Mystery or Deviance: Sexology Discourse in Turkey Between 1930-60

Between the years 1930-60, a series of books and magazines on sexual education were published that exclusively aimed at women in Turkey. Those texts, intended to teach women how to talk to men, how to discipline their bodies and minds, were fed from the situated reasoning which was being formed by aligned concepts such as nature-culture and body-mind and the popular sexology discourse which emerged in Europe during the nineteenth century. According to these texts a woman’s place is her home and a number of duties including the care of the husband make her merely visible. The invisibility on the other hand is presented to woman as something being mysterious and virtuous. Mystery and virtue invade woman’s body which is the only place remained for her to move around and the pleasure of sex would be defined in opposite ends like virtue and deviance.