Dangerous Sexualities Medico-Moral Politics in England Since 1830

"Dangerous Sexualities" examines the ways in which perception of health and disease are linked to moral and immoral notions of sex and makes use of historical narratives to underpin contemporary debates concerning morality, sexuality and health with particular reference to AIDS.

Part I covers moral environmentalism from 1830-1860 with chapters on cholera, eighteen-century social medicine, working-class female sexuality and professional masculinity. Part II discusses medical hegemony and the feminist response in the period 1860-1880 with chapters on the Contagious Diseases Acts, female sexuality and male desire, while Part III encompasses state medicine to criminal law, purity, feminism and the state 1880-1914. The final part examines the early twentieth century campaigns for sex education with chapters covering racial health, social and moral hygiene, masculinity and school sex hygiene.

Dangerous Sexualities takes a look at how our ideas of health and disease are linked to moral and immoral notions of sex. Beginning in the 1830s, Frank Mort relates his social historical narratives to the sexual choices and possibilities facing us now.This long-awaited second edition has been thoroughly updated to include new discussions of eugenics, race hygiene and social imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With a new and extended bibliography, introduction and illustrations, this second edition brings a classic into the 21st Century.

Introduction: Narratives of Sex Part One: Moral Environmentalism 1830-1860 1.Cholera 2.James Phillips Kay 3.Eighteenth-century Social Medicine and Philanthropy 4.Experts and Their Concepts 5.Science and Religion 6.Medico-moral Politics Implemented? 7.De-coding Morality: the Domain of the Sexual 8.Hygienics and Bourgeois Hegemony 9.Working-class Female Sexuality and Professional Masculinity 10.Hierarchies of Expertise: Female Philanthropy and the Gendered Politics of Reform 11.Conclusion Part Two: The Sanitary Principle in Dominance: medical hegemony and feminist response 1860-1880 1.Medical Hegemony and Social Policy 1850S1870 2.The Contagious Diseases Acts adn Mid-Victorian Social Reform 3.Female Sexuality 4.Male Desire 5.The Repeal Campaign and the Collapse of the edico-moral Alliance 6.Religion, Morality and Repeal Feminism 7.Women and Social Disciplining Part Three: From State Medicine to Criminal Law: purity, feminism and the state 1.Prologue 2.The Eclipse of State Medicine 3.Purity and Science 4.Purity and Populism 5.Speaking Out 6.Feminism and Social Purity 7.Ellice Hopkins 8.Purity, Feminism and the Reluctant State 9.Suffrage and Sexuality: 1908S1914 11.Mobilising a Language 12.Petitioning the State 13.The Libertarian Challenge 14.Conclusion Part Four: From Purity to Social Hygiene: early twentieth-century campaigns for sex education 1.The Dronfield Case: the Teacher and the Girls She Told 2.In Corpore Sano 3.Racial Health 4.Social and Moral Hygiene 5.Feminist Responses 6.Sex Education 7.The Construction of Sexual Difference: Advice to Girls 8.Masculinity 9. School Sex Hygiene Teaching: Competing Strategies 10.The State and Sex Hygiene 11.The Personal and the Political 12.Purity Politics in Decline 13.Conclusion Epilogue

Frank Mort is Professor of Cultural history and Director of the Ralph Samuel Centre for Metropolitan Cultural History at the University of East London.