Re: Re: Wilde Socialist's Hard Labour (was Re: Oscar Wilde:was O Happy Day)

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

> [snip]
>  In the
> anti-sodomitical periods before Wilde's, it was understood that
> "sodomy" was a _universal_ temptation, with _everyone_ capable of
> committing it; now, however, a new understanding of sex emerged: _not
> everyone_ is inclined for "sodomy" -- only an _abnormal minority_ of
> "homosexuals" are.

Sodomy of course was also a *heterosexual* (to use an anachronistic
expression) crime (anal intercourse). Probably others know the exact
history of this better than I do, but I believe some of Byron's
biographers have claimed that his immediate reason for leaving England
was that he had practiced anal intercourse with his bride and she
had told someone or was about to -- and potentially that was a
capital crime. But in *Fanny* the heroine, while correcting the
aim, takes good naturedly a seaman's starting to use the wrong
entrance, though when she sees or hears (I can't remember
exactly now) two men engaged in sodomy she calls the inn
keeper or someone and they are hauled off for punishment.

The distinction Yoshie describes lives on up to the present in
thousands of jokes about the Royal Navy. E.G., the young
lady who receives a proposal of marriage from a naval
officer. Her mother tells her that naval officers make very
fine husbands, but warns her that sooner or later her husband
will ask her to roll over and she must not do it. After several
years of marriage one night he asks her, roll over. Oh no,
she says, my mother warned me. Look, he says, if you ever
want that child you keep talking about, roll over.

Carrol