Careful observation among the ladies of large cities soon convinces one that homosexuality is by no means a rarity. Uranism may nearly always be suspected in females wearing their hair short, or who dress in the fashion of men, or pursue the sports and pastimes of their male acquaintances; (…) The female urning may chiefly […]

Early Christianity incorporated some of the ideas on self-mastery already present in Late Antiquity, but reworked them to formulate a radically new sexual ethics. Whereas in Late Antiquity, sexual renunciation was valued as part of a male ethics of self-mastery, by the 5th century ad, Christian ideals promoted virginity and sexual abstinence for men as […]

Male lions don’t desire male lions, because lions don’t do philosophy. ps-Lucian, c. 4th century ad Sex in the ancient world In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes tells a story about the origins of human beings. According to his myth, humans descend from creatures who had spherical bodies, genitals on the outside, four hands and feet, two […]

Sex is everywhere in the modern world. We are surrounded by a cacophony of advice columns, celebrities, agony aunts, chat shows, TV evangelists, therapists, women’s and men’s magazines, and self-help literature which tells us how to conduct our intimate relationships. Sexual imagery is used to sell us everyday products such as cars or clothes, or […]

Parts of this book were first developed in conjunction with my lecture series on ‘Sexuality and Social Exclusion’, ‘Sexuality and the Dynamics of Intimacy’, and ‘Gender, Sexualities and the State’ at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences and the Centre for Gender Studies of the University of Cambridge between 1999 and 2008. Many thanks […]