Women's sexuality in Francoist Spain
[8] Women's sexuality was relegated in society exclusively to the realm of medicine, and only allowed to be discussed in medical literature by male doctors.
[1] Female adultery, homosexuality, masturbation and premarital sex were all considered by the regime to be forms of sexual aberrations.
[1] A 1944 edition of Semanario de la SF said, "The life of every woman, despite what she may pretend, is nothing but a continuous desire to find somebody to whom she can succumb.
Voluntary dependency, the offering of every minute, every desire and illusion is the most beautiful thing, because it implies the cleaning away of all the bad germs—vanity, selfishness, frivolity—by love.
[14][16] Student protests in the 1960s began to be a period where women's sexual liberation started to happen on university campuses.
[26] Despite Francoist invocations to desexualize women and transform them exclusively into mother figures, society still had idealized feminine forms that were often most visible in films of the era.
In the earlier Franco period, this ideal feminine form was one with wide hips, prominent breasts and round faces.
[12] While exercise was viewed as important for preserving a women's ability to procreate and to avoid health problems, too much physical activity was frowned upon.
[28] Because of the support of sport for women in Spain through organizations like Sección Feminina, the ideal female body type was one that showed her strength.
[29] Because women's breasts were largely inaccessible to the male gaze as a result of clothing and cinematographic censorship, female beauty in the Francoist period often focused on legs and ankles.
[31] Women "should be properly dressed, that is, with long sleeves or elbow, without necklines, with baggy skirts that will not indicate the details of the body nor they grab undue attention.
[24] In order for some women who became pregnant to maintain the illusion of being virgins, they had clandestine abortions or committed infanticide.
[37] Homosexual women during the Franco period could only meet each other clandestinely, perpetuating a silencing of their voices and rendering them unintelligible to outsiders.
The clandestine nature of their relationships rendered lesbians invisible and prone to having collective imagery about them negatively defined by the state and its apparatus.
"[48][21] Some radical feminists in the immediate transition period would choose lesbianism as a form of exerting control over their sexuality that had been repressed by the Franco regime.
Political feminism that saw lesbianism as a natural endpoint for women began to become a bigger theme in some feminist works of this period.
[54] Carles Carreras i Verdaguer said of the leftist and communist culture found in places like Barcelona and Ibiza in 1968, "It was time for the breaking of the family model and, for example, we did not have our vocabulary.
[20] As a result of the rebound effect following the end of the dictatorship, Spanish women are more sexually liberated than some of their European counterparts.
Animal hobbies.To prevent girls from masturbating while at boarding schools, staff would come into rooms to check that their hands were not under their blankets during the night.
Pharmacists or anyone in their employ who gave any substance or medicine that would be considered abortive could face the loss of their professional qualifications for five to ten years and fines of between 1,000 and 25,000 pesetas.
This was especially true for women engaging in sex outside of marriage at a time when that practice, along with having children when single, were highly condemned by the government.
Further attempts to dislodge midwives from the birthing process included accusing them of witchcraft and quackery, trying to make them appear unscientific.
[74][75] Regular Nationalists soldiers engaged in similar patterns of rape, torture and murder in places like Maials, Callus and Cantalpino.
[70][75] As a result of Franco's death in 1975 and the democratic transition starting, the first protest condemning violence against women was held in Barcelona in 1976.
[83] Historical memory laws in Spain have resulted in more attention about to the violence faced by women during the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist period.
[88] One woman related an experience about dealing with her period in this era as, "My grandmother bought me the new cotton panties and I put them in my school bag in case I got stained.
[54] The Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) and the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing) defined sexuality and reproductive rights as, "Rights of women and men to have control over their sexuality, to decide freely and responsibly without being subject to coercion, discrimination and violence; the right of all couples and individuals to freely and responsibly decide the number and spacing of their children and to have the information, education and the means to do so, as well as to reach the highest level of sexual and reproductive health.
Sexuality is experienced and expressed in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviours, practices, roles and relationships.
It is lived and expressed through thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors, practices, roles and interpersonal relationships.
Sexuality is influenced by the interaction of biological, social, economic, political, cultural, ethical, legal, historical, religious and spiritual factors.
