Solitary Sex : A Cultural History of Masturbation
by Thomas W. Laqueur
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Description
"This is the first cultural history of the world's most common sexual practice: masturbation. At a time when almost any victimless practice has its public advocates and almost every sexual act is front-page news, the easiest and least harmful one is embarrassing, discomforting, and genuinely radical when openly acknowledged. But this has not always been the case. The ancient world cared little about maturbation; it was of no great concern in Jewish and Christian teaching about sexuality. In show more fact, as Thomas Lacqeur dramatically shows, solitary sex as an important medical and moral issue can be dated with a precision rare in cultural history: the solitary vice, self-pollution, or self-abuse came into being around 1712. A creature of the Enlightenment, masturbation at first worried not conservatives - for whom it had long been but one among many sins of the flesh - but rather the progressives who welcomed sexual pleasure but struggled to create an ethics of self-government. The first truly democratic sexuality, masturbation was of ethical interest to both men and women, young and old." "Solitary Sex explains how and why this humble and once obscure means of sexual gratification became the evil twin of the great virtues of modern commercial society; individual moral autonomy and privacy, creativity and the imagination, abundance, and desire. It shows how a moral problem became a medical one, how some of the most famous doctors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were convinced that solitary pleasures killed or maimed. In the early twentieth century, Freud and his successors transformed this tradition: masturbation defined a stage in human development, the foundational sexuality that culture transformed for its own purposes. And finally, in the late twentieth century, masturbation become for some a key element in the struggle for sexual, personal, and even artistic liberation. Working with material from the prehistory of solitary sex in the Bible to third wave feminism, conceptual artists and the World Wide Web, historian Thomas Laqueur uses medical and philosophical texts as well as diaries, autobiographies, and pornography to tell the story of what has become the last taboo."--Jacket. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Reviewed by Peter Monaghan for the Chronicle of Higher Education here:
http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i26/26a01401.htm
http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i26/26a01401.htm
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ThingScore 100
Laqueur's most recent book, Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation, shares with Making Sex the same startling initial premise: that something we take for granted, something that goes without saying, something that simply seems part of being human has in fact a history, and a fascinating, conflicted, momentous history at that.
added by jburlinson
Author Information
11+ Works 1,107 Members
Thomas W. Laqueur is professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley.
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Seksiä yksin: Masturbaation kulttuurihistoria
- Original title
- Solitary sex : a cultural history of masturbation
- People/Characters
- Sigmund Freud
- Important events
- masturbation
- Original language*
- englanti
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, Sexuality and Gender Studies
- DDC/MDS
- 306.772 — Society, Government, and Culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social Behavior - Dating, Marriage, Divorce Sexual relations Sexual and related practices Masturbation
- LCC
- HQ447 .L36 — Social sciences The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality The Family. Marriage. Women Sexual life Masturbation
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 231
- Popularity
- 140,481
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- 6 — Chinese, English, Finnish, French, Italian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 8
