The Pleasure’s All Mine

A History of Perverse Sex

Julie Peakman

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781780236759
  9781780231853
• eBook ISBN:
  9781780232034
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

What is perverse sex and what isn’t? Now available in paperback, The Pleasure’s All Mine explores the gamut of sexual activity that has been seen as strange, abnormal or deviant over the last 2,000 years. This first comprehensive history of sexual perversion examines an abundance of original sources – letters, diaries, memoirs, court records, erotic books, medical texts and advice manuals – and shows how, for ordinary people, different kinds of sex have always offered myriad different pleasures. There never was a ‘normal’.

Almost all sexual behaviours have travelled to and fro along a continuum of proscription and acceptance. Attitudes have changed towards masturbation, leatherwear, ‘golden showers’ and sado-masochism. From the specialized cultures of pain, necrophilia and bestiality to the social world of plushies and furries, and lovers of life-sized sex dolls, some previously acceptable behaviour now provokes social outrage, while activities as diverse as sodomy and wife-swapping have moved on the spectrum of acceptance from sin to harmless fun. Each ‘perversion’ is explored from the time it was first visible in history, to how it is viewed today, and along the way the book asks why we can be so intolerant of other people’s sexual preferences.

Carefully researched as well as a fascinating read, and featuring a wide array of illustrations, The Pleasure’s All Mine reaches conclusions that are surprising, and sometimes shocking. This is an essential volume for anyone interested in the art, history and culture of sex.

REFERENCES

Introduction

1 See section on ‘Problems with the Current Diagnostic Criteria’, in Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment and Treatment, ed. D. Richard Laws and William T. O’Donohue (New York, 1997), p. 4.

1 Taking it Straight

1 The current sociological argument is that heterosexuality is a learned behaviour, not a natural occurrence. A hetero–homosexual binary exists, but this framework also categorizes types of heterosexual behaviour in a hierarchical way. As Ingraham argues, ‘Thinking straight is understanding heterosexuality as naturally occurring and not as an extensively social arrangement or means for distributing power and wealth.’ For a more in-depth sociological understanding of the development of heterosexuality, see Chrys Ingraham, Thinking Straight: The Power, the Promise and the Paradox of Heterosexuality (London, 2005).

2 Pseudo-Demosthenes, ‘Oration’, Against Nerea, 59.122.

3 Wilhelm Adolf Bekker, Charicles; or, Illustrations of the Private Life of the Greeks (London, 1866), p. 463. Although this is not entirely true as some Roman women have been found to exercise a good deal of financial independence in practice; see for example Suzanne Dixon, Reading Women (London, 2003).

4 Suetonius, Tiberius, 43–44; David Mountfield, Greek and Roman Erotica (Fribourg, 1982), pp. 43.

5 King Priam had many children born of consorts, according to Homer’s Iliad, but by the classical period, having a concubine and a wife under the same roof was ruled out; see Susan Lape, ‘Heterosexuality’, in A Cultural History of Sexuality, vol. I: In the Classical World, ed. Mark Golden and Peter Toohey (London, 2011), p. 18.

6 John Younger, ‘Sexual Variations: Sexual Peculiarities of the Ancient Greeks and Romans’, in A Cultural History of Sexuality, vol. I: In the Classical World, ed. Golden and Toohey, I, pp. 71–3.

7 It must be noted that not all the works ascribed to Hippocrates were actually written by him. Helen King, ‘Sex, Medicine and Disease’, in A Cultural History of Sexuality, vol. I: In the Classical World, quoting Virgil 8.468L. See also Helen King, Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (London, 1998); and Helen King, ed., Health in Antiquity (London, 2005).

8 Hippocrates, On the Diseases of Women, Book 1.

9 Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 1, 1, 730a25.

10 These ideas were circulating at least as late as the seventeenth century; see Helkiah Crook, Misocosmographia (London, 1615), p. 216.

11 Peter Lewis Allen, The Wages of Sin (Chicago, IL, 2000), p. 11.

12 John Davenport, Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs (London, 1869).

13 See Virginia Burrus, The Sex Lives of the Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (Philadelphia, PA, 2004), pp. 12–13; Joyce Salisbury, Church Fathers, Independent Virgins (London, 1991).

14 St Augustine, De bono coniugali, c. 1 (PL 40, 373); c. 3, n. 3 (PL 40, 375).

15 St Jerome, Against Jovinian, quoted in Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage, Handbook of Medieval Sexuality (New York and London, 1996), p. 86.

16 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, article 1, 12.

17 Louise M. Sylvester, Medieval Romance and the Construction of Heterosexuality (Basingstoke, 2008).

18 Pierre Bayle, Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. John Hughes, at www.gutenberg.org.

19 See Judith M. Bennett, ‘Writing Fornication: Medieval Leyrwrite and its Historians’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, XIII (2003), pp. 131–62; quote from Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution (London, 2012), p. 10.

20 Martin Luther, ‘The Estate of Marriage’, trans. Walther I. Brandt, in Luther’s Works, vol. XLV (Philadelphia, PA, 1962), 9.13.

21 According to Lawrence Stone, the shift from parental decision-making to a couple’s own choice in marriage had already taken place by 1660, except among the highest ranks of aristocracy: Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London, 1977), p. 183.

22 Thompson mentions around 400 cases of wife sales: see E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (Harmondsworth, 1993), pp. 404–62; PRO, National Archives, Kew, HO27/1 Criminal Register for England and Wales 1805.

23 For examples see Julie Peakman, Lascivious Bodies: A Sexual History of the Eighteenth Century (New York, 2005), pp. 46–72; and Julie Peakman, Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of Pornography in Eighteenth-century England (London, 2003).

24 See Julie Peakman, Whore Biographies, 1700–1825 (London, 2008).

25 Jonathan Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality (Chicago, IL, 2007), p. 17.

26 Quoted ibid., p. 86.

27 R. J. Brodie and Co., The Secret Companion: A Medical Work on Onanism or Self-Pollution [1845] (London, 1985), p. 37; Richard Freiherr von ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Introduction
• ONE Taking it Straight
• TWO From Onanism to Spending
• THREE From Ganymedes to Gays
• FOUR From Female Friendships to Lipstick Lesbians
• FIVE From Transvestites to Transsexuals
• SIX A Man’s Best Friend: Bestiality
• SEVEN The Ties that Bind: Sadomasochism
• EIGHT Loving the Dead
• NINE Too Close for Comfort: Incest
• TEN Child Love or Paedophilia?
• ELEVEN The Games People Play
• TWELVE On Body Parts: Fellatio, Fetishism, Infibulations and Fisting
• Epilogue: A Limit to Tolerance?
• References
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Photo Acknowledgements
• Index