SOC 445 Chapter reading 1 pt 2/2: Groneman - Nymphomania: The Historical Construction of Female Sexuality
12 Sep 2018
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Groneman - nymphomania: the historical construction of female sexuality. The term nymphomania resonates with a sense of the insatiable. Surrounded by myth, hyperbole, and sexuality of women, devouring, depraved, diseased. Conjures up an aggressive sexual female who both terrifies and titillates men. Believed to be a specific organic disease, classifiable, with an assumed set of symptoms, causes, and treatments. Simply being unsatisfied with sex with a male partner could get a woman to be diagnosed with nymphomania. In the late 19th century, even minor transgressions of the social structures that defined feminine modesty could be classified as diseased. This is medically wrong because it defined femaleness as fixed and static when in fact, it is unstable and fluid. Nymphomania embodies victorian fears of the dangers of even the smallest transgressions. Gynecology emerged as a medical specialty to study these diseases of the sexual organs. Medicine worked to try to eliminate desire in women, this included procedures that removed their ovaries.
