Noyes, John Humphrey

1811–1886

U.S. Religious Leader

John Humphrey Noyes, the founder and leader of the utopian Oneida Community (established in 1848), developed a radical conception of masculinity and sexuality. His spiritual and religious convictions led him to criticize the dominant heterosexual family structure in the United States, as well as the changes wrought on U.S. work culture by nineteenth-century industrialization.

[Page 343]In 1831, after a year of studying law, Noyes was converted during a religious revival of the Second Great Awakening, after which he entered the Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. Finding Andover's theological approach too restrictive, he left and entered the Yale Divinity School, where he was influenced by Nathaniel Taylor's doctrine of Perfectionism. According to this doctrine, which assumed major importance in American religious thinking during the Awakening, Christ's redemption freed human beings from sin and allowed them to attain perfection.

Noyes's conceptualization of masculinity and of gender and sexual relationships rests on his own controversial interpretation of Perfectionism. He posited a fully redeemed world in which men and women may escape sin through their spiritual and intellectual understanding. He used his prolific writings and the example of the Oneida Community to try to convert the world to his beliefs.

Noyes advocated “male continence,” a method for controlling ejaculation during sexual activity, and “complex marriage,” a heterosexual, polygamous arrangement in which all male and female members of the community considered themselves married. These ideas grew out of the basic component of Noyes' Perfectionist ideology, which he called “ascending association.” Noyes believed that interaction with those more advanced in spiritual development could increase one's own spiritual gifts, and that any such relationship should be controlled by the person of higher spiritual rank. At Oneida, however, while older women might have higher spiritual rank than the youngest men, male community members were seen as ultimately having a higher spiritual rank. As Noyes noted, “in the fellowship between men and women … man is naturally superior” (Noyes 1975, 205). Noyes therefore put men firmly in charge of sexual virtue. Challenging the contemporary Victorian idea that men needed women's help to control their unruly sexual impulses, the practice of male continence assumed men's willingness and ability to control their most intimate sexual activities.

Noyes, reflecting prevalent societal values, believed men were more active than women—and more able to lead and inspire. He considered women more passive and receptive than men. However, Noyes encouraged men to cultivate and develop what he considered feminine qualities: the ability to listen as well as talk, to learn as well as teach. In the Oneida Community, Noyes returned men to the center of the family as spiritual leaders, and he returned wage-earning labor to the home. His beliefs displaced women who, in the dominant U.S. culture, were identified as leaders in the home environment. At Oneida, men did not leave home to go to a separate workplace; manufacturing and most (but not all) domestic duties were shared by men and women, generally under the leadership of men.

It is difficult to assess the precise influence that Noyes and the Oneida experiment have had on U.S. culture. Only a few hundred people ever joined the Oneida Community, but nineteenth-century “sex radicals” and twentieth-century sexual ethicists were influenced by the experiences of those who lived there. The Oneidans exemplified sexual intimacy within a loving community without jealousy or exclusivity, they emphasized the value of sexuality separate from reproduction, and they recognized the importance of male attention to female sexual pleasure.

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