Lisa Featherstone

In Australia’s past, sex has been theorised, pathologised, even criminalised, but comparatively little has been written about the topic. One of the more exciting developments in Australian historiography over the past fifteen years has been the inclusion of gay and lesbian narratives. These perspectives have broadened understandings of Australia’s past and have shown how reading original historical sources against the grain can provide evidence about the intimate lives of Australians.

In May 1965 the Victorian police raided a nondescript terrace house in East Melbourne. They were tracking illegal abortionists. Two doctors, one an outgoing social figure, bold and brassy, the other a quiet, studious man, were performing abortions on the premises. They had refused to pay protection money, and probably the raid was inevitable. The police rampaged about, taking files and notes, and eventually found three young and very groggy women who were clearly recovering from anaesthetic. The quick-thinking women claimed to be recovering from pelvic examinations, but the police were not fooled, and the women were rushed off to the Royal Women’s Hospital where a doctor probed them and their photographs were taken, legs apart. While the women were enduring this undignified end to their surgery, the doctors too were in trouble. With good lawyers, their hearings were adjourned, but they returned to their old work, a little more quietly, but still performing abortions.

In the 1740s a little-known English excise officer and master of a charity school published a frank memoir of his life. John Cannon wrote extensively of his partnerships and his marriage, and also of his sexual exploits. Beginning at the age of twelve, he was taught to masturbate by a school friend and he continued with this until his early twenties. From this time, he had regular sexual contact with a variety of women, including one relationship of ten years. Yet he rarely had sexual intercourse. Instead, his very active sexual life was filled with kissing and erotic fondling: for Cannon, penetrative sex was saved almost exclusively for marriage.

This is a big, bold book with an enormous scope: almost two centuries of sex, birth control and heterosexual relations. It is an ambitious project, but Hera Cook has produced an intriguing mix of broad survey and close, detailed analysis. The basic premise of The Long Sexual Revolution is that sex and reproduction were intertwined. ln many histories, sexuality and reproduction are discussed as if the two were unrelated, but Cook indicates the ways that contraception and control over reproduction were crucial to both sexual pleasure and sexual change.