Stanford Magazine: 'The Sex Scholar'

[eudaemonia]

Decades before Kinsey, Stanford professor Clelia Mosher polled
Victorian-era women on their bedroom behavior—then kept the
startling results under wraps

In 1973, historian Carl Degler was combing the University archives, gathering research for a book on the history of the family. Sifting through the papers of Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher, who taught in Stanford's hygiene department around the turn of the 20th century, he came across a mysteriously bound file. Degler nearly put it aside, figuring it was a manuscript for one of Mosher's published works, mostly statistical treatises on women's height, strength and menstruation. But instead, he recalls, "I opened it up and there were these questionnaires"— questionnaires upon which dozens of women, most born before 1870, had inscribed their most intimate thoughts.

In other words, it was a sex survey. A Victorian sex survey. It is the earliest known study of its type, long preceding, for example, the 1947 and 1953 Kinsey Reports, whose oldest female respondents were born in the 1890s. The Mosher Survey recorded not only women's sexual habits and appetites, but also their thinking about spousal relationships, children and contraception. Perhaps, it hinted, Victorian women weren't so Victorian after all.

Indeed, many of the surveyed women were decidedly unshrinking. One, born in 1844, called sex "a normal desire" and observed that "a rational use of it tends to keep people healthier." Offered another, born in 1862, "The highest devotion is based upon it, a very beautiful thing, and I am glad nature gave it to us."

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[infinity706]

Well, if we could find out if that sample is representative or not, it might even show that women 80 years ago got just as much sex and got off more than women today. That's kind of sad when you think about it, considering both men and women have far more resources to learn about sex than even the rich did back then. Once a week is pretty good for a lot of people even today and only 1 out of the 35 that desired sex failed to have orgasms.