ABSTRACT
Concern with sexuality has been at the heart of Western preoccupations since before the triumph of Christianity. It has been a matter of political debate for something like two hundred years. Already, by the last decades of the nineteenth century, the preoccupations of second-wave feminism were on the agenda: concerning male power
over women, sexual exploitation, the differences between men and women and the meaning of consent and choice. By the 1920s and 1930s, with the rise and fall of a world sex reform movement, and the apparently irresistible rise and rise of social authoritarianism and fascism, the intricate connections between sexual values and political power were clearly visible. It was during this period, through the writings of such people as Wilhelm Reich, that a concept connecting sex and politics – ‘sexual politics’ – first came into being.
