I spent a little too much time researching this month’s feature article at For The Girls. I wanted to know what the sex and reproductive lives of women were like 100 years ago, in 1906. In the end I named the article “Thank God It’s The 21st Century!”
A few interesting tidbits:
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* Kinsey’s 1953 book “Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female” included numerous sexual histories of women who were married at the turn of the century. Most didn’t know that female orgasm existed and very few people were naked when they had sex.
* Thanks to the Comstock laws in the US, a doctor could prescribe condoms to a man looking to philander with a prostitute (to prevent him catching sexually transmitted diseases) but it was illegal for the same man to use the condoms with his wife to prevent pregnancy.
* In 1907, US President Theodore Roosevelt expressed the opinion that a white, Protestant woman who avoided pregnancy was “a criminal against the race.â€
* Women got married at around age 24. I had actually assumed the average age of marriage would be younger, but it turns out that post World War 2 was when people started to get married young, not turn of the century.
* The average age of menarche (first period) was 17.
I found out heaps of other interesting facts, they’re all in the article.