I could understand how mass-audience public discourse might not admit such a thing.
But I'd assume there were enough people in sexual relationships that, at least in private or cras venues, reality would prevail.
For example, indeed sex itself was frowned upon from many angles, but prostitution was rampant in London. Same for drugs. And indeed it was often the same people holding the same views at the same time.
I think there are similar themes in other historical settings. I remember reading that many of key drivers of US prohibitions were themselves major alcohol abusers.
I think the hypocrisy itself isn't that unusual, but the scale of it (how widely the "public" beliefs were held and how large the gap between private and public was) was quite extreme, compared to similar cases.
Not a historian, no sources.
And ours isn't? Societies tend to have serious taboos that are nevertheless transgressed in private all the time.
Muslims drink. Chinese people curse the CCP. Western companies avoid hiring members of certain ethnic groups if possible.
I think there's a bad assumption here that women felt safe to express or acknowledge a sex drive, even in private, even to their husbands. Then, just as now, the main danger to a woman was her husband.
If only whores or women who are insane have a sex drive, that's a backwards way of saying that you will be judged for having a sex drive, and if you're found guilty, you will be punished as a whore, and if you are found innocent, you will be medicalized as a crazy person. Taboos are restrictions.
I do vaguely recall there was a lot of "medical" science about sex at the time, it might be it's from that one; see also hysteria, the treatment of which was a vibrator, but the remaining publications are clinical at best - denying that women have a sex drive, basically.
> The true story is that the use of vibrators became widespread only when they were marketed to the general public, both men and women, as domestic and medical appliances in the early 1900s. Ads featuring men and women, babies and older people, promised vibrators could do everything from eliminating wrinkles to curing tuberculosis. When doctors did use vibrators on women, they assiduously avoided touching their clitorises. “The greatest objection to vibration thus applied is that in overly sensitive patients it is liable to cause sexual excitement,” the gynecologist James Craven Wood wrote in 1917. If, however, he continued, “the vibratode is kept well back from the clitoris, there is but little danger of causing such excitement.”
The brain elasticity of an 80yo might not always be up to learning the JS framework of the week (though perhaps that is a wisdom in itself...), but I find, when talking to older folks, that their years of experience offer an irreplaceable perspective. That I would consider to be a form of wisdom.
Its not that they know everything about everything or that being old makes them automatically smart, but experiencing the world through a much longer lens of time (then my lens) can change how they see things and in particular can allow them to recognize patterns that younger folks would miss...
(None of this should be construed as me advocating for a geritocrasy, but just as a reminder to take the time to listen to the older folks around you. You do not (and probably should not) take what they say at face value as given facts, but listen, consider, and test their perspective as you form your own opinions of the world...
I am convinced most of the Victorian behavior is an act. It is the classical game of seduction, up to 11.
If your partner is not at all concerned with your pleasure/enjoyment/feelings during a sexual encounter, it's probably not going to be particularly enjoyable for you. It's not surprising people don't enjoy being treated like a Fleshlight.
I STILL hear modern day men saying (or implying) that women don't really like sex or care about it very much. It's not a cultural view, but sexually active individuals absolutely still hold that belief to an extent.
So there might be some truth to the trope.
I can think of contradicting evidence, e.g., the novel Fanny Hill (pre Victorian but still English)