Apples and Oranges: My Journey through Sexual Identity by Jan Clausen

 In Apples and Oranges, Jan Clausen presents a detailed analysis of her sexual history – from childhood impressions, to the actions of a rebellious teenager, to an adulthood filled with love for a woman, and then discovering a male lover.  Her situation is very interesting because she was a well-known lesbian writer and activist while involved in a long-term relationship with a woman.  Jan Clausen explains her removal from this community as she discovers that she’s in love with a man.  Apples and Oranges is impressive to me because Jan was able to use the journals she’d kept her entire life to look back on what she was thinking and feeling at different points.  She was then able to analyze how these feelings and experiences shaped her sexual identity and sense of self.  

Autobiography of a Geisha by Sayo Masuda, translated by G.G. Rowley

Autobiography of a Geisha was originally written in 1957, but G.G. Rowley just brought us this translation in 2003.  Until recently, I thought that geishas were just traditionally dressed Japanese women, and had no idea that they were sold to men as prostitutes.  Poor families often sold their young daughters to a geisha house where they were kept as servants while they studied the arts of dance, song, shamisen, and drum until they made their debut as a geisha around the age of sixteen.  As a geisha, they must repay the geisha house for their training and housing by being sold to men.  Sayo Masuda had a particularly rough childhood because she was sold as a servant at the earliest possible age to a family that mistreated and abused her.  She lived in constant fear and extreme poverty.  Though Sayo didn’t learn how to read and write beyond a basic level, she’s amazingly able to tell her story of life as a geisha and the years of pain and struggle she withstood to escape that life of shame.  She also gave me a good idea of what life in Japan was like in the 1940s and 50s and how it was possible for her to live this kind of a life.  

Brothel: Mustang Ranch and Its Women  by Alexa Albert

I first heard about Brothel on an NPR program and was intrigued because the author had gained permission to live inside one of Nevada’s most famous brothels – The Mustang Ranch.  Albert first asked to visit the ranch to conduct part of a college study and was denied for a number of reasons, one being that she is a woman.  When she was finally allowed to visit the Ranch, she managed to overcome her own obstacles and eventually gain the trust of several employees, resulting in an in-depth study of the women working at the Ranch.  Albert provides a lot of information in Brothel, including the history of prostitution in the USA, how the women of the Ranch live and act both professionally and personally, how they became prostitutes, and what kind of men visit them.  Alexa Albert was able to make the most of her visits to the Mustang Ranch and Brothel shows how quickly this unknown world can feel like home to almost anyone.

Crossing: A Memoir by Deirdre N. McCloskey

Donald McCloskey spent the first fifty years of his life living happily as a man, marrying, having kids, and becoming an accomplished professor of economics.  For most of that time he was a crossdresser, dressing as a woman in the privacy of his home, but eventually he realized that he would really like to become a woman.  The process of making this news public was a major strain that wound up costing him many personal relationships (including those with his wife and children), lots of money, and stress.  As Deirdre tells her story she examines the role of gender in our society and where she fits into that picture.  I particularly enjoyed her analyses of communication as a woman, and between women, as compared to that of men.  Also I was shocked to learn how unfair the standards and rules are to those wishing to have a sex change operation, both the medical rules and those of the psychological community.  

Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America by Andrea Tone

 As you can see, the cover of Devices and Desires shows various torturous-looking devices that immediately grabbed my attention.  I was further drawn in when on the first page of the book, in the acknowledgements section, Andrea Tone says, “Much of this book focuses on the history of bootleg birth control.”  This history begins in the late 1800s and continues to present day, examining virtually every aspect of birth control practiced in America.  In particular, and as promised, Andrea Tone explains how the government made birth control illegal, how it enforced the laws, what methods the public used during this time, and how and where they obtained them.  Some parts of this book seemed a little dry, but overall I found Devices and Desires to be fascinating and informative.  It’s amazing to me how difficult it is today to choose a form of birth control, and I can’t even imagine how difficult it must have been when most forms were illegal, possibly toxic, and most likely ineffective.

Her Way: Young Women Remake the Sexual Revolution by Paula Kamen

As the cover says, this book is “a report on today’s changing sexual roles and choices.”  Paula Kamen uses a good balance of interviews with women, statistical data, and mainstream media sources to explain the strength of today’s young women.  We are often called aggressive, immoral, and forward for behaving in ways that men traditionally have (by having earlier sexual encounters, more partners, and premarital sex) and this book works towards correcting these misconceptions.  I found the studies correlating levels of education with levels of “adventurous” sexual practices to be very interesting.  Basically, Paula Kamen makes the point that women today are more accepting of other’s choices when it comes to sexuality and more likely to promote an atmosphere of openness.

Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History by David Allyn

David Allyn takes a broad look into a period of time that many people try to narrow down into a few years or events.  Starting in the 1950s, all aspects of society are evaluated as influencing factors in changing sexual values in America.  It was striking to me to read about how topics such as interracial marriages, pre-marital cohabitation, masturbation, and homosexuality were either not tolerated or simply illegal as recently as forty years ago.  Most of these things I already knew about, but with specific cases presented together, the overall attitude at the time seems unimaginable compared to today.  It was interesting to read Allyn’s dismissal of subjects like swinging, orgies, and wife-swapping as being rather uncommon in real life, despite what mainstream media would lead us to believe.  In contrast to these stereotyped examples of sexual freedom, his examination of the openness towards sexuality in art and literature ends up illustrating the true key factors in changing society’s attitudes toward sex.