Lisa Featherstone
Biographic Data
| ID | 1022360 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lisa Featherstone |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lisa |
| FAMILY NAME | Featherstone |
| SIGNATURE | FEATHERSTONE L |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5189-1910 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Cambridge World History of Sexualities
Volume I offers historiographical surveys and general overviews of central topics in the history of world sexualities. Split across twenty-two chapters, this volume places the history of sexuality in dialogue with anthropology, women's history, LGBTQ+ history, queer theory, and public history, as well as examining the impact Freud and Foucault have had on the history of sexuality. The volume continues by providing overviews on the sexual body, fa…
Tourism, Americanization and the Vietnam War R&R Scheme in Sydney, Australia, 1967–71
Australia's addition to the Vietnam War R&R scheme in September 1967 brought some 280,000 short-stay tourists to Sydney, and particularly its notorious ‘red light district’, Kings Cross. We show how Australia's experience of this ‘friendly invasion’ aided considerably in the development of a nascent tourist industry in Sydney, due in no small part to the considerable efforts of government promoters and local entrepreneurs. This influx also create…
Consent
Sexual Violence in Australia, 1970s–1980s
The Seventies
The Seventies: The Personal, the Political and the Making of Modern Australia." Australian Historical Studies, 51(4), pp. 494–495
Children in a Terrible State”
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has shown us the multitude of ways that children were vulnerable to sexual violence. This article explores child sexual abuse outside of institutions, and the development of concepts of trauma in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s. From the mid-1970s, there was increased social, medical and legal focus on child abuse. Driven originally by feminists, there was a new interest in …
Look the Other Way
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has provided a depth of knowledge about sexual assault within institutions, highlighting the multiple ways that adults failed to protect victims. This article will show that this elision of responsibility towards children also occurred outside of institutions. It argues that many key players – including doctors and other professionals – did not step up to protect victims, and…
Marital Rape and the Marital Rapist
That's What Being A Woman Is For’
From 1976 until 1994, Australian states and territories introduced a raft of reforms to sexual assault laws. Most of these were welcomed, and were seen to reflect women's changing status within a modernising society. One reform, however, was especially contentious. The British law had proclaimed that a woman could not be raped within marriage: the marital bond included a husband's right to sexual access to his wife. Following South Australia's le…
The Science of Pleasure
In the city of Melbourne throughout the 1940s and 1950s, a radical general practitioner provided a nascent form of sexual therapy. It was an unusual treatment programme in a period when counselling of any kind was rare in Australia. Yet Dr Victor Wallace attracted a steady clientele, who were seemingly eager to fix their sexual dysfunctions and establish and maintain a healthy and happy sexuality. His patients, though diverse, were united in thei…
The Debatable Land
Review(s) of: The Cambridge history of Australia: Volume I, indigenous and colonial Australia and volume 2, the commonwealth of Australia, edited by Alison Bashford and Stuart Macintyre (Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2013,1536pp, $325hb)
Hierarchies of Harm and Violence
This article interrogates the prosecution of familial sexual crimes in 1950s Australia, a decade where the family was considered the bedrock of society. Using criminal trial transcripts from the period, we analyse how offenders, victims, families, lawyers and judges understood familial sexual abuse. We examine the contours of cases heard by New South Wales (NSW) higher courts in the 1950s, analysing three important themes: conceptualisations of t…
Sexual and gender-based violence
Current global estimates of sexual and gender-based violence show its widespread and enduring prevalence. In 2013, the World Health Organization reported that one-third of women globally have exper
Film and Television Reviews
Censoring Sex
This article will explore the social, cultural and medical reasons behind the rigorous censorship of the work and life of sex reformer William James Chidley (c.1860–1916). Chidley critiqued heterosexual intercourse — or the ‘crowbar’ method as he called it. Instead he promoted new ways of performing sex and correspondingly a new form of gender relations. For speaking about sex and the reorganisation of gender relations, Chidley was condemned and …
From the Guest Editors
The family in Australia
The one single primary cause”
In the late 1940s, the popular Australian journal Smith's Weekly boldly announced that “the one single primary cause” of divorce was “physical maladjustment between man and wife through ignorance of sex.” By the 1950s, the links between sex and divorce were omnipresent. Regardless of the traumas of World War II and the difficulties faced by both men and women in re-acclimatising to “normal” civilian life, rising divorce rates were commonly linked…
Introduction
Rethinking Female Pleasure
This article explores the multiple and complex ways white heterosexual women constructed female sexual pleasure and desire in early twentieth-century Australia. It considers the idealisation of female sexuality, and the ways this was both subverted and re-iterated by women themselves, through a study of female writers. It suggests that the challenge to female sexual normativity—as marital and reproductive—was slow and staggered, with many women u…
Sex educating the modern girl
This article explores the development of sex education for Australian girls in the 1920s. It shows that a new belief in the importance of informing girls about sex arose in this decade, both in Australia and elsewhere in the West. This belief marked a shift away from the Victorian notion that girlhood should be untainted by sexual knowledge. It was also allied to a growing faith in expert knowledge and modern rationality as a cure-all for social …
Pathologising White Male Sexuality in late Nineteenth-Century Australia through the medical prism of excess and constraint
This paper will explore the constructions of white male sexuality in late nineteenth-century Australia by the medical profession. In a period where female sexuality was always suspect, male sexuality, too, was brought into question, and the male body was increasingly constructed as vulnerable to sexual excess and sexual pathology. If male sexuality was to be active and dynamic, this could readily go too far, rendering men merely a slip away from …
Opening Up Women’s Bodies
Becoming a Baby
Sexy Mamas? women, sexuality and reproduction in Australia in the 1940s
World War II is frequently read as a turning point in the construction of femininity. According to Marilyn Lake and others, during this period women were increasingly defined in terms of glamour and allure, and there was a new emphasis on youth, beauty and heterosexual attractiveness. The present article will complicate this view with an examination of sexuality after marriage. Through a reading of letters written by women themselves, it will sug…
That's What Being A Woman Is For’
From 1976 until 1994, Australian states and territories introduced a raft of reforms to sexual assault laws. Most of these were welcomed, and were seen to reflect women's changing status within a modernising society. One reform, however, was especially contentious. The British law had proclaimed that a woman could not be raped within marriage: the marital bond included a husband's right to sexual access to his wife. Following South Australia's le…
Hierarchies of Harm and Violence
This article interrogates the prosecution of familial sexual crimes in 1950s Australia, a decade where the family was considered the bedrock of society. Using criminal trial transcripts from the period, we analyse how offenders, victims, families, lawyers and judges understood familial sexual abuse. We examine the contours of cases heard by New South Wales (NSW) higher courts in the 1950s, analysing three important themes: conceptualisations of t…
Pathologising White Male Sexuality in late Nineteenth-Century Australia through the medical prism of excess and constraint
This paper will explore the constructions of white male sexuality in late nineteenth-century Australia by the medical profession. In a period where female sexuality was always suspect, male sexuality, too, was brought into question, and the male body was increasingly constructed as vulnerable to sexual excess and sexual pathology. If male sexuality was to be active and dynamic, this could readily go too far, rendering men merely a slip away from …
Consent
Children in a Terrible State”
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has shown us the multitude of ways that children were vulnerable to sexual violence. This article explores child sexual abuse outside of institutions, and the development of concepts of trauma in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s. From the mid-1970s, there was increased social, medical and legal focus on child abuse. Driven originally by feminists, there was a new interest in …
Sexual and gender-based violence
Current global estimates of sexual and gender-based violence show its widespread and enduring prevalence. In 2013, the World Health Organization reported that one-third of women globally have exper
The one single primary cause”
In the late 1940s, the popular Australian journal Smith's Weekly boldly announced that “the one single primary cause” of divorce was “physical maladjustment between man and wife through ignorance of sex.” By the 1950s, the links between sex and divorce were omnipresent. Regardless of the traumas of World War II and the difficulties faced by both men and women in re-acclimatising to “normal” civilian life, rising divorce rates were commonly linked…
Rethinking Female Pleasure
This article explores the multiple and complex ways white heterosexual women constructed female sexual pleasure and desire in early twentieth-century Australia. It considers the idealisation of female sexuality, and the ways this was both subverted and re-iterated by women themselves, through a study of female writers. It suggests that the challenge to female sexual normativity—as marital and reproductive—was slow and staggered, with many women u…
Becoming a Baby
Marital Rape and the Marital Rapist
Sex educating the modern girl
This article explores the development of sex education for Australian girls in the 1920s. It shows that a new belief in the importance of informing girls about sex arose in this decade, both in Australia and elsewhere in the West. This belief marked a shift away from the Victorian notion that girlhood should be untainted by sexual knowledge. It was also allied to a growing faith in expert knowledge and modern rationality as a cure-all for social …
Sexy Mamas? women, sexuality and reproduction in Australia in the 1940s
World War II is frequently read as a turning point in the construction of femininity. According to Marilyn Lake and others, during this period women were increasingly defined in terms of glamour and allure, and there was a new emphasis on youth, beauty and heterosexual attractiveness. The present article will complicate this view with an examination of sexuality after marriage. Through a reading of letters written by women themselves, it will sug…
Opening Up Women’s Bodies
Becoming a Baby
Sex educating the modern girl
This article explores the development of sex education for Australian girls in the 1920s. It shows that a new belief in the importance of informing girls about sex arose in this decade, both in Australia and elsewhere in the West. This belief marked a shift away from the Victorian notion that girlhood should be untainted by sexual knowledge. It was also allied to a growing faith in expert knowledge and modern rationality as a cure-all for social …
Pathologising White Male Sexuality in late Nineteenth-Century Australia through the medical prism of excess and constraint
This paper will explore the constructions of white male sexuality in late nineteenth-century Australia by the medical profession. In a period where female sexuality was always suspect, male sexuality, too, was brought into question, and the male body was increasingly constructed as vulnerable to sexual excess and sexual pathology. If male sexuality was to be active and dynamic, this could readily go too far, rendering men merely a slip away from …
Introduction
Rethinking Female Pleasure
This article explores the multiple and complex ways white heterosexual women constructed female sexual pleasure and desire in early twentieth-century Australia. It considers the idealisation of female sexuality, and the ways this was both subverted and re-iterated by women themselves, through a study of female writers. It suggests that the challenge to female sexual normativity—as marital and reproductive—was slow and staggered, with many women u…
Film and Television Reviews
Censoring Sex
This article will explore the social, cultural and medical reasons behind the rigorous censorship of the work and life of sex reformer William James Chidley (c.1860–1916). Chidley critiqued heterosexual intercourse — or the ‘crowbar’ method as he called it. Instead he promoted new ways of performing sex and correspondingly a new form of gender relations. For speaking about sex and the reorganisation of gender relations, Chidley was condemned and …
From the Guest Editors
The family in Australia
The one single primary cause”
In the late 1940s, the popular Australian journal Smith's Weekly boldly announced that “the one single primary cause” of divorce was “physical maladjustment between man and wife through ignorance of sex.” By the 1950s, the links between sex and divorce were omnipresent. Regardless of the traumas of World War II and the difficulties faced by both men and women in re-acclimatising to “normal” civilian life, rising divorce rates were commonly linked…
The Debatable Land
Review(s) of: The Cambridge history of Australia: Volume I, indigenous and colonial Australia and volume 2, the commonwealth of Australia, edited by Alison Bashford and Stuart Macintyre (Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2013,1536pp, $325hb)
Hierarchies of Harm and Violence
This article interrogates the prosecution of familial sexual crimes in 1950s Australia, a decade where the family was considered the bedrock of society. Using criminal trial transcripts from the period, we analyse how offenders, victims, families, lawyers and judges understood familial sexual abuse. We examine the contours of cases heard by New South Wales (NSW) higher courts in the 1950s, analysing three important themes: conceptualisations of t…
Sexual and gender-based violence
Current global estimates of sexual and gender-based violence show its widespread and enduring prevalence. In 2013, the World Health Organization reported that one-third of women globally have exper
That's What Being A Woman Is For’
From 1976 until 1994, Australian states and territories introduced a raft of reforms to sexual assault laws. Most of these were welcomed, and were seen to reflect women's changing status within a modernising society. One reform, however, was especially contentious. The British law had proclaimed that a woman could not be raped within marriage: the marital bond included a husband's right to sexual access to his wife. Following South Australia's le…
The Science of Pleasure
In the city of Melbourne throughout the 1940s and 1950s, a radical general practitioner provided a nascent form of sexual therapy. It was an unusual treatment programme in a period when counselling of any kind was rare in Australia. Yet Dr Victor Wallace attracted a steady clientele, who were seemingly eager to fix their sexual dysfunctions and establish and maintain a healthy and happy sexuality. His patients, though diverse, were united in thei…
Children in a Terrible State”
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has shown us the multitude of ways that children were vulnerable to sexual violence. This article explores child sexual abuse outside of institutions, and the development of concepts of trauma in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s. From the mid-1970s, there was increased social, medical and legal focus on child abuse. Driven originally by feminists, there was a new interest in …
Look the Other Way
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has provided a depth of knowledge about sexual assault within institutions, highlighting the multiple ways that adults failed to protect victims. This article will show that this elision of responsibility towards children also occurred outside of institutions. It argues that many key players – including doctors and other professionals – did not step up to protect victims, and…
Marital Rape and the Marital Rapist
The Seventies
The Seventies: The Personal, the Political and the Making of Modern Australia." Australian Historical Studies, 51(4), pp. 494–495
Sexual Violence in Australia, 1970s–1980s
Consent
The Cambridge World History of Sexualities
Volume I offers historiographical surveys and general overviews of central topics in the history of world sexualities. Split across twenty-two chapters, this volume places the history of sexuality in dialogue with anthropology, women's history, LGBTQ+ history, queer theory, and public history, as well as examining the impact Freud and Foucault have had on the history of sexuality. The volume continues by providing overviews on the sexual body, fa…
Tourism, Americanization and the Vietnam War R&R Scheme in Sydney, Australia, 1967–71
Australia's addition to the Vietnam War R&R scheme in September 1967 brought some 280,000 short-stay tourists to Sydney, and particularly its notorious ‘red light district’, Kings Cross. We show how Australia's experience of this ‘friendly invasion’ aided considerably in the development of a nascent tourist industry in Sydney, due in no small part to the considerable efforts of government promoters and local entrepreneurs. This influx also create…
Sociology (20 works) · Political science (13 works) · Australian History and Society (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Criminology (10 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes (8 works)