One of the most interesting bits of my family law course at University was the set of cases on annulment and the light it cast upon "what everyone knows" about Victorian sexuality. I remember one annulment case in particular where counsel for the husband admitted that his client had been "inclined" to "certain acts" at some point in his adolescence but had abjured it on realising its evils* before he could possibly have done himself any lasting harm. At which point the learned judge observed, somewhat cynically, that the fact of the husband having left off masturbation so easily having taking it up inclined him to the wife's argument that the husband had no or limited sexual interest.
*The husband was arguing that the wife's case that he had bugger all interest in consummating the marriage and not much aptitude, either was wrong, since he was a healthy, decent, upstanding young Englishman of the right sort
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Date: 2010-04-27 05:27 pm (UTC)*The husband was arguing that the wife's case that he had bugger all interest in consummating the marriage and not much aptitude, either was wrong, since he was a healthy, decent, upstanding young Englishman of the right sort