Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

A Curious History of Sex by Kate Lister

4 reviews

devonjones's review against another edition

dark funny informative medium-paced

4.0

Just to be clear: this is a book about history and anthropology, and is *deeply* unerotic. It's informative and funny, but also focuses on many of the dark sides of health, law, and society. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content and Abortion

Moderate: Transphobia and Blood

Minor: Adult/minor relationship

laurastewies's review against another edition

funny hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Homophobia, Medical trauma, Abortion, Sexual violence, Sexism, Sexual content, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Transphobia

now_booking's review against another edition

funny informative reflective slow-paced

3.5

3.5 Stars! This is quite an interesting compendium of the interesting and unique history of sex, sexual practices and reproductive health. It’s written with a sort of academic matter-of-fact, “did you know” humour, that passes interesting facts whilst acknowledging the limitations of source data. It’s funny with its running collection of euphemisms around sex and reproductive health, but never puerile, in-depth and I suppose somewhat explicit at times by virtue of the subjects, but never in a titillating way- it’s very scholarly- kind of like a nerd-out about the historical intersection of sex and culture. Chapters focus on the relationship between sex and language, sex and sexual organs, sex and food, sex toys, hygiene, reproduction, menstruation, sex work and consent. Of course in any book investigating the history of sex in depth, gender is a sub-theme, from misogyny to queer phobia to erasure, be mindful if these are things you might find triggering.

Overall, I liked this and I enjoyed meandering through it slowly over the past couple of months. I read the book at times and listened to the audio read by the author, at other times and I found both interesting and felt that I learned a lot about the history and anthropology of sex. I recommend this if sex is something that interests you from an academic standpoint. This is entertaining but also filled with a lot of factoids and trivia. For me if there is a down side, it is that whilst there is certainly reference to non-“Western” traditions in this book, I would say to a large extent, this book focuses on Western histories of sex with to a lesser extent some focus on practices from India. And this is understandable because this book relies on (mostly verified) written histories and traditions rather than oral ones. But I would have loved to have more content around Africa and other parts of Asia (other than India) and even other indigenous populations, and I fear those narratives might be lost forever.

Whilst this author editorializes a lot, it never feels like she’s giving too much personal opinion. There is some though. If you’re a fan of the Twitter page, “Whores of Yore,” you’ll probably know the vibe and quite like this book. I recommend if sex is something you want to get nerdy about - definitely check out the cool sources cited. This is definitely a labour of love.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abortion, Biphobia, Blood, Death, Hate crime, Homophobia, Medical content, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Rape, Religious bigotry, Sexual assault, Sexism, Sexual violence, and Transphobia

Moderate: Infertility, Infidelity, and Medical trauma

marionlundqvist's review against another edition

funny informative mysterious reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Abortion, Adult/minor relationship, Biphobia, Blood, Homophobia, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Rape, Slavery, and Transphobia