The war on sex : Western repression from the Torah to Victoria / Chad Denton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Denton, Chad, 1981-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sex--History.

Sex.

History.

Sex customs--History.

Sex customs.

Sex--Religious aspects--History.

Sex--Religious aspects.

Physical Description:

xi, 278 pages ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Jefferson, North Carolina : McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, [2015]

Summary:

From earliest times, sex has fascinated and repulsed society in equal measure. In an effort to untangle Western society's complex relationship with the realities of sex, this provocative volume explores the ways in which governments, religious leaders and cultures in Europe tried to regulate sex and sexuality throughout history. From the sacred texts of ancient Israel to the slums of 19th century Britain, this book explores political, legal and cultural controls on consensual sex and the individuals and movements that resisted them. Topics range from prostitution and homosexuality to marriage, contraception and abortion. While traditional narrative holds that Europe alternated between sexual freedom and oppression through the Victorian age, this work reveals that the real story of how sex was regulated-and how people defied regulation-is not so clear cut. Book jacket.

Contents:

I The Torah 7

Sex and Purity 8

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 10

Female Sexuality and Its Male Victims 13

II Ancient Greece and the First Sexologists 18

Old-Fashioned Greek Values 19

Homer and Hesiod, Sappho and Achilles 20

The Greeks Contemplate Pedetasty 24

Sex, Honor and Hybris 30

III The Decadent Past, from Alexander the Great to Antinuous 34

Sex in the Hellenistic World 34

When Romans Were Romans 37

Fornication, Marriage and Scandal under the Republic 39

Imperial Interventions 43

Perverts and Prostitutes 45

Celibacy and Sex for Pleasure 51

Punishing Desire in the Afterlife 53

IV Rise of a New Order 56

When East Meets West 57

Sex and the New Testament 60

The Church Fathers versus Sex 64

Sex under the Late Roman Empire 69

Escaping the World 77

V The War on Sin 80

Justinian I and the End of Antiquity 81

Sex under Irish and Welsh Law 84

Sex under Germanic Law 86

Choosing Holiness 89

Imposing Holiness 95

The Islamic Alternative 101

VI Medieval Rigidness 107

Triumph of the Church 109

The Theology of Sex 114

Jews in a Christian World 117

On the Frontiet: Scandinavia and Slavic Europe 119

Sex and (Imagined) Love 121

Civilization's Sewer 126

Invasion of the Sodomites 129

Sinners Defiant 134

Savonatola's Flotence 137

VII The Sensual Empire: Turkey, 1453-1800 139

Shatia Law, Civil Law and Sex 140

Beardless Youths 142

In the Harem 144

The War on Prostitution 147

VIII Reforming and Reaffirming 149

The Reformers versus Sex 150

Sex in Protestant Europe 153

Heaven on Earth: Calvin's Geneva and Cromwell's England 159

Sex in Catholic and Orthodox Europe 162

The Radicals of the Reformation 170

The Erotic Side of the Printing Press 172

Deporting Morals 175

Rationalizing Sex 184

IX Enlightened Bedrooms, 1700-1814 189

The Philosophes Debate Sex 191

The Age of Decadence 199

The Age of Reform 204

Tribads and Mollys 211

The Pornographic Underground 215

Sex under the First Republic and Napoleon 218

X A Brave New World 222

A Bourgeois Mentality 224

Imposing Decency 230

Invasion of the Inverts 233

Indecency for Mass Consumption 237

The Science of Sex 239

Radicals versus (or for) Sex 240.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-276) and index.

ISBN:

9780786495047

0786495049

OCLC:

877371079