Nina Brochmann

Exposed. The Sick History of Women's Sexuality in Medicine

For 3,000 years, women have been branded as whores, witches and saints; nymphomaniacs and sexless souls; hysterical, frigid and greensick from virginity. Women's desire has been a threat – its absence a diagnosis. Doctors have denied the existence of the clitoris or turned it into a threatening abnormality, all depending on what suited the prevailing ideas of science’s leading men.

In Exposed, Nina Brochmann examines female sexuality as it has been defined, diagnosed, and cured throughout the history of medicine. With medical insight and wry wit, she reveals how science, culture, religion, and power have colluded in controlling female sexuality, and how old mythologies and misogyny disguised as science still have real life consequences for women´s sexuality and medical care today.

Exposed is not just about sex, but about who has had the right to define the female body – and what it has cost. Your sexlife has a history, and it’s time to lift the covers.