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Sex and The 18th Century Man: Massachusetts and The History of Sexuality in America
By Thomas A. Foster
Beacon Press
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Sex and The 18th Century Man: Massachusetts and The History of Sexuality in America, by Thomas A. Foster (Beacon Press, 256 Pages $28.95)

It's now commonplace to say that gender is constructed-- that the qualities of "masculinity" and "femininity" are essentially created out of necessity, desperation, and fantasy suited to the culture in which they appear. This idea, which seemed so radical two decades ago, now is touted on "Oprah" without anyone batting an eyelash. And, really it's a no-brainer. Anyone with a casual acquaintance with the history of style, affect, or popular culture knows that each century-- hell, sometimes each decade-- has different ways of defining gender-appropriateness. It's just a quick step further to contend that, at even a more basic level, gender is manufactured as well.

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The interesting work, then, is discovering how and why gender is constructed in distinct time-periods. Thomas A. Foster's Sex and the 18th Century Man is an excellent analysis of masculinity, manhood, and just "what it meant to be a guy" in early colonial Massachusetts. It's a perfect period to begin this exploration. Mid-to-late 1700s America-- not yet the United States-- was a society in flux, and nowhere more so than Massachusetts. Not really British, not quite Not British, and quickly becoming more distinctly American, 18th-century Massachusetts society was fascinatingly conflicted. What had been accepted as traditional British masculinity was now being rejected by colonialists, who were attempting to redefine themselves. Roles for women were also changing-- New World economies required it. And there was a war on, which always jostles gender patterns. All this historical stage-setting might make Sex and the 18th Century Man sound a little boring, which is not that case at all.

Foster's essentially academic book is nonetheless readable, accessible, and intriguing. He's delved into 18th-century newspapers, letters, diaries, journals, court records, and business accounts to try to figure out how New England colonialists saw masculinity, and the answers defy what we'd expect.

Sure, some things don't change: merchant Thomas Shreve, for example, wrote in 1789 a series of letters to Paul Revere recounting what he thought was his wife's cheating: "I was not wrong in anticipating the many mortifications Mrs. S. would unavoidably be exposed to in the sailing company with a Man...." His new position as a cuckold, the merchant went on to relate, injured his reputation and ability to do business. "Disordered households were an affront to the community of men," Foster notes.

But how are we to interpret the Reverend John Cleveland referring to God as "his first husband"? A queer phrase indeed. We know that Michael Wigglesworth-- Harvard professor, clergyman, and author of the enormously popular 1662 poem "The Day of Doom"-- wrote in his mid-17th century diary of his lust for his male students. So the idea and reality of same-sex attraction was not unknown to the Puritans. But here Cleveland is unhesitatingly proclaiming a primary, eros-tinged relationship to his (understood-as-male) god.

Present-day ideas about distinct sexual orientations being connected to distinct sexual acts were often not in play in colonial New England, Foster contends. Just because you had sex with a man didn't necessary make you a "homosexual"-- a word, indeed, yet to be coined. It wasn't just that these men hadn't made up their minds-- or were bi-curious or on the Down Low-- but rather that sexual activity and identity were more or less like Column A and Column B in a cheap restaurant: you could mix and match to different purposes.

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And there are more complications. Male effeminacy was frequently understood to be as much a symptom of wasteful consumption (all those powdered wigs and snuff boxes!) as sexual deviance. "Effeminacy was associated with a capitulation to one's desire for pleasure," Foster writes-- the very association for which metrosexuals now are praised. Fops in this society were disrespected for their "failure to know [their] social position," their "violation of the social order." It was an offense akin to sodomy.

Whatever one did sexually-- and there were laws against sodomy and other same-sex acts-- the dereliction of duty was conceptualized differently than today's notions of criminal lust, and considered in light of an overweening collective sexual orientation toward family, and through that, toward the community and the future.

Celibacy, therefore, was often not held a virtue, but a fault: being married and having children was the most moral and civic act. A 1746 newspaper article proposed a tax on single people-- "old bachelors and old maids"-- since they "promise no help to the future generation." (A precursor to today's tax breaks for people with kids?)

Yes, there were legal prosecutions of men charged with violating sodomy laws, but Foster points out that often sodomy cases were pressed when the males involved were of different social classes (the problem, again, being "a violation of the social order"), which intriguingly suggests that where this did not hold-- and here the written records are sparser-- sodomy could enjoy something of a protective veil.

For both what it shows and what it suggests, Sex and the 18th Century Man casts its eye on a fascinating and pivotal place and time. It's a book sure to add a new dimension to readers' understanding of masculinity's myriad forms.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com