Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T06:48:33.710Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Sexuality and the Print Media in the Modern World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
Get access

Summary

The history of the print media”s engagement with sexuality is a topic of enormous complexity. Depictions of sexuality in the periodical press are shaped by cultural attitudes and beliefs, representational and reporting practices, political economies, and audiences across time and space. The print media have been richly social since their inception, and all but the most rigorously controlled media systems have covered topics of a sexual nature. Sexuality has been represented as an object of social regulation, a topic of prurient interest, a problem to be solved, regulated, or eradicated, a form of commerce, and even a patriotic or religious duty. The press has played a major role in the modern project of demarcating normal sex and sexual subjects from deviant practices and identities. It has fomented moral panics around sexuality and helped liberalize sexual norms, sometimes simultaneously. The commercial, advertising-driven press developed in tandem with the sexual content it contained, and has long been a vehicle for racialized narratives of rape, imperiled femininity, and vice, adultery, and divorce. Through advertisements, classifieds, and specialized content in “obscene” journals, print media have, in some contexts, advertised sexual services and even brought people together for various types of sex.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Akyeampong, Emmanuel. ‘Threats to Empire: Illicit Distillation, Venereal Diseases, and Colonial Disorder in British West Africa, 1930–1948’. In Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1890–1950: Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and ‘Immorality’, ed. Pliley, Jessica, Kramm, Robert, and Fischer-Tiné, Harald, 152–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Teresa, Algoso. ‘Thoughts on Hermaphroditism: Miyatake Gaikotsu and the Convergence of the Sexes in Taisho Japan’. Journal of Asian Studies 65, no. 3 (2006): 555–73.Google Scholar
Barnett, Christina, Briggs, Alexis, Osei-Tutu, Annabella, and Dzokoto, Vivian. ‘How Will I Know if (S)He Really Loves Me? An Analysis of Romantic Relationship Concerns in Ghanaian Media, 2000–2016’. Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships 6, no. 3 (2020): 93125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bingham, Adrian. Family Newspapers? Sex, Private Life & The British Popular Press 1918–1978. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bingham, Natasha. ‘“Telling Our Stories”: Print Media Interpretations of Moscow Lesbians’ Life Stories in 2004 and 2005’. Journal of Lesbian Studies 21, no. 1 (2017): 120–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burton, Antoinette. ‘Accounting for Colonial Legal Personhood: New Intersectional Histories from the British Empire’. Law and History Review 38, no. 1 (2020): 143–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cline, Cohen, Patricia. The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York. New York: Vintage, 1999.Google Scholar
Cocks, Harry. Classified: The Secret History of the Personal Ad. New York: Random House, 2009.Google Scholar
Frisken, Amanda. Graphic News: How Sensational Images Transformed Nineteenth-Century Journalism. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Gallon, Kim. Pleasure in the News: African American Readership and Sexuality in the Black Press. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Gilfoyle, Timothy, Cline, Patricia Cohen, and Helen Lefkowitz, . The Flash Press: Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Lutes, Jean. ‘Lovelorn Columns: A Genre Scorned’. American Literature 91, no. 1 (2019): 5990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mutongi, Kenda. ‘Dear Dolly’s Advice: Representations of Youth, Courtship, and Sexualities in Africa, 1960–1980’. In Love in Africa, ed. Cole, Jennifer and Thomas, Lynn, 83108. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Namaste, Vivian. Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism. Toronto: Women’s Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Pande, Ishta. ‘Vernacularizing Justice: Age of Consent and a Legal History of the British Empire’. Law and History Review 38, no. 1 (2020): 267–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pliley, Jessica, Kramm, Robert, and Fischer-Tiné, Harald. ‘Introduction: A Plea for a “Vicious Turn” in Global History’. In Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1890–1950: Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and ‘Immorality’, ed. Pliley, Jessica, Kramm, Robert, and Fischer-Tiné, Harald, 130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reel, Guy. ‘Dudes, “Unnatural Crimes,” and a “Curious Couple”: The National Police Gazette’s Oblique Coverage of Alternative Gender Roles in the Late Nineteenth Century’. Journalism History 41, no. 2 (2015): 8592.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarkar, Tanika. ‘A Prehistory of Rights: The Age of Consent Debate in Colonial Bengal’. Feminist Studies 26, no. 3 (2000): 601–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soderlund, Gretchen. Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism, 1885–1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sreenivas, Mytheli. ‘Sexuality and Modern Imperialism’. In A Global History of Sexuality: The Modern Era, ed. Buffington, Robert M., Luibhéid, Eithne, and Guy, Donna J., 5788 Oxford: Blackwell, 2014.Google Scholar
Traub, Valerie. ‘Making Sexual Knowledge’. Early Modern Women 5 (2010): 251–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ullmann, Sharon. Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Wang, Yvon Y.Whorish Representation: Pornography, Media, and Modernity in Fin-de-siècle Beijing’. Modern China 40, no. 4 (2013): 251–59.Google Scholar
Wood, Nathaniel D.Sex Scandals, Sexual Violence, and the Word on the Street: The Kolasówna Lustmord in Cracow’s Popular Press, 1905–1906’. Journal of the History of Sexuality 20, no. 2 (2011): 243–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×