The seamy sexual underworld of extramarital behavior was central not only to the sexual lives of men and women, but to the very existence of marriage, the family, domesticity, and romantic love. But women-as prostitutes, seduced servants, remarrying widows, and adulterous wives- also pursued passion. In those worlds the majority of men became heterosexuals by avoiding sodomy and sodomite behavior.Īs men defined themselves more and more as heterosexuals, women generally experienced the new male heterosexuality as its victims. In Sex and the Gender Revolution, Randolph Trumbach reconstructs the worlds of eighteenth-century prostitution, illegitimacy, sexual violence, and adultery. This third gender had radical consequences for the sexual lives of most men and women since it promoted an opposing ideal of exclusive heterosexuality. For the first time in European history, there emerged three genders: men, women, and a third gender of adult effeminate sodomites, or homosexuals. A revolution in gender relations occurred in London around 1700, resulting in a sexual system that endured in many aspects until the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
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