history of sexuality

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  9/7/2022
  

  75 Years On, the Kinsey Institute Continues to Influence How we Think About Sex

  Tasked with teaching a course on marriage and family, biologist Alfred Kinsey was shocked by the lack of scientific research on human sexuality. In 1947 he launched a research institute to fill that void. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  8/25/2022
  

  The Democratic Possibilities of Cruising

  by Jack Parlett

  As a practice, cruising exemplifies the possibilities of urban culture by bringing people into contact with strangers and enabling them to recognize common desires. The history of crusing shows it's not just about sex, but about democracy. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/29/2022
  

  Historians Ask what the Decline of Nude Beaches Tells Us about the Internet's Influence

  Historians of naturism Sarah Schrank and Stephen L. Harp believe that the panoptical nature of social media is eroding a longstanding divergence between European and American attitudes about nudity in public spaces, particularly among young women. 

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  6/23/2022
  

  Dangerous as the Plague: The History of Moral Panics over Queer "Seduction"

  by Samuel Huneke

  From the perspective of the post-Obergefell US, this year's politicized attacks on LGBTQ people—particularly as threats to the nation's youth—seem like a sudden reversal. But such attacks have a long and miserable history that has shadowed movements for queer freedom at every turn. 

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• SOURCE: iNews
  6/16/2022
  

  The Secret of Successful Royal Marriage? History Says it's a Mistress

  by Kate Lister

  The transactional nature of royal marriages meant that bonds of affection or attraction between parties was an afterthought, making royal paramours (for kings, at least) commonplace. 

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  5/31/2022
  

  The Asian-Canadian Gay Pioneer Theorist of Sexuality

  by Laurie Marhoefer

  Li Shiu Tong, the partner of better-known German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, was an important theorist and activist whose once-lost writings anticipated today's politics of gay rights and liberation. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  5/10/2022
  

  SCOTUS is Enabling a Backlash Against Free Sexual Expression

  by Rebecca L. Davis

  The history of legislation aimed at suppressing "vice" shows that abortion is tied to other forms of free sexual expression. The last sweeping attack on sexual freedom took decades to reverse.

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• SOURCE: Atlas Obscura
  4/22/2022
  

  The 19th Century Woman's Secret Guides to Birth Control

  Women have always tried to share information enabling them to control their reproductive health, and others have always tried to stop them. Secrecy, coded language and misdirection are historical puzzles to untangle, say Andrea Tone, Naomi Rendina, Lauren Thompson and Donna Drucker. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/25/2022
  

  Antiabortion Movement Gunning for Contraceptive Rights, Too

  by Anya Jabour

  A century ago, sex researcher Katharine Bement Davis was silenced because she fought to redefine women's sexuality and contraceptive use as normal and fight for its decriminalization. The right today wants to undo her legacy through the courts.

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• SOURCE: Notches
  3/3/2022
  

  Elizabeth Reis on "Bodies in Doubt," Her History of Intersex in America

  "People born with bodily differences that fall outside the bounds of “normal” have suffered tremendously, as physicians have tried to “fix” their bodies and their psyches to fit into a narrow conception of acceptability."

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  2/23/2022
  

  The Beginnings of Queer Citizenship in West Germany

  by Samuel Clowes Huneke

  An emerging gay activist culture in West Berlin in the 1970s made substantial gains in building cultural spaces and expanding tolerance, but struggled to build political solidarity out of sexual identity amid other social divisions.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/4/2022
  

  Britain to Enable Pardons, Expunge Records for Persons Convicted of Same-Sex Contact Under Repealed Laws

  “It is only right that where offences have been abolished, convictions for consensual activity between same-sex partners should be disregarded too,” British Home Secretary Priti Patel said in a statement.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  9/28/2021
  

  The Golden Age of "Traditional Marriage" Never Was

  by Lauren Gutterman

  Despite conservative mythologizing, married Americans in the postwar era frequently sought and secured space to explore same-sex attractions and relationships. These histories show that regardless of who controls the Supreme Court, conservatives will be unable to force a narrow model of family life on the public. 

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• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  9/23/2021
  

  Peering Into Windows and Wombs: Reflections on SB 8

  by Gillian Frank

  "Even as abortion opponents loudly proclaim they are acting by divine mandate, people of faith like Dr. Curtis Boyd remain on the frontlines of this battle for reproductive healthcare."

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• SOURCE: Bookforum
  9/12/2021
  

  Vice, Vice, Baby: Anna Lvovsky's History of Policing Sex

  The “shifting public understandings of homosexuality in the twentieth century,” the legal historian Anna Lvovsky argues, “cannot be fully understood without a history of policing.”

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  8/27/2021
  

  EBay Deletes the Queer Past

  The online auction company's decision may make it difficult for historians of LGBTQ cultures and of sexuality to build archives of historically signicant erotica. 

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• SOURCE: Public Books
  7/26/2021
  

  What Erotica Reveals about Society: A Conversation with Pernilla Myrne

  "Of course this society was male-dominated; it was a patriarchal society, like all other historical societies. But it was possible to talk explicitly about sex, sexual pleasure, sexual desire, for both men and women."

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• SOURCE: NPR
  7/7/2021
  

  How An Anti-Vice Crusader Sabotaged The Early Birth Control Movement

  Author Amy Sohn discusses her new book on the life and work of anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, who's work resulted in the restriction of contraception for a century. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/26/2021
  

  The Tyranny of the Female-Orgasm Industrial Complex

  The writer's personal experiences, in light of a historical review of ideas about female sexuality, suggests that more knowledge has reinforced the social control of women by making pleasure obligatory rather than prohibited (Note: contains frank, explicit and extensive discussions of sexual activity).

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• SOURCE: CNN
  2/12/2021
  

  The Fantasy that Changed Female Friendship Forever

  by Nicole Hemmer

  If the 1980s phenomenon of the male Chippendales show benefitted women's empowerment, it was not (only) by making men the objects of lust, but by normalizing rituals of female friendship.