The Guide to Getting It On (147 page)

Layers Upon Layers

Historians who write about sex in the 1800s sometimes present it as having different layers—with The Busy Fleas and Concerns about Girls on Bikes being examples of two very different layers. Here are a few more layers that make sex in the 1800s all the more interesting:

What percentage of American women could even get on a bicycle in the 1800s when our physicians were prescribing large amounts of opium and morphine for everything from headaches and depression to menstrual pain and sleepless nights? By 1872, a half million pounds of opium poppies were being legally processed in America each year, and the morphine that came from them was being used like Tylenol and Prozac are today. By 1898, a new wonder drug called heroin was being billed as a totally safe, non-addictive substitute for opium and morphine.

Narcotics were more often prescribed for women, who took them at home, while men seemed to prefer alcohol, which they consumed in more public settings like saloons and concert halls.

We know today that morphine-based drugs do a serious number on the human sex drive. We also know that between the years of 1886 and 1906 there was so much cocaine in Coca Cola that people who had a second eight-ounce glass risked a cocaine overdose. Hashish was not exactly in short supply, and amphetamines were racing their way into the drug scene. All of this while the average American man was drinking up to a half a pint of liquor daily.

So how do you discuss sex in the 1800s without taking into account how many men and women were under the influence of drugs or alcohol? We’ll never have an answer, but good luck understanding sex in the 1800s without considering it. (One of the first questions a sex therapist asks a patient today is if they are taking any drugs that might be impacting their sex drive.)

And how do we handle knowing that sex-for-sale was such a central part of our culture when our country considered itself to be the home of Christian values, a fortress of fundamentalism, and site of frequent Evangelical revivals? Perhaps the drugs and alcohol helped us deal with our contradictions!

Our Sexual Desires—Shaped or Innate?

As we will see, there were many forces that shaped the sexual desires and decisions of Americans in the 1800s. Perhaps there are as many forces that are shaping our sexual desires and decisions today, but we aren’t able to see them because we don’t have the perspective that a hundred years can offer. We figure we do what we do because we are horny or in love. But what if there were other influences, such as art, religion, science, technology, fashion, television, music, birth control, the law, where you live, how much you make, what you drive, your education, your relationship with your parents, the drugs you take, whether you like your job, the cost of food, rent, and the price of gasoline—just to name a few?

Statistics

A writer can face no greater peril than when his readers expect sex, and he delivers statistics on population and immigration. Take comfort in knowing that sex is on the horizon. But first, we need to look at the population of America in the nineteenth century before we can appreciate what the population did in bed.

Population of America’s Ten Largest Cities in 1800

Population of America’s Ten Largest Cities in 1900

It’s hard to compare these two sets of figures without saying “Wow!“

In 1801, America was a small nation of 5,000,000 people. Its home was the Atlantic Seaboard. Only a few people lived west of the Alleghenies, and fewer yet had ever seen the Mississippi. Less than 10% of the population lived in cities.

By 1901, we were a nation of 77,000,000 people living in 45 states that stretched from San Francisco to New York City. Nearly 60% of us lived in cities, including millions of immigrants. Unlike our white, Protestant, old-stock settlers who arrived before 1800, English was a second language for many of our more recent immigrants.

At the start of the 1800s, America had defined herself as a small country on the edge of a boundless frontier. In 1891, the government announced that the frontier no longer existed. In less than 100 years, America had transformed from a sleepy seafaring and farming society of thirteen colonies into a major military power that produced one-third of the world’s industrial output. Our rural persona was quickly becoming industrial and impersonal, especially in the North.

As we shall see, these changes resulted in a new social order that would impact our sexuality in many different ways.

Immigration & The New Sperm Glut

Today’s social scientists are warning about the growing disproportion of males to females in China, where there will soon be 120 boys for every 100 girls. They worry that this will cause an “inherently unstable” society with increased amounts of violence, prostitution, rape, and warlike aggression.

Imagine what these social scientists would say if they learned that between 1870 and 1910, the male-to-female ratio in some of America’s largest cities may have been up to 135 males for every 100 females?

By the end of the 1800s, nearly a million immigrants were entering America every year, and most were settling in the larger cities of the North. As a result, there were almost twice as many foreign-born residents living in the big cities of the North as there were native-born citizens. The bulk of these immigrants were young, working-class males. For example, 80% of the Italians who entered the United States from 1880 to 1910 were males between the ages of 14 and 44. Our largest cities were being filled with young virile male bodies that nature programmed to ejaculate like machine guns.

Worse yet, the already high male-to-female ratio assumes that all of the potential female sperm catchers were as sexually willing as the male sperm hurlers. But think about it. Among the immigrant working class, how many Irish, Italian, German, Greek or Chinese fathers do you think allowed their daughters to cruise big city streets that were slick with the dripping testosterone of working-class stiffs? And how many middle- and upper-class daughters of white, protestant American families during the Victorian era were willing to put out sexually for the swelling ranks of working-class males?

Good luck finding material about our cities from the 1800s that doesn’t refer to them as “Satan’s slums” or “infernos of vice.” There are reasons for this. The demand was swelling for prostitution to flourish.

America’s New Sporting Culture

Past generations of Americans who had been craftsman or farmers were suddenly living in big cities and working in large factories. Industry was becoming America’s employer; cities were replacing small towns as America’s bedroom. In the past, you knew who your neighbors were because you grew up with them. Now, you were living in a large city, and it was likely that your neighbor or your neighbor’s parents were born in a foreign land.

A whole new “sporting culture” of young men started to emerge in America—a hard-drinking, hard-working wave of American “boyz” who craved sexual release and wild entertainment. These young men were no longer constrained by small-town mores and middle-class values. The apprenticeship system that had helped to mold young men’s lives was collapsing. A factory and corporate culture had taken its place, one that provided few restraints on what a person did when not on the clock.

Men in America no longer had a desire to marry young. They were working 10 to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. They had no traditional homes to go to. The streets, saloons and brothels became their home away from home. Whoring, gambling, fighting and public entertainment filled their free time.

The penises of millions of American men were up for grabs, and prostitution rose to meet the demand. Whores became cheap and plentiful. They thrived in a society that believed the daughters of the better classes would face grave danger if America’s men didn’t have outlets to sow their seed.

Equally as important, America’s economy during the 1800s was a treacherous landscape of booms and busts, pocked with financial recessions. Brothels provided one of the few safe, high-yield investments. The rents that brothels paid were at least ten times higher than if the same building had been occupied by a home or business, and the “fees” that were collected from brothels and prostitutes kept the governments of many American towns and cities in the 1800s from going bankrupt.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the 20th Century

Before 1820, when American men were often farmers, craftsmen or artisans, they worked out of their homes, and women had an important role in keeping the household together. But with the creation of factories, a number of important items like food and ready-to-wear clothes could now be bought in stores. Women were not as essential to the running of households as they had been, but it was still important for women of the working classes to contribute to the household economy.

Most of the new factory jobs needed male muscle from the working classes, and many of these jobs were dangerous. The few clerical jobs were mostly filled by males from the middle class. It wouldn’t be until the early 1900s that the labor force would want large numbers of women in the form of secretaries, sales girls, clerical workers, and phone operators. As a result, the years 1840 to 1900 were often brutal for women of the working classes. The job market was so bad for these women that prostitution was often the best alternative among a small group of dismal choices.

For instance, after the Civil War, a seamstress might earn as little as 20 cents a day, with $2 to $3 a week being a good wage for a woman who was employed full time. This would hardly pay her rent. The same woman might earn more in a single night of whoring than during an entire week of domestic work. Domestic work was often unsteady, unavailable, and, according to a number of women, much harder on them than turning tricks.

Since this was the first time in our history when women needed to earn income outside of the home, there were no protections against sexual harassment. If a woman had to give in to the sexual advances of her boss to keep her domestic or seamstress job, she might as well get paid top dollar for it.