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Book The Pursuit of Sodomy

Download or read book The Pursuit of Sodomy written by Kent Gerard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 1989 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians Kent Gerard and Gert Hekma make available--for the first time to an English-speaking audience--the best, most recent work on the history of male homosexuality in Early Modern Europe. The role of the male homosexual--during the pivotal era of 1400 to 1800--is thoroughly explored. A wide-ranging group of authors offers relevant and fascinating material on sexual history and sexuality, in general, and on homosexuality and European history, in particular.

Book Pederasts and Others

Download or read book Pederasts and Others written by William Peniston and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examine how a community of support in Nineteenth-Century Paris became a blueprint for modern sexual identity! A unique social history, Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris is a valuable addition to the growing field of gay and lesbian studies. The book examines the interaction between the city's male homosexual subculture and Parisian authority figures who attempted to maintain political and social order during the early years of the French Third Republic by using laws against public indecency and sexual assault to treat same-sex sexuality as a crime. Faced with a constant cycle of surveillance, harassment, and arrest, the city's gay men survived the hostile urban environment by forming a community of support that had a widespread and lasting influence on the development of modern sexual identities. Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris is based on a statistical analysis of more than 800 working-class and middle-class men who were arrested or investigated by Parisian police between 1873 and 1879. Their stories, presented through long and short case studies, represent nearly 2,000 names recorded by police in “Pederasts and Others,” a ledger detailing the arrests of male homosexuals for public offenses against decency and other minor offenses. (The term “pederast” identified those suspected of same-sex sexual activity, not the modern definition that indicates homosexual relations with a minor.) The ledger entries reveal specific habits, attitudes, values, and characteristics about these men that set them apart—the same traits that identified them as part of a community based on their behavior and relationships. Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris examines: the forces of authority the laws regarding same-sex sexual behavior the role of the police the role of the magistrates the role of the doctors the common characteristics of the city's male homosexual subculture the sexual behaviors of the Paris underground the geography of the subculture and takes an expanded look at three case studies: “A Decadent Aristocrat and A Delinquent Boy” “Pederasts, Prostitutes, and Pickpockets” “Love and Death in Gay Paris” Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris also includes tables, appendices, and maps linked to statistical data. The book is an essential resource for historians, sociologists, sexologists, criminologists, and other scholars working in the fields of gay and lesbian studies, urban studies, social and cultural history, and French history.

Book How Sex Got Screwed Up  The Ghosts that Haunt Our Sexual Pleasure   Book One

Download or read book How Sex Got Screwed Up The Ghosts that Haunt Our Sexual Pleasure Book One written by Jon Knowles and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2019-06-28 with total page 1077 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ghosts that haunt our sexual pleasure were born in the Stone Age. Sex and gender taboos were used by tribes to differentiate themselves from one another. These taboos filtered into the lives of Bronze and Iron Age men and women who lived in city-states and empires. For the early Christians, all sex play was turned into sin, instilled with guilt, and punished severely. With the invention of sin came the construction of women as subordinate beings to men. Despite the birth of romance in the late middle ages, Renaissance churches held inquisitions to seek out and destroy sex sinners, all of whom it saw as heretics. The Age of Reason saw the demise of these inquisitions. But, it was doctors who would take over the roles of priests and ministers as sex became defined by discourses of crime, degeneracy, and sickness. The middle of the 20th century saw these medical and religious teachings challenged for the first time as activists, such as Alfred Kinsey and Margaret Sanger, sought to carve out a place for sexual freedom in society. However, strong opposition to their beliefs and the growing exploitation of sex by the media at the close of the century would ultimately shape 21st century sexual ambivalence. Book One of this two-part publication traces the history of sex from the Stone Age to the Enlightenment. Interspersed with ‘personal hauntings’ from his own life and the lives of friends and relatives, Knowles reveals how historical discourses of sex continue to haunt us today. This book is a page-turner in simple and plain language about ‘how sex got screwed up’ for millennia. For Knowles, if we know the history of sex, we can get over it.

Book Ornamentalism

    Book Details:
  • Author : Bella Mirabella
  • Publisher : University of Michigan Press
  • Release : 2011
  • ISBN : 0472051172
  • Pages : 389 pages

Download or read book Ornamentalism written by Bella Mirabella and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original essays by leading scholars on the significance of accessories in the cultural, social, and political lives of men and women in the Renaissance

Book Forbidden Friendships

Download or read book Forbidden Friendships written by Michael Rocke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-03-05 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is a superb work of scholarship, impossible to overpraise.... It marks a milestone in the 20-year rise of gay and lesbian studies."--Martin Duberman, The Advocate The men of Renaissance Florence were so renowned for sodomy that "Florenzer" in German meant "sodomite." In the late fifteenth century, as many as one in two Florentine men had come to the attention of the authorities for sodomy by the time they were thirty. In 1432 The Office of the Night was created specifically to police sodomy in Florence. Indeed, nearly all Florentine males probably had some kind of same-sex experience as a part of their "normal" sexual life. Seventy years of denunciations, interrogations, and sentencings left an extraordinarily detailed record, which author Michael Rocke has used in his vivid depiction of this vibrant sexual culture in a world where these same-sex acts were not the deviant transgressions of a small minority, but an integral part of a normal masculine identity. Rocke roots this sexual activity in the broader context of Renaissance Florence, with its social networks of families, juvenile gangs, neighbors, patronage, workshops, and confraternities, and its busy political life from the early years of the Republic through the period of Lorenzo de' Medici, Savonarola, and the beginning of Medici princely rule. His richly detailed book paints a fascinating picture of Renaissance Florence and calls into question our modern conceptions of gender and sexual identity.

Book Sex and Punishment

    Book Details:
  • Author : Eric Berkowitz
  • Publisher : Catapult
  • Release : 2012-04-12
  • ISBN : 1619020785
  • Pages : 417 pages

Download or read book Sex and Punishment written by Eric Berkowitz and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An "enormously informative and entertaining” history of Western sex law which covers cases from ancient times to the 19th century (Boston Globe) The "raging frenzy" of the sex drive, to use Plato's phrase, has always defied control. However, that's not to say that the Sumerians, Victorians, and every civilization in between and beyond have not tried, wielding their most formidable weapon: the law. At any given point in time, some forms of sex were condoned while others were punished mercilessly. Jump forward or backward a century or two (and often far less than that), and the harmless fun of one time period becomes the gravest crime in another. Sex and Punishment tells the story of the struggle throughout the millennia to regulate the most powerful engine of human behavior. Writer and lawyer Eric Berkowitz uses flesh–and–blood cases—much flesh and even more blood—to evoke the entire sweep of Western sex law, from the savage impalement of an ancient Mesopotamian adulteress to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in 1895 for "gross indecency." The cast of Sex and Punishment is as varied as the forms taken by human desire itself: royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, lonely goat–lovers, prostitutes of all stripes, London rent boys. Each of them had forbidden sex, and each was judged—and justice, as Berkowitz shows, rarely had much to do with it. With the light touch of a natural storyteller, Berkowitz spins these tales and more, going behind closed doors to reveal the essential history of human desire.

Book Moral Argument  Religion  and Same Sex Marriage

Download or read book Moral Argument Religion and Same Sex Marriage written by Gordon A. Babst and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2009-09-03 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The diverse expert contributors to this volume from the fields of politics and law use moral argumentation with respect to same-sex marriage, gay rights in general, and California's Prop 8. The arguments are advanced in terms of the nation's foundational political and legal principles, extending ethical argumentation to important contemporary public policy areas such as marriage, the separation of church and state, and the rearing of children. Several chapters also contest the perceived if not actual establishment in the law and public policy of heterosexist and religious bias that continues to work against full and meaningful inclusion of sexual minorities. This bias is ironically and improperly couched in the language of American political and religious values, and it misunderstands the nation's core principles, or willfully miscasts them as inapplicable to many Americans and their families. Nonetheless, this bias is pervasive in the nation's political discourse, working to deny an important right and the recognition of equality to many citizens. The main contribution ofMoral Argument, Religion, and Same-Sex Marriage is in its direct engagement with the political and legal arguments of the gay community's critics on their own moral and ethical terms. Along the way, important concepts in public discourse_such as governmental neutrality, the right to marry, and religious freedom_are presented and cast in the light of liberal-democratic theory.

Book Empires of Love

    Book Details:
  • Author : Carmen Nocentelli
  • Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
  • Release : 2013-02-05
  • ISBN : 0812244834
  • Pages : 274 pages

Download or read book Empires of Love written by Carmen Nocentelli and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a wide range of Dutch, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish sources, Empires of Love shows how the encounter with Asia shaped the way early modern Europeans came to define their racial and sexual identities.

Book Long Before Stonewall

    Book Details:
  • Author : Thomas A. Foster
  • Publisher : NYU Press
  • Release : 2007-07
  • ISBN : 0814727506
  • Pages : 415 pages

Download or read book Long Before Stonewall written by Thomas A. Foster and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2007-07 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Book Same Sex Marriage

Download or read book Same Sex Marriage written by Kathleen A. Lahey and published by Insomniac Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alderson tells the stories of same-sex couples who have actually gotten married, as well as the behind-the-scenes stories that explain the legal victory that made this all possible.

Book Sex and Religion

    Book Details:
  • Author : Dag Ølstein Endsjø
  • Publisher : Reaktion Books
  • Release : 2012-01-01
  • ISBN : 1861899882
  • Pages : 336 pages

Download or read book Sex and Religion written by Dag Ølstein Endsjø and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sex and religion are inevitably and intricately linked. There are few realms of human experience other than sex in which religion has greater reach and influence. The role of religion, of any faith, to prohibit, regulate, condemn, and reward, is unavoidably prominent in questions of sex—namely with whom, when, how, and why. In Sex and Religion, Dag Øistein Endsjø examines the myriad and complex religious attitudes towards sex in cultures throughout the world. Endsjø reflects on some of the most significantly problematic areas in the relationship between sex and religion—from sex before or outside of marriage to homosexuality. Through many examples from world religions, he outlines what people mean by sex in a religious context, with whom it’s permissible to have sex, how sex can be a directly religious experience, and what consequences there are for deviance, for both the individual and society. As Endsjø explains, while Buddhist monks call attention to gay sex as a holy mystery, the Christian church questions a homosexual’s place in the church. Some religions may believe that promiscuity leads to hurricanes and nuclear war, and in others God condemns interracial marriage. Sex and Religion reveals there is nothing natural or self-evident about the ways in which various religions prescribe or proscribe and bless or condemn different types of sexuality. Whether sex becomes sacred or abhorrent depends entirely on how a religion defines it. Sex and Religion is a fascinating investigation of mores, meanings, rituals, and rules in many faiths around the globe, and will be of interest to anyone curious about the intersection of these fundamental aspects of human history and experience.

Book Sex and Reason

    Book Details:
  • Author : Richard A. Posner
  • Publisher : Harvard University Press
  • Release : 2009-07-01
  • ISBN : 0674042255
  • Pages : 469 pages

Download or read book Sex and Reason written by Richard A. Posner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sexual drives are rooted in biology, but we don’t act on them blindly. Indeed, as the eminently readable judge and legal scholar Richard Posner shows, we make quite rational choices about sex, based on the costs and benefits perceived. Drawing on the fields of biology, law, history, religion, and economics, this sweeping study examines societies from ancient Greece to today’s Sweden and issues from masturbation, incest taboos, date rape, and gay marriage to Baby M. The first comprehensive approach to sexuality and its social controls, Posner’s rational choice theory surprises, explains, predicts, and totally absorbs.

Book Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland  1400 1600

Download or read book Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland 1400 1600 written by Helmut Puff and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003-06 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the late Middle Ages, a considerable number of men in Germany and Switzerland were executed for committing sodomy. Even in the seventeenth century, simply speaking of the act was cause for censorship. Here, in the first history of sodomy in these countries, Helmut Puff argues that accusations of sodomy during this era were actually crucial to the success of the Protestant Reformation. Drawing on both literary and historical evidence, Puff shows that speakers of German associated sodomy with Italy and, increasingly, Catholicism. As the Reformation gained momentum, the formerly unspeakable crime of sodomy gained a voice, as Martin Luther and others deployed accusations of sodomy to discredit the upper ranks of the Church and to create a sense of community among Protestant believers. During the sixteenth century, reactions against this defamatory rhetoric, and fear that mere mention of sodomy would incite sinful acts, combined to repress even court cases of sodomy. Written with precision and meticulously researched, this revealing study will interest historians of gender, sexuality, and religion, as well as scholars of medieval and early modern history and culture.

Book Same Sex Cultures and Sexualities

Download or read book Same Sex Cultures and Sexualities written by Jennifer Robertson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates the centrality of sex, gender, and sexuality to theories of human behaviors and practices. Moves beyond other “lesbian and gay studies” readers by presenting a broader view of the significance of studying same-sex cultures and sexualities across cultures. Offers readings from all four subfields of anthropology: cultural, biological, linguistic, and archaeological (along with historical and applied anthropology). Includes discussion of biotechnology and bioethics, health and illness, language, ethnicity, identity, politics, post-colonialism, kinship, development, and policymaking.

Book From Sodomy Laws to Same Sex Marriage

Download or read book From Sodomy Laws to Same Sex Marriage written by Sean Brady and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by recent adoptions of same-sex marriage, From Sodomy Laws to Same-Sex Marriage provides international perspectives on the legal and social history of same-sex relationships from the early 19th century to the present. Its emphasis is on areas where the impetus for change has been most noticeable: Europe, the Americas, and Australasia. From Sodom and Gomorrah to Britain's sodomy laws and continental Europe's abhorrence of sexual acts 'against nature', the history of same-sex love traditionally ranged from fire and brimstone maledictions to secrecy and scandal. Until recently, legal positions across the western world reflected the legacies of the British and French empires, as well as Christianity, particularly Catholicism. In recent years, however, there has been a revolution in attitudes towards same-sex relationships. This poses hitherto unanswered questions: what historical complexities lie behind the revolutionary shift from punitive attitudes to legal endorsement of same-sex relationships? Given the cultural variety of historical attitudes to same-sex relationships, why has their legal acceptance been so international? The essays in this volume provide answers to these questions, offering the first international overview of the topic. While other studies have attempted to explain the change in legal and social treatment of same-sex relationships in a national context, or within a shorter time frame, this is the first volume to examine the topic from the French Revolution to the present day, bringing together a diverse array of perspectives over a range of countries. It is an important volume for students and scholars of queer history, the history of sexuality, law and sociology.

Book Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures

Download or read book Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures written by Sabrina Petra Ramet and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-11 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of original essays explores the historical and cultural diversity of the experience of gender reversal over an exceptional geographical and chronological range. Topics cove- red include anthropology, history, literature.