Sexual Damnation: How Shame, Law, and History Punished Desire

When we talk about sexual damnation, the cultural and religious punishment of sexual behavior deemed immoral. Also known as sexual sin, it’s not just about guilt—it’s about control. From medieval penitentials to 19th-century medical journals, societies didn’t just disapprove of certain acts—they branded them as crimes against God, nature, or reason. This wasn’t random moralizing. It was a system. One that tied female pleasure to madness, same-sex desire to disease, and masturbation to blindness—all to keep bodies in line with power.

Behind sexual shame, the internalized fear of being judged for desire stood institutions: churches, courts, doctors, and families. The religious morality, dogma that framed sex as sinful unless tied to procreation didn’t vanish with the Enlightenment. It just got a lab coat. Victorian doctors called masturbation a cause of insanity. Judges jailed women for adultery while ignoring male infidelity. And when lesbians appeared in court records, their relationships were erased—or twisted into "friendships"—because acknowledging them meant admitting their existence was real.

historical sexuality, the study of how sexual norms changed across time and place reveals something surprising: what’s considered "damning" today was often celebrated yesterday. Etruscans painted sex on tomb walls as sacred. Ancient Egyptians used lipstick as a signal of power and availability. Even in Puritan New England, couples had sex for pleasure—just quietly. The real shift didn’t come from nature or biology. It came from fear. Fear of women owning desire. Fear of queer people living openly. Fear that if sex wasn’t controlled, so too would be power.

And yet, people resisted. Anne Koedt wrote about the clitoris. Activists stormed police raids on gay bars. Women used steam-powered vibrators to escape "hysteria" diagnoses. These weren’t just acts of rebellion—they were reclamation. Every article below digs into one of those moments: the banned poems, the erased archives, the medical lies, the legal battles. This isn’t about ancient history. It’s about why you still feel guilty for wanting, for touching, for saying no—or yes. And how that guilt was never yours to carry.