By now you have probably realized that men were doing much of the early research into human sexuality. Male sexuality was viewed as normative, and therefore female sexuality was approached through the lens of male sexuality. Clelia Mosher (1863-1940) was ahead of her time, asking questions about sexuality that were quite different from those of her male predecessors. She was actually the first researcher to ask Americans about their sexual behavior (Ericksen, 1999).
In 1892, while Mosher was a student at the University of Wisconsin, she began a research project that lasted 28 years. Her main motivation was to help married women have more satisfying sex lives. She asked upper-middle-class women whether they enjoyed sexual intercourse, how often they engaged in it, and how often they wanted to engage in it (MaHood & Wenburg, 1980). One of the questions that Mosher asked the women in her study was, “What do you believe to be the true purpose of intercourse?” (Ericksen, 1999). Although a few women claimed that sexual intercourse was only for procreation, the majority of women said that intercourse was for both sexual pleasure and procreation. However, many of these women felt guilty for wanting or needing sexual pleasure. Ericksen (1999) suggests that this guilt reflected the transition from the repressive Victorian era to the more progressive 20th century view of sex as an important component of marriage. Much of Mosher’s work was never published and never became part of the sex knowledge that circulated during her time.