Book Review: A Curious History of Sex

By Al Preston

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            I am asexual, and while I acknowledge that’s a weird way to start a book review, just bear with me here. I am asexual specifically within the neutral to positive range. To be blunt, I don’t have a huge opinion on sex.

            Unless my dysphoria (a sense of unease or distress with my body) is acting up, I don’t think about bodies, sex, the ‘nuts and bolts’ if you will, all that much. At least in reference to myself. While it’s fascinating to see how other people view and interact with those feelings, I do not have a particularly good understanding of those feelings.

            When researching AIDS, drag, transgender, and LGBT+ history, sex comes up a lot. From queerness being considered purely as a sex act, to the deep emotional bonds queer folks have always been able to make, there’s a deep connection between LGBT+ history and the history of sex. I knew this, I just didn’t consider it all that deeply.

            A good portion of the humans on this planet like and craves sex. There is a minority that are indifferent or completely uninterested in sex, which may seem a bit hard to grasp. Much like it’s a struggle for me to understand why sex is such a big deal.

            So, what does all this have to do with this review? Well, as an asexual…I don’t get it. I struggle with references to sex in sources. I am often confused by why sex plays such a role into the community. Like any historian, once I have a question, I found a book that might help answer that question.

            A Curious History of Sex by Kate Lister is a fun read. Lister wrote for a general audience, not just an academic one. Lister focuses primarily on Western Europe with a few asides from other places and cultures. As a British academic, she’s writing what she has the easiest access to. Throughout the book, she uses the slang for sex acts and genitals across the ages whenever she is talking about those things which gave me a number of chuckles as I read.

            She runs readers through many elements of sex. Why people have sex, why did a particular society regulate sex and how did they have sex or have safe sex? Many things that we today take for granted like condoms and birth control have been talked about and experimented with for centuries. From using animal intestines as condoms to the healing properties of menstrual blood, Lister covers a lot in her work.

            Injected with Lister’s humor, A Curious History of Sex, is a very enjoyable read. However, to Lister’s own admittance, there’s so much more she couldn’t cover in this book. To write a total monolith about a complete history of sex would be impossible. As my history professors have always told me, you have to stop somewhere.

            I would have loved a more in-depth history of sex from the perspective of other cultures or from a queer lens, but that is not this book. Lister focused her scope on Western Europe and the weird things they were getting up to. Every so often she would mention other cultures, but her main focus was on the sexual health and habits of Western Europeans.

            There was a lot of interesting information! Lister talks about some weird stuff like the aforementioned animal intestine condoms. She debunks some myths we’ve held about the history of sex, like the Victorians using vibrators to cure women of lunacy (they didn’t). There are discussions about sex health and the way we use words when referencing sex and genitals.

            As much as I greatly enjoyed reading this book, it wasn’t necessarily what I was looking for when I started looking for a book about the history of sex. While I don’t feel any closer to understanding sex and what draws people to it, I do now know some extremely interesting facts about sex through time.

            I hope to find another book that might answer my question more thoroughly. Hopefully with a queer lens. I may focus more on the history of sex work. Transgender identities and sex work had a close history, especially for male to female transgender folks. What counts as ‘gay sex’ has changed a lot over time as well. How to have ‘gay sex’ has developed and changed just as much.

            Like a good historian, I’ll keep researching this topic until I have discovered my own answer to this question of mine. While Lister didn’t necessarily answer my question, I feel a few steps closer to one.