Under the Covers: A Very Intimate History of Sex

- Blurb -

The chastity belt, pious abstinence and Victorian prudishness: there is an accepted assumption that people of the past were more sexually conservative than those today, and in turn that their reservation made them morally superior. However, while times change, people don't: outside of the high-profile shows of chasteness, the common person has had the same desires through history - what is accepted about sexual history is largely an invention of historians, politicians and religious leaders, each with the ability to censor all that went against their agenda.At a time when sexual and personal freedom are at their height in the western world, this nostalgia for 'more innocent' times sows seeds of bigotry and prejudice, especially against women, sex workers and the LGBTQ community. To set the record straight, Cale and Polsom-Jenkins sunder the myth of chastity that pervades western history, using brand-new research to reveal the medieval Church licensing prostitution, monks administering 'menstrual regulators' and to showcase the prevalence of LGBTQ communities through history.