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16 results
  • Article
  • Article

Can our sexual desires be transformed?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

In the 1950s, many psychiatrists thought that homosexuality could be reformed. One found that it couldn’t – and his discoveries led to a change in the law.

  • Article
  • Article

Surviving as an asexual person in a heteronormative world

| Seleena Laverne DayeNan Carreira

Experiencing no sexual attraction led Seleena Laverne Daye to feel she was somehow failing as an adult. But she found a way to claim her identity and to thrive.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

My important, ridiculous nose

| A L Kennedy

The nose is a much-maligned appendage, but it’s a powerful organ capable of invoking powerful emotions from past memories and sexual attraction.

  • Article
  • Article

Dial ‘S’ for sex

| Dr Kate Lister

In pre-internet days, phone boxes became a patchwork of ‘tart cards’ offering sexual services. Find out about the clandestine world they hint at.

  • Article
  • Article

Trading breastmilk with men

| Alev ScottVicky Scott

When Alev Scott advertised her milk for sale, she was inundated with messages from men keen to satisfy sexual fetishes. Here she finds out who they are, and why women sell to them.

  • Article
  • Article

The shocking ‘treatment’ to make lesbians straight

| Helen SpandlerSarah CarrJooney WoodwardDolly Sen

Being a lesbian has never been a crime in the UK, but 50 years ago, some psychologists experimented with treatments to try to ‘cure’ women of their orientation. Find out what this involved.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Naked, not nude

| Caroline VoutFunmi Lijadu

Classicist Caroline Vout argues that it’s time to take the dust covers off the Ancient Greeks and Romans, and to encounter their bodies not nude, but naked.

  • Article
  • Article

Shame and the online free-for-all

| Lucia Osborne-CrowleyEduardo Rubio

Lucia Osborne-Crowley looks at how shame manifests online, where public humiliation is common and second chances all too rare.

  • Article
  • Article

The indelible harm caused by conversion therapy

| Jules MontagueStephen Nestor Ostrowski

With first-hand evidence from two powerful testimonies, neurologist Jules Montague explores the destructive history of conversion therapy, a punitive treatment designed to ‘cure’ people of homosexuality.

  • Article
  • Article

Eels and feels

| Ruth Garde

For Georgian Londoners, the allure of electric animals was both intellectual and sensual.

  • Article
  • Article

The Ladies of Llangollen

| Sarah Bentley

As we celebrate LGBT History Month, Sarah Bentley explores the relationship between the two 18th-century women known as the Ladies of Llangollen.

  • Article
  • Article

The Transvengers as foe of the paradigm of heteronormativity

| Jason Barker

Jason Barker writes about his experience of working with a group of young trans people and describes the process of developing the theory which underlies The Transvengers comic, and society, today.

  • Article
  • Article

Dating on dopamine

| Pete LangmanSimon Paulson

Drug treatment for Parkinson’s can come with an unwanted side serving of compulsive behaviour, as Pete Langman discovered. Read about his dating journey in a dopamine cloud.

  • Article
  • Article

Charged bodies

| Ruth Garde

Electrified humans brought education and performance together with a spark in the 18th century.

  • Article
  • Article

Guerrilla public health

| Harry Shapiro

From safe-use guides to needle exchange schemes, Harry Shapiro reflects on 40 years of drug harm reduction in the UK.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

‘My Hair Is Not…’

| Inés Yearwood-Sanchez

Eight Black people talk about their relationship with their hair – their hairstyle history, their experiences, and how they decided to have natural hair.