While looking for other information pertaining to the "sexual revolution" in the Victorian era (actually I was just looking for information about what people were wearing during that period) I stumbled across the following in a paragraph about sex work of all things in Wikipedia (emphasis mine.)

When the United Kingdom Census 1851 publicly revealed a 4% demographic imbalance in favour of women (i.e., 4% more women than men), the problem of prostitution began to shift from a moral/religious cause to a socio-economic one. The 1851 census showed that the population of Great Britain was roughly 18 million; this meant that roughly 750,000 women would remain unmarried simply because there were not enough men. These women came to be referred to as "superfluous women" or "redundant women", and many essays were published discussing what, precisely, ought to be done with them. "Why are Women Redundant" William Rathbone Greg, N. Trubner & Co. 1869]

Source: Wikipedia: Victorian Era

Wading as far as I could through Greg and Trubner's Victorian prose is difficult (here's a link to the Google Books version) it looks like they don't believe it's a problem that some women through virtue, commitment or genius preferred not to marry at all, nor is it the incredibly large number who worked as domestic servants. Instead it's because

We will be plain, because we wish both to be brief and to be true. So many women are single because so many men are profligate. Probably, among all the sources of the social anomaly in question, this, if fully analyzed, would be found to be the most fertile, and to lie the deepest. The case lies in a nut-shell. Few men -- incalculably few -- are truly celibate by nature or by choice. There are few who would not purchase love, or the indulgences which are its coarse equivalents, by the surrender or the curtailment of nearly all other luxuries and fancies, if they could obtain them on no cheaper terms. In a word, few -- comparatively very few -- would not marry as soon as they could maintain a wife in anything like decency or comfort, if only through marriage they could satisfy their craving and gratify their passions.

If their sole choice lay between entire chastity -- a celibacy as strict and absolute as that of women* -- or obedience to the natural dictates of the senses and the heart in only legitimate mode the decision of nine out of ten of those who now remain bachelors during the whole or a great portion of their lives would, there can be no doubt, be in favour of marriage.

Source: Why Women are Redundant, pg. 27

In other words, if there hadn't so many sex workers in the Victorian era there wouldn't have been a "surplus" of women. Because, you know, men who wanted to "quench their passions" would have to resort to... gasp... wives!

This from an era that allegedly revered women's purity above all else.

What.

Ever.

* Note the implication both of women as the "no-sex" class and men as the obligatory "sex class?"

Screen Capture of Bob Dole in Britney Spears Pepsi Ad on YouTube by figleaf (hey, that's me!)

Sarah McKenney, guest blogging at Sociological Images, has a great take on the extreme end of women (and girls) as sexual vs. sexualized.

There is no shortage of sexualized images of girls in American culture.  Shows like TLC’s Toddlers and Tiaras frequently contain over-the-top sexualized portrayals of girls.  Images like these are undeniably sexualized.

However, these images of Thylane Loubry Blondeau, a 10-year-old French model making headlines this week, are creating controversy instead of condemnation.  Some argue that, unlike the child beauty queens, the photographs of Blondeau are art.  There is an interesting class effect here; unlike the hypersexualized girls on shows like Toddlers and Tiaras, the photos of Blondeau are high fashion, therefore high class, and therefore acceptable.

...

I’m no prude.  I think that children are – and have a right to be – sexual beings.  However, there is a difference between sexuality (feeling sexual) and sexualization (being seen as sexy). I (and many other like-minded feminists) believe that girls should be sexual; but, sexualization (and its concomitant focus on appearance instead of desire) is bad because it denies girls’ sexual subjectivity in favor of sexual objectification.

Source: Sociological Images

While I'm a generally queasy about adult intrusion into children's expressions of sexuality I think the ridiculously exaggerated case of Thylane Loubry Blondeau takes the difference between sex and sexualization to its logical extreme.  For instance the same people who applaud the presentation of a child as a sexual object would almost certainly be dismayed were the child to become behaviorally sexual, either as an active agent or (more likely) passively at the hands of adults.

For instance while a nominal virgin the former Mickey Mouse Club cast member Britney Spears could perform in jeans cut so low she had to depilate her pubic mound without causing much more than a bit of tut-tutting since it was presumed to be literally only a presentation of her image. Enough so that for several years the public willingly maintained its credulity in the face of Spears' age, health, and close association with sexually-active men.  Oh, until it finally became obvious that she actually was being sexual as adults do.  At which point impresarios basically gave her the hook.

What's got to be perfectly wonderful about toddler and pre-teen girls is that by and large they embody the "sexual" ideal put forward by bogus Rule #1: it really is inconceivable, and it really would be intolerable, for a child like Loubry Blondeau to express sexual desire. Her pants can be as low as her handlers like, and her tops as sheer or non-existent, with zero chance at all of showing secondary sexual characteristics because she doesn't have any! Yet.

This is scarcely fair either to her, to all other children, and, of course, to all post-adolescent and adult women. And to their future (for girls) and current (for women) partners. Imposing either of the Rules of Desire is an unnatural and problematic imposition on adults, and utterly ghastly and inappropriate projection on children.

The editors at Big Think say something we all know, endlessly, over and over, because... well, first here's the story, arbitrarily truncated because the rest really doesn't matter

What's the Latest Development? The locations of the vagina, cervix and female nipples that correspond to the brain's cortex have been mapped for the first time. The study confirms that there is a difference between stimulating the vagina and the clitoris and that there is a direct neurological link ...

Source: Big Think

Yeah! Whee! Lady parts! We all just love sticking probes in women's ladybusinesses.  "For science" of course.

Extra credit for tossing in the nipple stimulation!

(I'm unable to confirm whether they're now hoping to get additional funding to measure the cortical reaction to researchers shaking their faces between the subject's breasts and going wooba-wooba-wooba-wooba.)

You know why this irritates me beyond all fucking belief?

Because, hello, when was the last time anybody did a study of fucking male orgasms? When was the last time anybody did a cortical assay of men's secondary erogenous zones?

Because, great bactrian camel humps!  Isn't anybody curious about male sexual response beyond "Oh men?  They just stick it in a hole and wiggle, case closed.  Now back to the "mysteries" of the pussy?"

You wanna know something gang?  We know roughly 130 times more about women's orgasms, women's sexual response, women's arousal patterns, women's SES/SIS interactions in the Dual Control Model of Sexual Response model, the maps of women's erogenous zones, women's g-spots, p-spots, a-spots, plus vaginal depth, width, lubrication, relative humidity, and fucking barometric pressure than we do about men.

Because for some crying-out-loud reason (coughRule #1cough, cough women as the "no-sex" classcough) we have to study women's responses over, and over, and over, and over because the very idea of women's sexual responsiveness is inconceivable! Intolerable!

Oh, that plus women are things and we study the crap out of things.  Men, though, even if anybody gave a crap about dime-a-dozen, here's-some-cold-cream-not-go-in-the-other-room-and-take-care-of-that-son men's cortical locations, are human beings.  And consequently studying us men would require, I dunno, human subject research determinations or something.  So nobody bothers.

So.  Anyway.  Two really, really big objections here.

1) It's not that women's sexual response isn't mysterious, it's that men's are no less mysterious.

2) It's not that men's sexual response is mysterious, it's that women's sexuality isn't either.

Men and women aren't identical.  But we're not so different that the unbelievable imbalance in research is warranted.

Update: One possibility that doesn't change my social critique at all: it's actually possible that men's sexual response, erogenous zones, etc., are academically as thoroughly researched as women's... but it's just never reported on blogs or in the press.

Photo by Flickr user moarplease. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Back in April Lilithland interrogates passes along a quote that nicely restates bogus Rule of Desire #1 (emphasis mine)

I loved Ryan and Jetha's book on sex and evolution Sex at Dawn, particularly their take on female sexuality. Here is a quote from the book:

And yet, despite repeated assurances that women aren't particularly sexual creatures, in cultures around the world men have gone to extraordinary lengths to control female libido: female genital mutilation, head-to-toe chadors, medieval witch burnings, chastity belts, suffocating corsets, muttered insults about "insatiable" whores pathologizing, paternalistic medical diagnoses of nymphomania or hysteria...

Source: Dodson and Ross

It's a great approach to the question: If society goes to these extraordinary lengths, what self-evident (to them) truth, exactly, are they toiling so ruthlessly to maintain? They believe it's intolerable for women to have sexual interest because they find it inconceivable for women to have sexual interest.

Update: I originally attributed this to lilithland. I'm grateful to Sungold for pointing out it's actually a quote from Sex at Dawn.  I've fixed the attribution.  And ordered the book.