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“As a general rule,” intoned the English urologist William Acton in 1875, “a modest woman seldom desires any gratification for herself. By the Victorian era, doctors were asserting that women were not, in fact, capable of a true orgasm. The Dark Age of the bedroom had begun, as male medical experts played down the importance of female satisfaction to the sex act and to women’s happiness in general. Then, around 1730, anatomists proved that the female orgasm was not essential for reproduction. Scholars believed the buildup of “female semen” in unsatisfied women could be downright dangerous, resulting in hysteria and melancholia. 1730: Female orgasm officially demoted.įor most of Western history, doctors believed (despite some fairly obvious evidence to the contrary) that conception could only occur when both men and women experienced sexual pleasure this immutable law of nature was even written into many handbooks for midwives in the Renaissance. (This was no great improvement for women’s rights, since male thinkers promptly argued that men were “sexually charged” and essentially active, and that women were essentially passive).Ĭ. But in the 18th century, scientists began to see men and women as complete biological opposites – profoundly different creatures, distinct in body, character and even soul. This appealed to classical notions of cosmic harmony, and allowed doctors to argue that women were simply inferior versions of men. Before that time, Laqueur argues, most anatomists accepted the ancient idea expressed by the Greek doctor Galen that there was really only one gender: Women’s sexual organs were essentially the same as men’s, except they were inverted due to a lack of “vital heat.” The vagina was matched by penis, the ovaries by the testicles (“stones of women”), the labia by the foreskin, the uterus by the scrotum. “Some time in the 18th century, sex as we know it was invented,” writes Berkeley historian Thomas W.