"The Etherized Wife provides a comprehensive examination of the evolution of sex therapy through the prism of gender. The book makes the argument that in sex therapy, like other domains of life in which men set the standard of normality, women have been judged normal to the degree they match men's expectations. What is particularly striking about this bias is that it contradicts therapists' overt identification with feminism and the battle against women's inequality. To support these claims, Leslie Margolin maps a series of case studies drawn from the discipline's own literature-the articles and books that have been, and continue to be treated as exemplars of the discipline's collective consciousness. Through examination of case studies which focus on discrepancies in sexual desire, where the man wants more sex and the woman less, the book shows how therapists have favoured the man's side. The Etherized Wife shows how the sex therapy discipline has unintentionally enshrined male sexuality as the model of normal, natural, healthy sexuality"--

Volume I offers historiographical surveys and general overviews of central topics in the history of world sexualities. Split across twenty-two chapters, this volume places the history of sexuality in dialogue with anthropology, women's history, LGBTQ+ history, queer theory, and public history, as well as examining the impact Freud and Foucault have had on the history of sexuality. The volume continues by providing overviews on the sexual body, family and marriage, the intersections of sexuality with race and class, male and female homoerotic relations, trans and gender variant sexuality, the sale of sex, sexual violence, sexual science, sexuality and emotion, erotic art and literature, and the material culture of sexuality.

Now a classic in the field, The Horrors of the Half-Known Life is an important foundational text in the construction of masculinity, female identity, and the history of midwivery.