Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America [Hardcover]

One of the Daviss sprawling account of sex and sexuality over the course of American history traverses the various behaviors, beliefs, debates, identities, and subcultures that have shaped the way we understand connection, desire, gender, and power. Comprehensive, rigorous, and unafraid to challenge readers, this history illuminates the present with brutal and startling clarity. An engrossing account of the surprising variety of sexual beliefs, behaviors, subcultures, and culture wars that have marked American history from the beginning. This book will fascinate and challenge you. At a time when sex and sexuality are at the heart of our most polarizing debates, Rebecca L. Davis shows how both left and right have much to learn from history. Filled with colorful characters from a forgotten past, The scope of Rebecca L. Daviss knowledge and her vivid narratives make Rebecca L. Davis provides a fascinating account of the struggles over sexual identity and expression set in an unfamiliar geography and with historical actors new to many readers. She teaches us that such battles did not simply occur in the places we expectNew York and San Franciscobut across the South, the Midwest, and the Southwest, thanks to the courage and conviction of Native American, Black, and Latinx activists willing to challenge the limits of their local communities In engaging prose and using truly fascinating examples, Rebecca L. Davis shows us that ideas about sexualityfar from being just a contemporary preoccupationhave always played a central role in how we organize our lives, construct our communities, and understand our differences. [F]ascinating&[Davis] wants to show how the battles of todayover issues like gender nonconformity and reproductive rightshave antecedents that have been forgotten or suppressed.