Male Continence and the Practical Machinery of Complex Marriage

Complex marriage required a practical method for separating sexual relations from reproduction, since a community practicing shared partnership among dozens of adults could not sustain uncontrolled childbearing, and Noyes supplied one in a technique he called male continence, in which men were trained to engage in intercourse without ejaculation, a discipline he taught as a skill any committed man could learn and presented as more considerate to women than the withdrawal or abstinence practiced elsewhere in reform circles of the period. Spencer Klaw's history of the community describes how this technical foundation let Oneida later launch a formal breeding program called stirpiculture in the 1860s, in which a committee approved specific pairings believed likely to produce spiritually and physically superior children, treating reproduction itself as a matter for communal planning rather than individual couples, a step considerably beyond simply permitting shared partnership. The system held for roughly three decades under Noyes's direct leadership, but mounting outside pressure, including threatened prosecution and Noyes's own flight to Canada in 1879, forced the community to abandon complex marriage that year and reorganize in 1881 as an ordinary joint stock company, Oneida Community Limited, ending the marital practice while its manufacturing business continued under conventional ownership.