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History Post-confederation (1867-)

Sex and the Married Girl

Heterosexual Marriage and the Body in Postwar Canada

by (author) Heather Stanley

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Nov 2022
Category
Post-Confederation (1867-), Women, Gender Studies
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781487501198
    Publish Date
    Nov 2022
    List Price
    $75.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781487521141
    Publish Date
    Nov 2022
    List Price
    $29.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487512682
    Publish Date
    Nov 2022
    List Price
    $29.95

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Description

Sex – who was having it, who shouldn’t have it, and who was supposed to be having it but wasn’t – was a major concern to social authorities in the immediate postwar era. Though they are often remembered with nostalgia as a sexually simpler time, the 1950s and early 1960s were incredibly sexually productive years.

 

Sex and the Married Girl examines how two interrelated and dominant groups in Canada – medical professionals and church leaders – used married heterosexual female sexuality as a lever to rebuild the Canadian family and the state itself. Using embodied historical methodologies, the book examines not only discourses around sex but also how those discourses could influence the actual experience of sex for married women. Heather Stanley draws upon extensive oral life histories of women who lived, married, and had sex during this liminal social period to demonstrate that this was a time of simultaneous sexual and gender quiescence and change.

About the author

Heather Stanley is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Lethbridge.

Heather Stanley's profile page