The War on Sex
Western Repression from the Torah to Victoria
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About the Book
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.
About the Author(s)
Bibliographic Details
Chad Denton
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 292
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2015
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9504-7
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1661-2
Imprint: McFarland
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Preface 1
Introduction 3
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 Pederasty 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 Frontier: Scandinavia and Slavic Europe 119
Sex and (Imagined) Love 121
Civilization’s Sewer 126
Invasion of the Sodomites 129
Sinners Defiant 134
Savonarola’s Florence 137
VII. The Sensual Empire: Turkey, 1453–1800 139
Sharia 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
Epilogue: The Thaw 243
Chapter Notes 249
Bibliography 267
Index 277
