This blog comes with a warning: it is not for those delicate of hearing or squeamish of stomach because today I am writing about two sex...

On 21 June 1986, nine American women removed their shirts in a park in Rochester, New York. They were protesting against a law which...

Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s ‘Girl Making a Dog Dance on Her Bed’ was painted in the late 1760s. The painting is typical of his decadent...

This is a short piece from my book, Disgrace (Reaktion Books, 2022) Sexual violence: it is a difficult subject to talk about. There is...

In 1975, Dennis Coates published a short book of poetry inspired by his time at West Point, the U.S. Military Academy. One poem –...

Just two months after the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington DC, Fox TV broadcast the first of their series ‘24’. The main...

In September 1971, Ebony magazine published an article that broke a major taboo: a survivor of breast cancer wrote candidly about her...

Between 25 and 40 million people worldwide have died as a result of opportunistic infections arising from AIDS or Acquired...

What does tuberculosis look like? If we are thinking about the early-nineteenth century, we might imagine an emaciated, white, male...

In April 1973, cinemas throughout America began screening a tearjerking love story, the plot of which revolved around sickle cell...

The Great Cat Massacre in New York City began in July 1916. By the end of that month, 72,000 cats and around 8,000 dogs had been...

A few weeks before writing this blog, I was launching a book that I had recently published. A former PhD student of mine and someone I...

It is impossible not to be charmed by Athens. At night, bouzouki music wells up from dark basements; tables spill out of ouzeris, around...

To whom does a woman’s body belong? In mid-nineteenth century Britain, this question provoked impassioned debates between moralists,...

Is sex a ‘good thing’? Is celibacy dangerous? How can we understand the explosive violence of Incels, those young men (primarily) whose...

Why is monogamy such a big deal? What can a history of fidelity and infidelity reveal about the changing rights, duties, and social...

Pornography is divisive. It is guaranteed to incite heated debates between people inhabiting different subject positions based on...

What do we mean when we talk about the ‘perversions’? Who gets to decide what is ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’? The concept of ‘perversion’ is...

Throughout human history, sexual danger has regulated social lives and subjectivities. From the ‘yellow press’ of the late nineteenth...

Walking into the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution (as it was then called) in the 1890s could be a dispiriting experience....