Deviant Desires

Self-described pervert Katherine Gates takes an anthopological look at the explosion of extreme fetishes and post-modern eroticisms in this lavishly illustrated guide to some of the most obscure and fascinating sexual subcultures. Here are just a few of the strange and convoluted erotic turn-ons included: Pony riding academies, cybersex and its permutations, a man whose fetish is to costume himself as a thanksgiving turkey and get cooked in an oversize oven. Also includes interviews with John Waters, Clive Barker, and Harold Schecter.

Can there still be anything new to say about the erotic, sexy play, and desire? YES, because what drives each of us to any sexual fixation-from feet or fat to latex or ponyplay-may hold mysteries, but can never be inexplicable. YES, because even the most seemingly unusual kinks and fetishes, like trample and crush, cannibal play, quicksand and male pregnancy, derive from such universal themes as power and transformation. YES, because when some taboos crumble, others emerge, with often surprising, delightful, and even disturbing consequences for our psyches and libidos. YES, because as human culture evolves, we newly discover sexual excitement and fulfillment from scenarios (such as car accidents) and objects (like gas masks and medical equipment) that never existed before. YES, because wherever there is darkness, secrecy, and silence, what's most essential is light, revelation, and ever better communication.

In tribute to the many splendors of human sexuality, The Deviant's Pocket Guide to the Outlandish Sexual Desires Barely Contained in Your Subconscious profiles over 40 of the wildest and woolliest sexual proclivities you'll ever find, even on the internet. The human race is a species of inventors. In our few millennia of existence, we've created fire, the wheel, the printing press, vaccines, and the internet. But never is our creativity more evident than when it comes time to reproduce. For nature lovers, there's Dendrophilia (you know, tree hugging). For car people, there's the Automotive Fetish. And for those people who love stuffed animals…you'll just have to look inside. Each entry in this one-of-a-kind encyclopediaexplores the psychological underpinnings, important logistics, and typical fantasies associated with the deviance in question. For the aspiring deviant, there's even a list of useful accoutrements. Hysterical and astonishingly thorough, The Deviant's Pocket Guide is the only reference book you'll ever need.

The Victorian East End lives in fear of the Ripper and his mission to kill rent boys. Silas Hawkins, nineteen and forging a life on the streets could well be the next victim, but when he meets Archer, his life changes forever. Young, attractive and rich, Archer is The Viscount Clearwater, a philanthropist, adventurer and homosexual. When Archer suspects the Ripper is killing to lure him to a confrontation, he risks his reputation and his life to stop the madman's murders. Every man must play his part, including Silas. Secrets must be kept, lovers must be protected, and for Archer and Silas, it marks the start of their biggest adventure - love. A mashup of mystery, romance and adventure, Deviant Desire is set in an imaginary London of 1888. The first book in the on-going The Clearwater Mysteries series and mixes fact with fiction. The series takes the theme of loyalty and friendship in a world where homosexuality is a crime. Insta-love, physical romance, mystery and murder. Praise for Jackson Marsh "Intensively researched." "No usual tried tropes here. Great story, natural dialogue, well-developed characters, and an unpredictable plot." "Amazing. Jackson Marsh has written a compelling mystery and a wonderful love story both at the same time."

"A sumptuously documented book, one that makes innovative use of the principle of montage to generate informative historical readings of Japan's myriad mass cultural phenomena in the early twentieth century. Both in terms of its scholarship and its methodology, this is a truly admirable work."—Rey Chow, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Brown University "As Miriam Silverberg has brilliantly shown here, the modern times of 1920s and ‘30s Japan were rendered in a cacophony of cultural mixing: a period of consumerist desires and Hollywood fantasy-making but also the rise of nationalist empire-building. Excavating its kaleidoscope of everyday culture Silverberg astutely offers a theory of montage for how Japanese subjects 'code-switched' in juggling the mixed cultural/political elements of these times. Utilizing a montage of media, texts, sites, and scholarship, Silverberg leads the reader into the terrain of the 'erotic grotesque nonsense' in a work that is as scintillating as it is theoretically important."—Anne Allison, author of Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination "Unlike other scholars who merely view ero-guro-nansensu in its literal meanings, Silverberg brilliantly documents it as a complex cultural aesthetic expressed in a spectrum of fascinating mass culture forms and preoccupations. With great erudition and humor, she traces the sensory and conceptual modes that are animated with potency and sophistication through this cultural metaphor. This book is destined to be a classic in Japan scholarship."—Laura Miller, author of Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics

Investigates race and racism in the U.S. exotic dance industry.

Examining the fascinating history of female genital cosmetic surgery, Camille Nurka traces the origins of contemporary ideas of genital normality. Over the past twenty years, Western women have become increasingly worried about the aesthetic appearance of their labia minora and are turning to cosmetic surgery to achieve the ideal vulva: a clean slit with no visible protrusion of the inner lips. Long labia minora are described by medical experts as ‘hypertrophied,’ a term that implies deformity and the atypical. But how far back does the diagnosis of labial hypertrophy go, and where did it originate? Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery tells the story of the female genitalia from the alien world of ancient Greek gynaecology to the colonial period of exploration and exploitation up to the present day. Bringing together historical, medical, and theoretical documentation and commentary, Nurka uncovers a long tradition of pathologizing female anatomy, a history sure to be of interest to any reader who wishes to know more about how medicine shapes our commonly held ideals.

Exploring forms of desire unaccounted for in previous histories of sexuality What can the Renaissance tell us at our present moment about who and what is “queer,” as well as the political consequences of asking? In posing this question, The Shapes of Fancy offers a powerful new method of accounting for ineffable and diffuse forms of desire, mining early modern drama and prose literature to describe new patterns of affective resonance. Starting with the question of how and why readers seek traces of desire in texts from bygone times and places, The Shapes of Fancy demonstrates a practice of critical attunement to the psychic and historical circulations of affect across time within texts, from texts to readers, and among readers. Closely reading for uncharted desires as they recur in early modern drama, witchcraft pamphlets, and early Atlantic voyage narratives and demonstrating how each is structured by qualities of secrecy, impossibility, and excess, Christine Varnado follows four “shapes of fancy”: the desire to be used to others’ ends; indiscriminate, bottomless appetite; paranoid self-fulfilling suspicion; and melancholic longings for impossible transformations and affinities. These affective dynamics go awry in atypical and perverse ways. In other words, argues Varnado, these modes of feeling are recognizable on the page or stage as “queer” because of how, and not by whom, they are expressed. This new theorization of desire expands the notion of queerness in literature, decoupling the literary trace of queerness from the binary logics of same-sex versus opposite-sex and normative versus deviant that have governed early modern sexuality studies. Providing a set of methods for analyzing affect and desire in texts from any period, The Shapes of Fancy stages an impassioned defense of the inherently desirous nature of reading, making a case for readerly investment and identification as vital engines of meaning making and political insight.