Jana Funke Gay politics today tend to be premised on the ‘born this way’ argument, the idea that being gay is not a matter of choice or preference, but rather an innate, natural and biologically conditioned fact of life. If homosexuality is something we are born with and therefore not something we choose […]
Tag: nineteenth century
Intimate Worlds: Exploring Sexuality Through the Wellcome Collection
Jennifer Grove A letter dated 2nd October 1936, headed with the logo of The Oriental Hotel, Kobe, Japan and the large underlined word ‘URGENT’, reads “I have bought the special things at sex store…” [original underlining]. The letter is from Montague Henry Knapp, a retired naval captain and collector, to […]
“Cow protection or Gay protection?” LGBT rights, “Hindu” tradition and the Indian elections
Onni Gust with Radhika Govindrajan Elections in India are drawing to a close with results pending. Amongst the 814 million eligible to vote are 28 000 gender non-conforming people, many of whom are hijra, who can now register as “third gender.” The competition for seats in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of Parliament, […]
(Sexual) Labour Day
Julia Laite I’ve often said that researching prostitution makes me more of a labour historian than a historian of sexuality. Despite having typically been lumped into the same categories as homosexuality and other perceived sexual deviances, women who sold sex in the past connected their actions not to their sexuality but to […]
The Erotics of Shaving in Victorian Britain
Justin Bengry Beardedness, or alternatively clean-shavenness, has long been an important signifier of manliness, inscribing crucial gender and sexual meanings onto the male body. But fashions in shaving are notoriously unstable, even in the nineteenth century, that idyll for the hirsute among us. Beardedness in nineteenth-century Britain, in fact, only […]
Love, Lust and Procreation: Debating Sex in Nineteenth-century Medicine?
Elisabeth Brander Nineteenth-century medical texts are extremely diverse in the topics they cover. They range from specialized works meant to be used by trained physicians and surgeons, to books of practical home remedies, to treatises on phrenology. They also offer much more than strictly medical advice – many of the […]
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