Homosexual law reform was supported by influential sections of the Church of England.
Tag: religion
“She was both Poxt and Clapt together”: Confessions of Sexual Secrets in Eighteenth-Century Venereal Cases
Olivia Weisser Furtive trysts. Regretful dalliances. Fleeting affairs. Sexual secrets were nothing new in the 1700s, but confessing them to a doctor became surprisingly common in published medical cases of venereal disease. In one instance, a woman consulted a surgeon for a common reproductive ailment known as “the whites.” She […]
The Cologne Sexual Assaults in Historical Perspective
Michelle Lynn Kahn “Are you safe?” Emails from loved ones flooded my inbox the first days of 2016. All assumed the worst-case scenario: that I was among the victims of the coordinated sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve at the Central Train Station in Cologne, Germany, where I am writing […]
CFP: Histories of Sexuality and Religion
How have religious practices, identities, beliefs, institutions and politics shaped the history of sexuality?
365 Notches: (re)marks on our 1st anniversary
It’s hard to believe that we are celebrating one year of Notches! On 6 January 2014, with the support of the Raphael Samuel History Centre, we launched a new blog with the goal of getting folks inside and outside the academy to think critically about histories of sex and sexuality across […]
Blood Ties: Queer Blood, Donations, and Citizenship
T.J. Tallie Can queer blood be less American than straight blood? In the United States, blood donations are automatically refused if the donor is a man who has had sex with another man at any point since 1977. Los Angeles-based filmmaker and activist Ryan James Yezak began the National Gay […]
The Queer Caribbean: Conflicting Uses of the Colonial Past
Agnes Arnold-Forster In 1991, the Progressive Liberal Party government amended the Bahamas’ Sexual Offences Act, decriminalising “buggery” and other same-sex sexual acts in private. Over twenty years later the Bahamas still remains ahead of the majority of its Caribbean neighbours. Male-male sexual activity continues to be illegal in eleven Caribbean nations. […]