Sex, Politics and Society

Jeffrey Weeks is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at London South Bank University, UK. He has an international reputation for work on the history and sociology of sexuality. His previous publications include The World We Have Won (2007), The Languages of Sexuality (2011), What is Sexual History? (2016), Coming Out (3rd edition, 2016), and Sexuality (4th edition, 2017).

'This is the most comprehensive historical study of modern sexuality to date. Weeks leaves no topic untouched in his quest to cover the varieties of human sexual experience in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is an essential text for courses on the history of modern European sexuality. Scholars and students alike will benefit from his exhaustive inclusion of every topic from Victorianism to society's modern consideration of LGBT people.'Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, USA'Sex, Politics and Society was groundbreaking when it was first published – and it has fully stood the test of time. This new updated edition speaks as eloquently to us now of the intersections of sex and sexuality with culture, politics and society as it did in 1981. It remains lodestone in my work.'Matt Cook, Birkbeck, University of London, UK'For more than three decades, Jeffrey Weeks' Sex, Politics and Society has been an essential guide to the history of sexuality in modern Britain. Like its predecessors, this new edition offers accessible explanations of complex theoretical material, while expertly tracing shifts in attitudes towards, and experiences of, sexuality since 1800. The addition of extended discussions on LBGT rights, same-sex marriage, and the fluidity of gender and sexual identities brings its story up to date. This remains an indispensable work for anyone interested in how people have lived and loved over the past two centuries.'Tracey Loughran, Cardiff University, UK

• CONTENTSPreface and Acknowledgements 1. Sexuality and the historian Introduction Histories of sexualitySexuality and powerSexuality and the politics of historyThe making of ‘modern’ sexuality2. ‘That damned morality’: sex in Victorian ideology Victorian sexuality: myths and meaningsEmergent patterns The domestic ideology Sex and class 3. The sacramental family: middle-class men, women and children Masculinity and femininity Birth control Childhood 4. Sexuality and the labouring classes Middle-class myths, working-class realities Traditions, illegitimacy and proletarianisation The patterns of family life Respectability and its discontents 5. The public and the private: moral regulation in the Victorian period Forms of moral regulation Private morality, public vice Reform or control? 6. The construction of homosexuality Homosexuality: concepts and consequencesThe sins of sodom Moral, legal and medical regulation Identities and ways of lifeIntimate lives 7. The population question in the early twentieth century Population politics Maternalism Eugenics The influence of eugenics 8. The theorisation of sex A new continent of knowledge Sex, science and society Havelock Ellis and sex research The impact of Freud9. Feminism and socialismSexual radicalism and its limits Feminism and sexuality The morals of socialism 10. Sex psychology and birth control Sex psychology International movements Parenthood and birth control 11. Towards a conservative modernity A ‘glorious unfolding’? Domesticity and family lifeProtecting purity Psychology and sex delinquency 12. The state and sexuality Welfare and citizenship Reproducing the population Towards the complementary marriage ‘Wolfenden’ and sexual liberalism 13. The permissive moment The transition ‘Permissiveness’ Youth Women Ideologies The political momentThe limits of permissiveness 14. Personal politics and moral conservatism The ebbing tide Second-wave feminism The challenge of gay liberationThe new moralismThe Thatcherite experimentThe AIDS crisis15. The changing landscape of sexuality and genderIntimate pleasures Doing families A gender revolution?16. Diversity, agency and citizenshipThe changing world of LGBT peopleBecoming ordinary Multicultural Britain?Live and let love Index