Female Sexual Inversion Same-Sex Desires in Italian and British Sexology, c. 1870-1920

by Beccalossi, Chiara

• ISBN13: 9780230234987
• ISBN10: 0230234984
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-11-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

An examination of how female same-sex desires were represented in a wide range of Italian and British medical writings, 1870-1920. It shows how the psychiatric category of sexual inversion was positioned alongside other medical ideas of same-sex desires, such as the virago, tribade-prostitute, fiamma and gynaecological explanations.

Author Biography

Chiara Beccalossi is a Postdoctoral Research fellow at the Centre for the History of European Discourses, the University of Queensland, Australia. She has published a number of articles on the history of sexuality and history of medicine, and is the co-editor of A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Age of Empire(2011) with Ivan Crozier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Note on terminology
Abbreviations
PART I
Introduction: Female Sexual Inversion and other Medical Embodiments of Female Same-Sex Desires in Italy and Britain, circa 1870–1920
Sexuality in Post-Risorgimento Italy and Victorian Britain
PART II
Italy: The Fashionable Psychiatric Disorder of Sexual Inversion and Other Medical Embodiments of Same-Sex Desires
Britain: Oblique Discourses Surrounding 'Lesbic Love'
PART III
Cesare Lombroso and Italian Criminal Anthropology
Pasquale Penta, 'First Class Sexologist'
Havelock Ellis and Sex Psychology
William Blair-Bell and Gynaecology
Concluding Remarks
Bibliography
Index