Straight

In this slim volume, Blank (Virgin: The Untouched History) sets out to explore the changing views of marriage, heterosexuality, and conceptions of biological sex itself over the past 150 years, systematically exploring the history from scientific, philosophical, and sociological perspectives in an entertaining and intelligent style. She argues that although sexual contact between men and women has existed since time immemorial, the word and idea of heterosexuality as an identity is a relatively recent invention. Beginning with the sex research of Richard von Krafft-Ebing in the late 1800s and trickling down from the elite world of medicine and science to middle-class households by way of the writings of Sigmund Freud, heterosexuality as we know it emerged and adjusted in response to a number of sociocultural factors, such as urbanization and the invention of the birth control pill.