Rethinking Early Modern Women’s Masturbation

By Paige Donaghy Early Modern

Why is women’s masturbation absent from most studies examining sexual practices of early modern people?

More than Masturbatory: An Interview with April Haynes

By Nicholas Syrett Author Interviews, Early America

Antebellum women’s efforts to reform sexuality through public physiology education.

Bad for the Soul, Good for the Body: Religion, Medicine and Masturbation in the Middle Ages

By Katherine Harvey Medicine and the Body, Medieval

The monk could no longer be considered a virgin, since he has been ‘polluted…through masturbation’.

Death by Celibacy: Sex, Semen and Male Health in the Middle Ages

By Katherine Harvey Medieval

Medieval priests were not supposed to have sex, but medical theory suggested that celibacy could kill them.