Wherever you have a military, you will have sex. Whether it’s an occupied city, an encampment in a theater of war, or a military base here in the United States, anywhere you have a large population of young men, stationed away from their girlfriends and wives, you will soon have Read more
When and where public baths have been popular, they’ve meant different things to different cultures. They might be sites for socializing, religious purification, spiritual/bodily cleanliness, relaxation/pampering, public health/hygiene, homosocialiality, and, of course, sex, or some combination of those things. At the start of the twentieth century, single-gender communal bathhouses were Read more
Listen, download, watch on YouTube, or scroll down for the transcript. Related Episodes: Coverture: Married Women and Legal Personhood in Britain Marriage in America: A Brief History What’s in a Name? North American Naming Conventions and the “Death” of Patrilineal Lines Transcript for “Recogimiento: Virginity, Enclosure, and Female Virtue in Colonial Read more
Niagara Falls was once known as the Honeymoon Capital of the World. Join us as we explore this unique phenomenon. Everything has a history, even honeymoons. Listen, download, watch on YouTube, or scroll down for the transcript. Related Posts: Marriage in America: A Brief History Get Lit: Heating and Lighting in Read more
Georgian London was the epicenter of urban pleasure culture. Harlots leveraged their assets, rakes indulged in licentious sex, and brothels, molly-houses, taverns and bawdy houses were scattered all over the city. Behind all this reckless abandon lay a milieu of misery. Between 1756 and 1760, the Foundling Hospital of London Read more
Today’s episode is part of our sex series 2.0 and a continuation of one of our earliest episodes, Selling Sex: 19th Century New York City Prostitution and Brothels. In that episode, Sarah and I discussed the vibrant sexual culture in New York City during the Gilded Age, roughly 1870 to Read more
In the age of #MeToo, rape and sexual assault have been consistently in the news. Debates abound about what counts as rape, whose testimony we should believe, and too often, men with power and privilege get away with it. But though it feels pressing right now, none of those debates Read more
Have you been tested? Averill and Elizabeth take a look at the British imperial policy of blaming–and locking up–women for outbreaks of syphilis. Transcript for Locked Up and Poxxed: THE Venereal Disease and Women who Sold Sex in the Victorian British Empire Written by Averill Earls, PhD Starring Elizabeth Garner Read more
In the third episode in our series on women’s reproductive rights in America, Jane Roe & the Pill, we finally get to two of the most important turning points in our story: the invention of the hormonal birth control pill, and the Roe v. Wade case in 1973. The mid Read more
At the Women’s Marches across the U.S. on January 21st, 2017, there were hundreds–maybe thousands–of women in their 60s, 70s, and 80s who held up signs that conveyed their frustration with still needing to fight for rights like birth control and abortion. This is a battle that has waged for Read more