Handcuffs, paddles, whips—the words alone are enough to make a person blush. Even by our society’s standards, the practice of things like BDSM is still very hush-hush, considered deviant sexual behavior that must be kept hidden. But the narrow view of what is thought of as “normal” sex—a vanilla act performed by one man and one woman—is more and more contested these days. And as Julie Peakman reveals, normal never really existed; for everyone, different kinds of sex have always offered myriad pleasures, and almost all sexual behaviors have traveled between acceptance and proscription. The Pleasure’s All Mine examines two millennia of letters, diaries, court records, erotic books, medical texts, and more to explore the gamut of “deviant” sexual activity. Delving into the specialized cultures of pain, necrophilia, and bestiality and the social world of plushies, furries, and life-size sex dolls, Peakman considers the changing attitudes toward these, as well as masturbation, “golden showers,” sadomasochism, homosexuals, transvestites, and transsexuals. She follows the history of each behavior through its original reception to its interpretation by sexologists and how it is viewed today, showing how previously acceptable behaviors now provoke social outrage, or vice versa. In addition, she questions why people have been and remain intolerant of other people’s sexual preferences. The first comprehensive history of sexual perversion and packed with both color and black and white images, The Pleasure’s All Mine is a fascinating and sometimes shocking look at the evolution of our views on sex.

Through a series of close readings, Boer explores the earthy nature of the Bible. These readings are gathered into three parts: the Song of Songs; Masculinities; Paraphilias. Each study is undertaken with rigorous attention to relevant scholarship and significant theoretical engagement (especially with psychoanalysis, ecocriticism and Marxism).

Sex is often regarded as a dangerous business that must be rigorously controlled, regulated, and subjected to rules. Sexual acts that defy acceptable practices may be seen as variously defiling, immoral, and even unnatural. They may challenge and subvert both cultural preconceptions and the social order in a politics of sexual transgression that threatens to transform permissible boundaries and restructure bodily engagements. This collection of essays explores acts of sexual transgression that have the power to reconfigure perceptions of bodily intimacy and the social norms of interaction. Considering issues such as domestic violence, child prostitution, health and sex, teenage sex, and sex with animals across a range of settings from contemporary Oceania, the Pacific, South Africa, and southeast Asia to Euro-America, this book should interest all those who question the "naturalness" of sex, including public health workers, clinical practitioners and students of sex, sexuality, and gender in the humanities and social sciences.

Beginning with 1953, entries for Motion pictures and filmstrips, Music and phonorecords form separate parts of the Library of Congress catalogue. Entries for Maps and atlases were issued separately 1953-1955.

In this fully updated second edition, the author clearly introduces and assesses all of Freud's thought, focusing on those areas of philosophy on which Freud is acknowledged to have had a lasting impact. These include the philosophy of mind, free will and determinism, rationality, the nature of the self and subjectivity, and ethics and religion. He also considers some of the deeper issues and problems Freud engaged with, brilliantly illustrating their philosophical significance: human sexuality, the unconscious, dreams, and the theory of transference. The author's approach emphasizes the philosophical significance of Freud’s fundamental rule – to say whatever comes to mind without censorship or inhibition. This binds psychoanalysis to the philosophical exploration of self-consciousness and truthfulness, as well as opening new paths of inquiry for moral psychology and ethics. The second edition includes a new Introduction and Conclusion. The text is revised throughout, including new sections on psychological structure and object relations and on Freud’s critique of religion and morality.

Mighty Lewd Books describes the emergence of a new home-grown English pornography. Through the examination of over 500 pieces of British erotica, this book looks at sex as seen in erotic culture, religion and medicine throughout the long eighteenth-century, and provides a radical new approach to the study of sexuality.

The transformation of the Roman world from polytheistic to Christian is one of the most sweeping ideological changes of premodern history. At the center was sex. Kyle Harper examines how Christianity changed the ethics of sexual behavior from shame to sin, and shows how the roots of modern sexuality are grounded in an ancient religious revolution.