User:Zara33/Women in the Victorian era

Lead Section
Scholarly discussions of Victorian women's sexual promiscuity was embodied in legislation (Contagious Diseases Acts) and medical discourse and institutions (London Lock Hospital and Asylum).

Prostitution and Medicine
Prostitution was a social concern in the Victorian era relating to sexuality, morality, class, and medicine. In Victorian discourse, the term "prostitute" typically refers to lower class women engaged in sexual promiscuity while the term "fallen woman" typically refers to sexually promiscuous women of the middle class.

Dr. William Acton' s work encapsulates how restrictive beliefs of morality restrained sexual agency and contributed to the creation of gendered hierarchies in Victorian England. The impact of Acton's medical doctrine is reflected in institutions such as the London Lock Hospital and Lock Asylum and legislation such as the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866, and 1869.

London Lock Hospital and Lock Asylum
The first lock hospital was established in England by William Bromfield in 1747 as a charitable institution to cure the physical aspects of sexually transmitted diseases attributed to prostitution. The London Lock Hospital treated men and women afflicted with sexually transmitted diseases, although only women were treated in the Lock Asylum. The historian María Isabel Romero Ruiz analyzes the difference between the lock hospital and the lock asylum in relation to the physical treatment of those afflicted (in hospitals) and the mental treatment of sexual promiscuity.

Alternate Medical Discourses
Some scholars argue that Acton's medical doctrine and practice do not reflect the entirety of Victorian England's medical discourse. The work of doctors like Sir James Paget demonstrate that the landscape of medical discourses, especially involving sexuality, were far less restrictive and oppressive. Paget rejected oppressive and gendered beliefs about hysteria and believed that men were more likely to suffer from emotional fits and accused some medical professionals of fear-mongering to repress sexual agency. The work and ideas that Paget promoted were popular in medical journals like The Lancet and were not met with outrage or disdain.