Similarly, they avoid the tendency evident in some recent
revisionist histories to take flight from the present into a romanticized past.

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392 journal of social history

Indeed, they aim to narrate a story in which the categories of repression and
freedom do not figure prominently. Their narrative is structured by a periodiza?
tion of American history in which three sexual systems achieved successive
dominance between the colonial and the contemporary period. Despite the
historicism of their approach, a certain ideal of progress is evident in that the
establishment of a liberal sexual culture valuing sexual choice and diversity
functions as a dramatic center to the narrative.
The authors identify three periods, each characterized by a dominant sex
system. The first period, roughly from 1600 to 1780, featured a family and
marriage centered, reproductive sexual regime. Shaped by agricultural hardships
and the need for labor as well as by English familial and religious traditions, the
colonists legitimated sex only in marriage and primarily for its procreative role.
Yet, the colonists, even the Protestants, were not sexual ascetics. They typically
accepted marital sexual pleasures and affectionate expression in moderation.
They did not, however, tolerate nonmarital sex, as was evidenced by the harsh
penalties for fornication, sodomy, and adultery. The church, state and local
community enforced this marital, reproductive sexual code through legal sanc?
tions, public rituals of humiliation and threats of social ostracism. The colonial
sex system was not uniform. Many Native American Indians practiced premarital
intercourse, polygamy or institutionalized homosexuality. In the Cheasepeake
colonies where there was a large number of single migrants and many more men
than women, there was more tolerance towards nonmarital, nonprocreative sex.
With the growth of slavery in the South a somewhat unique sex system emerged
among the slaves and between the races.
By the late eighteenth century this sex system was becoming marginalized. The
- state, church, and local
existing forces of social control community - were losing
their hold over the individual under the impact of commercialization and
industrialization. A new era of expanded individualism was coming into exis?
tence. It was accompanied by a different sex system.
Between 1780 and the 1880s a marital centered, romantic sexual order assumed
dominance. Sex was legitimated less as a reproductive act than as a medium of
romantic love and intimacy. Erotic expression and pleasure was an expected part
of marital sex. Marriage itself was imbued with heightened expectations of
intimacy even though men and women often occupied different spheres. This
created some emotional and social strains in intimate affairs. Many middle class
women supported the romanticization of marriage since it promoted their
enhanced autonomy in marital relations. It most certainly was used to limit
conception as is evidenced by the dramatic drop in fertility rates during this
period. Expanded individual choice in intimate affairs extended beyond marriage
as well. Tolerance for nonmarital forms of sexuality expanded. Thus, there
emerged movements advocating sexual lifestyle experimentations; same sex
intimacy was socially acceptable, even idealized for its elevated spiritual charac?
ter; a vast sexual undergroup composed of brothels, pornography, and dance halls
cropped up in urban centers. In short, the beginnings of a "liberal" sexual order
can be observed in the nineteenth century.
In the late nineteenth century this nascent liberal sexual culture came under
attack. A myriad of moral reform and purity groups assailed the expanded sexual

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REVIEWS 393

freedom, the eroticization of sex in marriage, and commercialization of sex, the

growing toleration of sex outside marriage, and the double standard that under-
pinned the Victorian sex system. Led by feminists, female moral reformers,
physicians, and Protestant ministers, these moral crusaders succeeded in passing
anti-abortion, anti-prostitution, anti-pornography legislation. They pressed the
state to assume more responsibility for sexual regulation. Despite efforts by some
reformers to institute a more restrictive sex order, powerful social forces promoted
the eroticization of sex, the growth ofa public and commercialized sexual culture,
an emphasis upon romantic intimacy, and the rise of a youth sexual culture.
Prompted by the growth ofa consumer oriented economy and society, by the freer
intermingling of men and women, and the movement of women into higher
education and the paid workforce, the formation of diverse working class,
immigrant, black and homosexual cultures, by the appearance of liberal and
radical sex reformers defending sexual choice and pluralism, America was
entering a post-Victorian sexual era.
Between 1920 and the 1960s a liberal sexual order was becoming dominant. Sex
was constructed not only as a sphere of reproduction and romance but as a medium
of personal happiness and fulfillment. Its role in intimate relations was height?
ened. As a companionate, egalitarian intimate ideal gained cultural salience, its
erotic and romantic underpinings were emphasized. Although a heterosexual
marriage model remained the norm, there was expanded tolerance for nonmarital
intimate lifestyles. The increased visibility of a youth culture which integrated
premarital coitus into its rituals of dating and social bonding, the rise of
heterosexual cohabitation, the formation of homosexual subcultures, and the
routine inclusion of sexual images into the public sphere, pointed to a sexual
culture that valued sexual freedom and diversity.
Yet, by the mid-1970s this evolving liberal consensus was challenged and by the
1980s, it is in disarray. In the 1970s, the challenge came from sex radicals and the
Left. Sexual libertines like Hugh Hefner promoted an ideology of expanded sexual
freedom. This took hold in the urban singles culture and in the youth countercul-
ture and posed a threat to the marital and familial norm. From the Left, feminists
and gay liberationists demanded the legitimation of homosexuality and nonmari?
tal intimate lifestyles. This threatened the heterosexual norm that underpinned
the American liberal sexual culture. With the resurgence of conservative cultural
politics and the Herpes and AIDs epidemics, the 80s have witnessed a right-wing
assault on sexual liberalism. Reacting to the spread of porn, sexual disease, rising
divorce and illegitimacy rates, which were taken as symbols of social and moral
breakdown, conservatives blamed the permissiveness of our sexual culture. Our
current sexual culture is, then, divided between advocates of choice and diversity
and proponents of a more restricted sexual order.
Intimate Matters offers a novel perspective on American sexual history. The
general reader, as well as the college student, will find a highly readable overview
that is intelligent and challenging. The scholar will appreciate the thematic focus
that gives coherence to this work. Indeed, by its own standard as a serious work
of historical synthesis aimed at a educated public, Intimate Matters is a noteworthy
success.
I do, of course, have some reservations, two of which Fll mention. As a work

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394 journal of social history

intended to address current moral and political events, Intimate Matters could
have profited had its ideological significance been made explicit. For authors who
are acutely aware of the power of discourse to shape sexuality, they must surely
have known that their own work counts as a discursive intervention. To be sure,
this work will contribute to further politicizing sex by framing it as a social
construction. Yet, in the face of current backlash politics directed especially
against women and sexual minorities, a historical narrative that articulated a
stronger defense of a progressive sexual order would have been pertinent.
From a scholarly standpoint, I have some doubts about the periodization that
informs the narrative. The description ofthe colonial sex system as dominated by
a procreative sexual norm seems somewhat inconsistent with the authors'
acknowledgment that even Northern Protestants valued sex as a medium of
pleasure and intimate or affectionate expression. Similarly, while their charac?
terization of middle class Victorians as approaching sex as a domain of love is, in
general, correct, it lacks important nuance. My own research suggests that while
the Victorians accepted sex in marriage, they defined a spiritual notion of love as
its essence. Sexual expression was not a vehicle of love but often threatened it as
it elicited sensual desires which threatened to engulf marriage in a sea of lust.1
Again, while the construction of sex as a sphere of self-fulfillment figured
prominently in the "modern" period, sex functioned primarily as a medium of
love. Indeed, what is crucial in the twentieth century is the central role that sex
plays in demonstrating, maintaining and improving love and romantic solidarity.
In other words, it would seem more pertinent to describe the changes in the
meaning of romantic love or intimacy over three centuries than to speak of shifts
from procreative to romantic to commercial sexual meanings.2
In short, I am underscoring shortcomings that are perhaps inevitable in a book
of this genre. As a general overview it is useful and, at times, masterful, but on any
number of important issues (e.g. Victorian sexuality, the colonial Protestant view
of love, working class intimate patterns) it proves to be quite cursory. This hardly
detracts from what is, unquestionably, the best available overview of American
sexual history.

State University at Albany Steven Seidman

ENDNOTE

1. Steven Seidman,"ThePowerof Sex and the Dangerof Pleasure:VictorianSexualityRevisited,"

Journalof SocialHistory(24 (1990): 47-68.

2. See Steven Seidmon, RomanticLongings:Lovein America,1830-1980 (New York:Routledge,

1991).

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