Sex
(from Civilization in The United States)

In Sex, sociologist and anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons examines American attitudes toward intimacy, marriage, gender, and sexual convention in the early twentieth century.

Parsons argues that American culture treats sexuality less as a natural part of human life than as a subject to be controlled, classified, and suppressed. She challenges restrictive divorce laws, the separation and suspicion between men and women, idealized notions of marital respectability, and the tendency to reduce relationships to fixed social roles rather than individual personalities.

Comparing American customs with European attitudes, Parsons explores how Puritan traditions, social expectations, and fear of open discussion shaped relationships between the sexes. She ultimately portrays American sexual culture as emotionally constrained and resistant to the honest examination necessary for personal and social maturity.

Originally published in the influential 1922 anthology Civilization in the United States, Sex offers a provocative historical perspective on sexuality, gender roles, marriage, and social conformity.

This work contains terminology and theories about sexuality that reflect the assumptions and limited scientific knowledge of its era.

Narrated by Eleesha Lewis.