Author: Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536
Book Description
A lively, scholarly, and often startling exploration of 19th-century American attitudes toward sexuality -- what we felt, thought, wrote, and said about the human body; about love, lust, intercourse, masturbation, contraception, and abortion; about the power of sexual words and images.Horowitz shows us a many-voiced America in which an earthy acceptance of desire and sexual expression collided with the prohibitions broadcast from pulpit and printed page by evangelical Christian elements. She describes the new sensibility that placed sex at the center of life; visionaries like Robert Owen, espousing free love, and the lively new commerce in erotica -- including newspapers like The Sunday Flash and, most famously, The National Police Gazette (which featured a legal way to write explicitly about sex). We see a rising opposition instigated by conservative New Yorkers who feared the corruption of young male clerks living in boardinghouses, deprived of parental influence. And we see how this movement led into an era of suppression -- pitting Anthony Comstock, who succeeded in banning sexual subject matter from the mails, against the new dissenters committed to free speech -- and into the opening battles of the national cultural wars that continue to this day.
Rereading Sex
Author: Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536
Book Description
A lively, scholarly, and often startling exploration of 19th-century American attitudes toward sexuality -- what we felt, thought, wrote, and said about the human body; about love, lust, intercourse, masturbation, contraception, and abortion; about the power of sexual words and images.Horowitz shows us a many-voiced America in which an earthy acceptance of desire and sexual expression collided with the prohibitions broadcast from pulpit and printed page by evangelical Christian elements. She describes the new sensibility that placed sex at the center of life; visionaries like Robert Owen, espousing free love, and the lively new commerce in erotica -- including newspapers like The Sunday Flash and, most famously, The National Police Gazette (which featured a legal way to write explicitly about sex). We see a rising opposition instigated by conservative New Yorkers who feared the corruption of young male clerks living in boardinghouses, deprived of parental influence. And we see how this movement led into an era of suppression -- pitting Anthony Comstock, who succeeded in banning sexual subject matter from the mails, against the new dissenters committed to free speech -- and into the opening battles of the national cultural wars that continue to this day.
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536
Book Description
A lively, scholarly, and often startling exploration of 19th-century American attitudes toward sexuality -- what we felt, thought, wrote, and said about the human body; about love, lust, intercourse, masturbation, contraception, and abortion; about the power of sexual words and images.Horowitz shows us a many-voiced America in which an earthy acceptance of desire and sexual expression collided with the prohibitions broadcast from pulpit and printed page by evangelical Christian elements. She describes the new sensibility that placed sex at the center of life; visionaries like Robert Owen, espousing free love, and the lively new commerce in erotica -- including newspapers like The Sunday Flash and, most famously, The National Police Gazette (which featured a legal way to write explicitly about sex). We see a rising opposition instigated by conservative New Yorkers who feared the corruption of young male clerks living in boardinghouses, deprived of parental influence. And we see how this movement led into an era of suppression -- pitting Anthony Comstock, who succeeded in banning sexual subject matter from the mails, against the new dissenters committed to free speech -- and into the opening battles of the national cultural wars that continue to this day.
Rereading Sex
Author: Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375701869
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
From bawdy talk to evangelical sermons, and from celebrations of free love to prosecutions for obscenity, nineteenth-century America encompassed a far broader range of sexual attitudes and ideas than the Victorian stereotype would have us believe. In Rereading Sex, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz lets us listen to the national conversation about sex in the nineteenth century and hear voices that resonate in our own time. Probing court records, pamphlets, and “sporting men’s” magazines, Horowitz shows us a many-voiced America in which an earthy acceptance of desire and sexual expression collided with prohibitions broadcast from the pulpit. We encounter fascinating reformers like Victoria Woodhull, who advocated free love and became the first woman to run for president; faddists like Sylvester Graham, who obsessed about the dangers of masturbation; and moral crusaders like Anthony Comstock, who succeeded in banning sexual subject matter from the mails. We also see how newspapers like the Sunday Flash treated prostitutes like celebrities and how the National Police Gazette found a legal way to write about explicity about sex through crime reports that read like gossip columns. Employing an encyclopedic knowledge artfully rendered, Horowitz brings to the fore a wide spectrum of attitudes and a debate echoed in the culture wars of today.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375701869
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
From bawdy talk to evangelical sermons, and from celebrations of free love to prosecutions for obscenity, nineteenth-century America encompassed a far broader range of sexual attitudes and ideas than the Victorian stereotype would have us believe. In Rereading Sex, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz lets us listen to the national conversation about sex in the nineteenth century and hear voices that resonate in our own time. Probing court records, pamphlets, and “sporting men’s” magazines, Horowitz shows us a many-voiced America in which an earthy acceptance of desire and sexual expression collided with prohibitions broadcast from the pulpit. We encounter fascinating reformers like Victoria Woodhull, who advocated free love and became the first woman to run for president; faddists like Sylvester Graham, who obsessed about the dangers of masturbation; and moral crusaders like Anthony Comstock, who succeeded in banning sexual subject matter from the mails. We also see how newspapers like the Sunday Flash treated prostitutes like celebrities and how the National Police Gazette found a legal way to write about explicity about sex through crime reports that read like gossip columns. Employing an encyclopedic knowledge artfully rendered, Horowitz brings to the fore a wide spectrum of attitudes and a debate echoed in the culture wars of today.
Alone of All Her Sex
Author: Marina Warner
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0394711556
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 488
Book Description
Shows how the figure of Mary has shaped and been shaped by changing social and historical circumstances and why for all their beauty and power,the legends of Mary have condemned real women to perpetual inferiority.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0394711556
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 488
Book Description
Shows how the figure of Mary has shaped and been shaped by changing social and historical circumstances and why for all their beauty and power,the legends of Mary have condemned real women to perpetual inferiority.
Histories of Sexuality
Author: Stephen Garton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317489012
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
This book presents the first assessment of one of the most rapidly expanding fields of research: the history of sexuality. From the early efforts of historians to work out a model for sexual history, to the extraordinary impact of French philosopher Michel Foucault, to the vigorous debates about essentialism and social constructionism, to the emergence of contemporary debates about historicism, queer theory, embodiment, gender and cultural history - we now have vast and diverse historical scholarship on sex and sexuality. 'Histories of Sexuality' highlights the key historical moments and issues: pederasty and cultures of male passivity in ancient Greece and Rome; the impact of early Christianity and ideals of renunciation on the sexual cultures of late antiquity; the sustained existence of homosexual cultures in medieval and renaissance Europe; the "invention" of homosexuality and heterosexuality in eighteenth century Europe and America; the truth behind Victorian sexual repression; the work of reformers and scientists such as Havelock Ellis, Marie Stopes, Stella Browne, Margaret Sanger, Alfred Kinsey, William Masters and Virginia Johnson.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317489012
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
This book presents the first assessment of one of the most rapidly expanding fields of research: the history of sexuality. From the early efforts of historians to work out a model for sexual history, to the extraordinary impact of French philosopher Michel Foucault, to the vigorous debates about essentialism and social constructionism, to the emergence of contemporary debates about historicism, queer theory, embodiment, gender and cultural history - we now have vast and diverse historical scholarship on sex and sexuality. 'Histories of Sexuality' highlights the key historical moments and issues: pederasty and cultures of male passivity in ancient Greece and Rome; the impact of early Christianity and ideals of renunciation on the sexual cultures of late antiquity; the sustained existence of homosexual cultures in medieval and renaissance Europe; the "invention" of homosexuality and heterosexuality in eighteenth century Europe and America; the truth behind Victorian sexual repression; the work of reformers and scientists such as Havelock Ellis, Marie Stopes, Stella Browne, Margaret Sanger, Alfred Kinsey, William Masters and Virginia Johnson.
Sex and Punishment
Author: Eric Berkowitz
Publisher: Saqi
ISBN: 1908906014
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Sex and Punishment tells the story of the struggle throughout millennia to regulate the most powerful engine of human behaviour: sex. From the savage impalement of an Ancient Mesopotamian adulteress to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde for 'gross indecency' in 1895, Eric Berkowitz evokes the entire sweep of Western sex law. The cast of Sex and Punishment is as varied as the forms taken by human desire itself: royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, lonely goat-lovers, prostitutes of all stripes and London rent boys. Each of them had forbidden sex, and each was judged – and justice, as Berkowitz shows – rarely had anything to do with it.
Publisher: Saqi
ISBN: 1908906014
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Sex and Punishment tells the story of the struggle throughout millennia to regulate the most powerful engine of human behaviour: sex. From the savage impalement of an Ancient Mesopotamian adulteress to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde for 'gross indecency' in 1895, Eric Berkowitz evokes the entire sweep of Western sex law. The cast of Sex and Punishment is as varied as the forms taken by human desire itself: royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, lonely goat-lovers, prostitutes of all stripes and London rent boys. Each of them had forbidden sex, and each was judged – and justice, as Berkowitz shows – rarely had anything to do with it.
The New England Watch and Ward Society
Author: Paul Charles Kemeny
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190844396
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 409
Book Description
The New England Watch and Ward Society provides a new window into the history of American Protestantism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By suppressing obscene literature, gambling, and prostitution, the moral reform organization embodied Protestant efforts to shape public morality in an increasing intellectually and culturally diverse society.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190844396
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 409
Book Description
The New England Watch and Ward Society provides a new window into the history of American Protestantism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By suppressing obscene literature, gambling, and prostitution, the moral reform organization embodied Protestant efforts to shape public morality in an increasing intellectually and culturally diverse society.
The Flash Press
Author: Patricia Cline Cohen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226112357
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Obscene, libidinous, loathsome, lascivious. Those were just some of the ways critics described the nineteenth-century weeklies that covered and publicized New York City’s extensive sexual underworld. Publications like the Flash and the Whip—distinguished by a captivating brew of lowbrow humor and titillating gossip about prostitutes, theater denizens, and sporting events—were not the sort generally bound in leather for future reference, and despite their popularity with an enthusiastic readership, they quickly receded into almost complete obscurity. Recently, though, two sizable collections of these papers have resurfaced, and in The Flash Press three renowned scholars provide a landmark study of their significance as well as a wide selection of their ribald articles and illustrations. Including short tales of urban life, editorials on prostitution, and moralizing rants against homosexuality, these selections epitomize a distinct form of urban journalism. Here, in addition to providing a thorough overview of this colorful reportage, its editors, and its audience, the authors examine nineteenth-century ideas of sexuality and freedom that mixed Tom Paine’s republicanism with elements of the Marquis de Sade’s sexual ideology. They also trace the evolution of censorship and obscenity law, showing how a string of legal battles ultimately led to the demise of the flash papers: editors were hauled into court, sentenced to jail for criminal obscenity and libel, and eventually pushed out of business. But not before they forever changed the debate over public sexuality and freedom of expression in America’s most important city.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226112357
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Obscene, libidinous, loathsome, lascivious. Those were just some of the ways critics described the nineteenth-century weeklies that covered and publicized New York City’s extensive sexual underworld. Publications like the Flash and the Whip—distinguished by a captivating brew of lowbrow humor and titillating gossip about prostitutes, theater denizens, and sporting events—were not the sort generally bound in leather for future reference, and despite their popularity with an enthusiastic readership, they quickly receded into almost complete obscurity. Recently, though, two sizable collections of these papers have resurfaced, and in The Flash Press three renowned scholars provide a landmark study of their significance as well as a wide selection of their ribald articles and illustrations. Including short tales of urban life, editorials on prostitution, and moralizing rants against homosexuality, these selections epitomize a distinct form of urban journalism. Here, in addition to providing a thorough overview of this colorful reportage, its editors, and its audience, the authors examine nineteenth-century ideas of sexuality and freedom that mixed Tom Paine’s republicanism with elements of the Marquis de Sade’s sexual ideology. They also trace the evolution of censorship and obscenity law, showing how a string of legal battles ultimately led to the demise of the flash papers: editors were hauled into court, sentenced to jail for criminal obscenity and libel, and eventually pushed out of business. But not before they forever changed the debate over public sexuality and freedom of expression in America’s most important city.
Men Beyond Desire
Author: David Greven
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403977119
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
This book explores the construction of male sexuality in nineteenth-century American literature and comes up with some startling findings. Far from desiring heterosexual sex and wishing to bond with other men through fraternity, the male protagonists of classic American literature mainly want to be left alone. Greven makes the claim that American men, eschewing both marriage and male friendship, strive to remain emotionally and sexually inviolate. Examining the work of traditional authors - Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Cooper, Irving, Stowe - Greven discovers highly untraditional and transgressive representations of desire and sexuality. Objects of desire from both women and other men, the inviolate males discussed in this study overturn established gendered and sexual categories, just as this study overturns archetypal assumptions about American manhood and American literature.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403977119
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
This book explores the construction of male sexuality in nineteenth-century American literature and comes up with some startling findings. Far from desiring heterosexual sex and wishing to bond with other men through fraternity, the male protagonists of classic American literature mainly want to be left alone. Greven makes the claim that American men, eschewing both marriage and male friendship, strive to remain emotionally and sexually inviolate. Examining the work of traditional authors - Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Cooper, Irving, Stowe - Greven discovers highly untraditional and transgressive representations of desire and sexuality. Objects of desire from both women and other men, the inviolate males discussed in this study overturn established gendered and sexual categories, just as this study overturns archetypal assumptions about American manhood and American literature.
What is Gender?
Author: Mary Holmes
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446240258
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
Is gender something done to us by society, or something we do? What is the relationship between gender and other inequalities? What is Gender? explores these complex and important questions, helping readers to critically analyse how women′s and men′s lives are shaped by the society in which they live. The book offers a comprehensive account of trends in sociological thinking, from a material and economic focus on gender inequalities to the debates about meaning initiated by the linguistic or cultural turn. The book begins by questioning simplistic biological conceptions of gender and goes on to evaluate different theoretical frameworks for explaining gender, as well as political approaches to gender issues. The cultural turn is also examined in relation to thinking about how gender is related to other forms of inequality such as class and ′race′. The book is up-to-date and broad in its scope, drawing on a range of disciplines, such as: sociology, psychoanalysis, masculinity studies, literary criticism, feminist political theory, feminist philosophy and feminist theory.
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446240258
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
Is gender something done to us by society, or something we do? What is the relationship between gender and other inequalities? What is Gender? explores these complex and important questions, helping readers to critically analyse how women′s and men′s lives are shaped by the society in which they live. The book offers a comprehensive account of trends in sociological thinking, from a material and economic focus on gender inequalities to the debates about meaning initiated by the linguistic or cultural turn. The book begins by questioning simplistic biological conceptions of gender and goes on to evaluate different theoretical frameworks for explaining gender, as well as political approaches to gender issues. The cultural turn is also examined in relation to thinking about how gender is related to other forms of inequality such as class and ′race′. The book is up-to-date and broad in its scope, drawing on a range of disciplines, such as: sociology, psychoanalysis, masculinity studies, literary criticism, feminist political theory, feminist philosophy and feminist theory.
Sexuality and Its Disorders
Author: Mike Abrams
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1483315096
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 657
Book Description
Sexuality and Its Disorders explores sexuality from an evolutionary perspective using powerful, real-life case studies to help readers provide effective guidance around issues relating to sexuality. Drawing on his 30 years of clinical experience and research, author Mike Abrams provides a comprehensive, evidence-based, and clinically-oriented text with cutting-edge coverage throughout. Discussions include the physical and psychological development of sexual identity; the social aspects of sexual behavior; the many expressions of sexuality; cognitive behavior treatment of sexual problems; and more. The many perspectives of sexuality are examined with interviews and commentaries from major figures in the field—including David M. Buss, Helen Fisher, C. Sue Carter of Kinsey, Todd K. Shackelford, Ken Zucker, and Gordon Gallup—who discuss such topics as the origins of sexuality, the nature of love, the role of attachment, and the treatment of sexual problems.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1483315096
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 657
Book Description
Sexuality and Its Disorders explores sexuality from an evolutionary perspective using powerful, real-life case studies to help readers provide effective guidance around issues relating to sexuality. Drawing on his 30 years of clinical experience and research, author Mike Abrams provides a comprehensive, evidence-based, and clinically-oriented text with cutting-edge coverage throughout. Discussions include the physical and psychological development of sexual identity; the social aspects of sexual behavior; the many expressions of sexuality; cognitive behavior treatment of sexual problems; and more. The many perspectives of sexuality are examined with interviews and commentaries from major figures in the field—including David M. Buss, Helen Fisher, C. Sue Carter of Kinsey, Todd K. Shackelford, Ken Zucker, and Gordon Gallup—who discuss such topics as the origins of sexuality, the nature of love, the role of attachment, and the treatment of sexual problems.