'Vrouwen, trouw je ras gezond!'

Havelock Ellis' ideeën over nymfomanie, ras en vrouwelijke seksualiteit

Samenvatting

This article examines the medical and ideological construction of nymphomania in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It builds on Carol Groneman’s analysis of how female hypersexuality was defined as a disease within a patriarchal medical context. This study expands her work by analyzing the ideas of British sexologist Havelock Ellis, with particular attention to the entanglement of sexuality with race and eugenics. Ellis viewed female sexuality as essential to the health of the ‘white race’. The analysis reveals how social order, racial theories, and class-based anxieties played a role in the medicalization of sexual behavior. Case studies illustrate how women from different social classes were treated differently. The diagnosis of nymphomania functioned as a tool to suppress female autonomy under the guise of medical care. This article advocates for an intersectional approach to the history of sexuality, in which race, class, and gender are structurally integrated.