Old stereotypes die hard

I came across a Smithsonian-style magazine that was printed in the 70s. One of the articles was about a pioneering sex researcher from the late 1800s and early 1900s. This was a woman (surprisingly!) and she was pleased to find that her fellow females would open up to her about this taboo topic if they felt it would help science! She surveyed them and found that many of them participated in sex because they saw it as their "wifely duty" rather than because they particularly enjoyed it. Some of them had never heard the word orgasm, though they described how sometimes sex was more intense than other times. One of the younger women did admit to finding sex quite pleasurable, but when asked how often she'd like to have sex, she said once a month would do. The other women said things like: "when I want to have a baby" or "for our anniversary." I found all of this rather fascinating for that era, when people weren't as sex-saturated as they are now. For these feminine attitudes to have been reported somewhat naively and captured by this scientist -- and to see how they mirror some of the negative stereotypes of our day. Very interesting! 

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