The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian Hindu Sanskrit text on sexuality, eroticism and emotional fulfillment. Attributed to Vātsyāyana, the Kamasutra is neither exclusively nor predominantly a sex manual on sex positions, but rather a guide on the art of living well, the nature of love, finding partners, maintaining sex life, and other aspects pertaining to pleasure-oriented faculties. It is a sutra-genre text with terse aphoristic verses that have survived into the modern era with different bhāṣyas (commentaries). The text is a mix of prose and anustubh-meter poetry verses.
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure – popularly known as Fanny Hill – is an erotic novel by the English novelist John Cleland first published in London in 1748. Written while the author was in debtors' prison in London, it is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel". It is one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history.
John Cleland was an English novelist best known for his fictional Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, whose eroticism led to his arrest. James Boswell called him "a sly, old malcontent".
Catherine Millet is a French writer, art critic, curator, and founder and editor of the magazine Art Press, which focuses on modern art and contemporary art.
Catherine Breillat is a French filmmaker, novelist and professor of auteur cinema at the European Graduate School. In the film business for over 40 years, Breillat chooses to normalize previously taboo subjects in cinema. Taking advantage of the medium of cinema, Breillat juxtaposes different perspectives to highlight irony found in society.
A facial is a sexual activity in which a man ejaculates semen onto the face of one or more sexual partners. A facial is a form of non-penetrative sex, though it is generally performed after some other means of sexual stimulation, such as vaginal sex, anal sex, oral sex, manual sex or masturbation. Facials are regularly portrayed in pornographic films and videos, often as a way to close a scene.
Romance is a 1999 French arthouse film written and directed by Catherine Breillat. It stars Caroline Ducey, Rocco Siffredi, Sagamore Stévenin and François Berléand.
Sex-positive feminism, also known as pro-sex feminism, sex-radical feminism, or sexually liberal feminism, is a feminist movement centering on the idea that sexual freedom is an essential component of women's freedom. They oppose legal or social efforts to control sexual activities between consenting adults, whether they are initiated by the government, other feminists, opponents of feminism, or any other institution. They embrace sexual minority groups, endorsing the value of coalition-building with marginalized groups. Sex-positive feminism is connected with the sex-positive movement. Sex-positive feminism brings together anti-censorship activists, LGBT activists, feminist scholars, producers of pornography and erotica, among others. Sex-positive feminists believe that prostitution can be a positive experience if workers are treated with respect, and agree that sex work should not be criminalized.
Catharine Alice MacKinnon is an American feminist legal scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has been tenured since 1990, and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. From 2008 to 2012, she was the special gender adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
The Second Sex is a 1949 book by the French existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, in which the author discusses the treatment of women in the present society as well as throughout all of history. Beauvoir researched and wrote the book in about 14 months between 1946 and 1949. She published the work in two volumes: Facts and Myths, and Lived Experience. Some chapters first appeared in the journal Les Temps modernes.
Fear of Flying is a 1973 novel by Erica Jong. It became controversial for its portrayal of female sexuality, and figured in the development of second-wave feminism.
The Ethical Slut is a self-help book about non-monogamy written by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy. In the book, Easton and Hardy discuss non-monogamy as a concept and a practice, and explore sexual practices and common challenges in non-monogamous relationships.
Rachilde was the pen name and preferred identity of novelist and playwright Marguerite Vallette-Eymery. Born near Périgueux, Dordogne, Aquitaine, France during the Second French Empire, Rachilde went on to become a Symbolist author and one of the most prominent women in literature associated with the Decadent movement of fin de siècle France.
Lesbianism is the sexual and romantic desire between women. There are historically fewer mentions of lesbianism than male homosexuality, due to many historical writings and records focusing primarily on men.
A Real Young Girl is a 1976 French drama film about a 14-year-old girl's sexual awakening, written and directed by Catherine Breillat. The film, Catherine Breillat's first, was based on her fourth novel, Le Soupirail.
Wendy Perriam is a British novelist, whose work often reflects her strict convent background, against which she rebelled sharply, and her stories contain much explicit sexual content. She has also appeared frequently on radio and TV.
Feminist views on BDSM vary widely from acceptance to rejection. BDSM refers to bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and Sado-Masochism. In order to evaluate its perception, two polarizing frameworks are compared. Some feminists, such as Gayle Rubin and Patrick Califia, perceive BDSM as a valid form of expression of female sexuality, while other feminists, such as Andrea Dworkin and Susan Griffin, have stated that they regard BDSM as a form of woman-hating violence. Some lesbian feminists practice BDSM and regard it as part of their sexual identity.
Monique Pauline Roffey is a Trinidadian-born British writer and memoirist. Her novels have been much acclaimed, winning awards including the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, for Archipelago, and the Costa Book of the Year award, for The Mermaid of Black Conch in 2021.
In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. The concept was first articulated by British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". Mulvey's theory draws on historical precedents, such as the depiction of women in European oil paintings from the Renaissance period, where the female form was often idealized and presented from a voyeuristic male perspective. Art historian John Berger, in his work Ways of Seeing (1972), highlighted how traditional Western art positioned women as subjects of male viewers’ gazes, reinforcing a patriarchal visual narrative.
City Crimes; Or, Life in New York and Boston is an 1849 novel by George Thompson, writing under the penname of "Greenhorn". The novel was written for the working class and meant to give a shock to its readers through its use of graphic violence among several characters and sexual promiscuity, specifically among women. It is considered by critics to fall within several genres such as sensational literature and urban gothic and to have laid the groundwork for the city mysteries genre.
