Special Love - Special Sex: An Oneida Community Diary

The recently discovered diary of an Oneida Community member written between 1876 and 1877 deals with love, aggression, jealousy, and the conflict between private desire and public good. Victor Hawley was a thirty-year-old dental assistant with a passion for collecting butterflies, who fell in love with Mary Jones, another colony member. Because of the community's unique social and sexual practices, however, the two were kept apart and denied their request to have a child. In the eyes of the...