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 deviance. Here, I will consider these notions of excess and constraint through an examination of sexual norms and perceived perversions, including sexual excess, sodomy and masturbation.